The SEO community has been going through an amazing transformation over the past few years. Black hat methods are being phased out relentlessly and people are starting to really focus on community and content.
I’ve been madly impressed by the content being produced and I wouldn’t want it any other way. However, I’ve noticed some false beliefs sprouting up, especially amongst new SEO’s who take heavy value into what they read.
White Hat is Not Invincible
This is the biggest problem. Just, because you’re completely white hat, does not mean you’re untouchable. Several e-commerce sites took a hit by the panda update for using the same description blurb for products associated with several different categories. This is a very innocent mistake that could’ve happened to anyone.
Whether you’re white hat or not, you need to be aware of every single Google update. You’re not safe just because you “didn’t do anything wrong.”
Preaching White Hat Causes Paranoia
I’ve gotten pretty frustrated with a few SEO’s (and clients) that think one tiny imperfect link is going to cause a ranking apocalypse. It’s ok to let a few imperfections slip through. It’s unnatural for every single link to be perfect.
You need to have a mix of everything. That includes directories, guest posts, links on mediocre sites, non-exact anchors, brand name links, etc. You need it all. This leads me to my next point.
Scalability Issues
If you’re only getting absolutely perfect, pearly white links, you need an incredible budget. Otherwise, you have to learn to be lenient in your outsourcing. Outsourcing is going to have flaws. Just like I wrote above, it’s ok to have a few imperfections.
Think of it like stock photos. They’re perfectly shot photos with perfect looking people… and no one likes them. They don’t feel real.
Thinking “Black Hat Will Always Fail”
White hat posts always talk about black hat techniques failing or how Google will eventually catch up. There are black hat methods that mimic white hat so well, human eyes couldn’t catch it. You just don’t know about them, because people will never out themselves.
It’s important to be aware these techniques can work, otherwise you’re giving black hats the upper hand.
Ignorance Leaves You Vulnerable
Lastly, if you’re oblivious to “good” black hat techniques, you’re leaving yourself incredibly vulnerable. There are some horrible things your competitors could do if they wanted. For example, misrepresenting your company and asking for your link to be removed.
If you don’t know about these methods, you won’t know what warning signs to look for. Keep that in mind the next time you ignore a black hat post, because you think it’s useless information.
Conclusion
It’s ok to look at the top players in the industry as role models, but you need to give everyone some attention. Read topics about everything, even ones you don’t agree with. From there, you can make your own unique assessments. If you simply follow what everyone else is doing, then you’ll always be behind them.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Agree on this 100%. I really love to know more and more about black hat and grey hat, and whatever hat. I think it helps me to learn more and more about SEO, and then from all the knowledge I will make my own considerations based on what I think and what I have seen with my experiments.
Follow the others, but try always to surpass them.
Exactly. I’ve read a few posts that keep saying not to spend so much of your day reading, but I don’t think that’s the issue. I think you should spend a lot of time reading, just make sure you’re reading the right things.
There are constantly new ideas and techniques being tested in the industry. It’s important to know about all of them.
How about the part where most people preaching black hat are multiple shades of gray? This entire industry feels incredibly fake at times. You’ve got post after post after post preaching great content and then you look at the SERPs and it’s NOT what’s holding true in reality. But hey, posturing is important, right?
Yes it’s good that we’re trending towards more “outreach”, I suppose. But the fact that everyone seems to worship content marketing like the answer to all SEO’s problems while ignoring the massive, glaring issues with a content-based ranking system is mind boggling to me.
I completely agree. Content is important, but that doesn’t mean you ignore everything else. It’s only one avenue. You have to do a little bit of everything to really stay ahead. The SERPs aren’t perfect and they probably never will be.
Had to read one more post before I hit the sack tonight and I’m glad I did.
This post pretty much summarized up everything I’ve been holding inside over the last 24 hours.
Well done Peter… Well done
Peter, loving this. We like to live in our little protected bubbles, and we say “I do what Rand says!” like it somehow puts a little flag on our websites to protect us. It doesn’t, and people do need to not sleep comfortably that the next Google update won’t completely change how on-site is handled or something else that could penalize our existing on-page tactics.
By optimizing sites at all we’re trying to game the system for our own benefit, and we have to be vigilant that the game could change at any time, without warning.
Exactly Matt. Unfortunately not everyone sees it like that. Junior SEO’s put too much weight on what all the popular folks on Twitter say and don’t try things out for themselves. That’s something that’s changed a lot over the past few years. Everyone use to test tactics all the time, and come up with their own conclusions. Now it seems to be a fading practice.
Couldn’t agree more!
Another piece of advice is to test a theory and don’t take everything at face value before you start touting the latest tip, trick, technique etc