The best way to avoid bad press is to follow white hat principles, or at least fully disclose and explain any gray hat principles to your client. This is like promising that you’ll get to the top of the rankings without black hat techniques and...
So for example, if pure gray hat you might build links to your site through link distribution methods, but never would you purchase links directly from a link seller. Impatience, budget, and lack of understanding all factor into the need for a gray...
Google & Link Schemes - Several Shades of Gray For the black hat link builder, the lesson to take away from this is obvious: stop doing that. Either way, Google have certainly upped the ante recently with the Penguin update and a slew of emails to...
The message wasn't subtle, Google is using their megaphone to show that tactics once considered light gray have been re-cast a few shades darker in 2012. Link building tactics once considered reasonable – or at least not black hat – are clearly on...
However, there is some gray here. Understanding the gray area between what Google says and what (currently) works is a different matter. The gray area is understanding that some “paid links” are OK and other “paid links” may not be.
SEO Younglings or SEO Padawans) easily interpret gray or dark side tactics as acceptable means for achieving search rank. If you're an SEO Jedi, black hat tactics undoubtedly tempt you on a regular basis.
Obviously there is a white hat/black hat/gray hat blur on this point, so please feel free to discuss and comment below. In continuation to a relatively popular article I wrote last month on top web analytics myths, I thought I would expand upon the...
Purchasing links from prominent directories or spending time mass-submitting directory entries have been established as gray-hat SEO tactics, and are often employed by spam websites in an attempt to crawl up the SERP.
How to Optimize Your Images For Search Engine Traffic - Michael Gray When Black Hat Becomes More Ethical Than White Hat - SEO.com Here's a roundup of today's other search news and headlines from around the web, sorted by category.
How to Choose a New Domain - Michael Gray The safest way to build up trust/links for your website is to create good, unique, resourceful/helpful content, promote via social channels, and try to win links the "white hat" way.
Telling its reporters to attack Google just isn't in The Gray Lady's DNA. So, I tip my hat to whoever it is. As Auric Goldfinger tells James Bond in the movide Goldfinger (1964), "They have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance.
You inform everyone around you that what you're about to do is a really gray area, but if you want speedy results, this is the deal with devil they need to make their Q4 numbers. Others will blame the black hat SEOs for tempting law abiding...
Is Your Search Firm's Hat White, Black or a Shade of Gray? Here's a recap of this week's columns and news stories for the week of Feb.to 19, as reported by Search Engine Watch, as well as search news and tips from around the web.
While I think there are benefits to Street View, Michael Gray (Graywolf) wrote a good post about the many possible privacy issues around this. This has also added legitimacy to the "black hat" SEOs, but that's a column for another day.
Whilst some things are fairly obvious, far more are in a gray area not easily defined. They have changed the account signup process doing away with the Firstname Lastname system that has worked for the past seven years (Helloooo Tinfoil Hat Theory!
After all, drawing conclusions from data is never a case of black and white - it's all just shades of gray. This indicates that certain markets are particularly cut-throat, but more worryingly suggests that reporting spam could be tantamount to...
Today, successful search marketing strategies absolutely must incorporate elements of black hat (or gray hat -- call it whatever you want) methodology. Fire the white hat agency and "get real. Here are the columns and news stories for the week of...
We hear about black hats, gray hats, and white hats -- that's all B.S. Buying links works, and Google is failing miserably in their battle on this front, as well as against other black hat methods that come up every day.
This gray area is where a lot of SEO is really done, much like business deals can be made on the golf course. Gray Matters That said, there's space between white and black hat tactics. While I respect Chris's position that standards would increase...
Participants: Michael Gray, Nick Denton, and Martin Nisenholtz from The New York Times. Social search and the semantic web are the end of black-hat SEO. I think SEOs are highly adaptable, so I suspect you'll see a large number of black-hat SEOs...
