There’s been a lot of chatter recently regarding last week’s SMX Advanced conference, particularly the focus given to Black Hat SEO techniques in sessions like Give It Up.  Seeing as I wasn’t there, I’m not in a position to comment on just how Black or White the conference was, but to judge from some of the posts from people who were in attendance, it seems like the were a lot of tactics discussed which crossed the line into some pretty dark territory.

I’ll leave the debate about whether or not Black Hat SEO can even be viewed as Advanced SEOto the people who are more qualified to dissect the technicalities of each.  Hopefully it may even encourage some of those commentators who insist that there should have been a greater focus on Advanced White Hat SEO methods to begin sharing in greater detail some of the Advanced techniques they felt should have been included.

What’s piqued my interest in all this has been the developing discussion about whether or not it’s ethical to even learn about Black Hat SEO techniques if you’re someone who regards him or herself as a White Hat SEO.

Once You Start Down The Dark Path, Forever Will It Dominate Your Destiny

The fingers-in-their-ears brigade treat is as a threat for that knowledge to be shared, pointing to the risk of inexperienced SEOs taking on board these techniques without fully appreciating the dangers involved or the damage they may cause in the long run by implementing them on their clients’ or employers’ sites.  Which kind of makes sense, especially from the point of view of the extra hassle for the White Hats who’ll be brought in later to clean up the mess.

Feel The Power Of The Dark Side

On the other hand you have the folks who revel in their Black Hat dabblings, either as full-time spammers or those who run their own networks of Dark Side sites as a sideline to their day to day White Hat work for clients.  These guys obviously like getting new tips to try out, but I wonder how they feel once the tactics become more widespread and their effectiveness starts to wane.

But with the blast shield down, I can’t even see. How am I supposed to fight?

And then of course, right smack dab in the middle of it all you have the fencesitters like me, cozily taking up the middle ground and watching the world go by, taking the stance that finding out about Black Hat SEO tactics and techniques DOESN’T necessarily mean that you’ll implement them wholesale.  It does mean that you’re better equipped to identify those tactics when used by a competitor and, hopefully, enables you to develop strategies to combat them.

In addition to  all the White Hat SEO blogs and sources that I refer to on a daily basis I also subscribe to a handful of blogs by prominent Black Hat SEOs and have even frequented a Black Hat forum or two from time to time.  These guys tend to play their cards very close to their chests for fear of devaluing a technique that is making them money, so the discussions are usually pretty general or they relate to a process that is already in the wild and in such widespread use by the script-kiddies that there’s no longer any real profit to be gained from trying to keep it a secret.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that a great deal of Black Hat knowledge and tactics relate to the technical prowess and optimization required to automate site/email/link generation for the purposes of spamming on a massive scale.  A large part of a lot of the Black Hat techniques discussed centre on the “churn and burn” nature of creating sites to generate as much revenue as possible in the short period of time before the Search Engines catch up and ban them, at which point they move on to the next set of sites to do the same thing with them.

There are also a lot of “Algorithm Chasers” pushing the cutting edges of Search Engine tolerances, finding out just how far they can push things before tripping a filter and sending a site into the depths of Google penalty hell.

You can often look at a Black Hat tactic and reverse engineer it, filter out the spammy automation and identify a viable/potential White Hat technique underneath.
In many cases Black Hat methods are often just about taking the rules that most SEOs “bend” on a regular basis and stretching them to breaking point.

It’s very easy to get caught up in the debate over whether it’s ethical or not to use Black Hat methods and the posts this week about SMX Advanced have sparked some very interesting commentary, but ultimately it’s down to the individual to decide what they feel is right and wrong and whether it’s worth the risk to employ such tactics on their sites (or to ensure that they provide their client with the necessary oversight and sufficient background knowledge to make an informed decision).

And if you struggle to find the correct guidance from your internal moral compass, just remember the man who’s been unofficially appointed as the Moral Compass of SEO.

(I’ve been trying to find out the source for the following quote but haven’t had any luck so far, so if I don’t get it quite right please forgive me.  And if you do know who said it and where, please drop a link to it in the comments so I can update the post.  Thanks.)

BlackHat SEO is anything that you wouldn’t want to explain to Matt Cutts over a Sprite in the bar at a search conference

I’m not sure if the embargo on discussing what went on in the Give It Up session at SMX Advanced goes so far as to prevent people saying whether or not Matt was in the audience for it, but I’d be willing to bet that very few people chatted to him in the bar afterwards.