An overview of black hat SEO and white hat SEO, by Perry W.

White Hat and Black Hat SEO techniques are the angels and demons of the SEO world. White Hat SEO methods are the "legal" ways of doing search engine optimization while Black Hat SEO methods are the exact opposite. There exists so little information on how to totally differentiate the two. As a matter of fact some reliable SEO companies use Black Hat techniques accidentally, though most use them deliberately.

Search Engines and Black Hat SEO

Black Hat SEO techniques sometimes give the impression that the whole SEO business revolves around the concept of outwitting - even to the point of fooling - search engine relevance algorithms. In fact though, there are ways of implementing fair and justifiable SEO processes. Most of the time (though not all of the time) Black Hat SEO techniques are easier to implement than White Hat SEO methods. For this reason, search engines like Google continue to find ways to level the playing field and to discourage the use of Black Hat SEO techniques.

Google polices the search engine environment and bans Black Hatters whenever they are caught or reported by concerned internet users and stakeholders. But as much as search engines strive to eliminate the use of Black Hat SEO techniques, there will always be clever people who will get away unscathed with unethical SEO techniques.

It's for the Money or for the Easy Way

For what reasons do Black Hatters practice unethical SEO? The answer is fairly simple. It's the big bucks in exchange for negligible effort. SEO companies who stick to White Hat methods work hard to succeed. On the other hand, Black Hatters exert a fraction of the effort and earn as much or more money than the White Hatters.

Moreover, sometimes it is disheartening and frustrating to find Black Hat SEO sites that rank above yours on search engine results pages after all the effort that you have exerted using White Hat techniques. Black Hat SEO sites rank higher because they trick the system. They look for the weaknesses in search engine algorithms and target them. On the other hand, White Hatters playing under the assumption that the internet is a level playing field usually end up being at the losing end of the search engine results.

Black Hatters as Algorithm Testers

Black Hatters are sometimes too clever for their own good. Once Google or any search engine for that matter discovers a Black Hat SEO anomaly, it will implement counter measures to fight it. In particular, Google's algorithm will be tweaked to make it more foolproof.

However, as soon as the new algorithm takes effect, Black Hatters then find other ways to trick the program. If this process continues, the good guys will basically win in the end.

There will always come a time when after encountering all the tricks behind Black Hat SEO, search engines will be able to provide the absolute counter measure. In other words Black Hatters are just providing the good guys an edge in the business. Black Hat techniques serve as the testing ground for search engines to improve their system. In the long run, White Hatters will gain all the benefits in the SEO market.

The domain name SEO.com (SEO - Search Engine Optimization) has been sold for 5 million dollars to a comapny named Web Target. Dave Bascom, new owner of SEO.com already have some plans what to do with this domain name:

SEO.com will continue to be a search engine optimization firm, but our website will also offer lots of good stuff like SEO resources, tools, articles, tips, and insight into the SEO/SEM industry. Stay tuned for a new logo, website, and a lot more.

$5M places SEO.com in million dollars domain somewhere near 6th place. Not bad.

1. Sex.com $14 million
2. Porn.com $9 million
3. Business.com $7.5 million
4. Casino.com $5.5 million
5. AsSeenOnTv.com $5.1 million
6. Seo.com $5 million
7. Korea.com $5 million
8. Altavista.com $3.3 million
9. Loans.com $3 million
10. Wine.com $3 million
11. Wines.com $2.9 million
12. Tom.com $2.5 million
13. Autos.com $2.2 million
14. Mortgage.com $1.8 million
15. Express.com $1.8 million
16. Men.com $1.3 million
17. Feedback.com $1.23 million
18. Phone.com $1.2 million
19. Find.com $1.2 million
20. Wallstreet.com $1 million

SEODigger is a simple and easy to use tool, which gives very valuable results. Enter a domain name and it will give you all the positions in Google SERPs, based on a database of about 50 billions of search terms.



For example, the site webmasterworld.com appears by 862 keyphrases in the first 20 Google search results.

Registration is free, enjoy!

ExoClick.com is proud to welcome a new member on board! Sebastian is from Poland and will take care of our SEO publishers.
Sebastian has been doing SEO for a while, approaching all the aspects of the optimization and monetization of web sites. He will promote our services to the different SEO communities but he will also be able to understand your needs as a SEO webmaster and help you monetize your search engine traffic at 200%.

This also means we add another language to our "customer support". We had English, French and Spanish and now also have Polish. So feel free to contact us in any of these 4 languages.

You can contact Sebastian directly at sebastian [AT] exoclick.com

Mamy nowego gracza w druzynie!

Witamy nowego czlonka w rodzinie ExoClick.com! Sebastian jest z Polski i zajmie sie opieka naszymi wydawcami SEO.

Dotychczas Sebastian zajmowal sie szeroko pojetym pozycjonowaniem, mial stycznosc ze wszystkimi aspektami zwiazanymi z optymalizacja stron jak i ich spieniezaniem. Bedzie promowal nasze uslugi w srodowiskach zwiazanych z SEO a takze zrozumie Twoje potrzeby jako pozycjonera i doradzi Ci jak jeszcze lepiej wykorzystac Twoj traffic.

To wydarzenie oznacza jednoczesnie, ze nasze biuro obslugi bedzie moglo kontaktowac sie z Wami w jeszcze jednym jezyku. Poslugiwalismy sie angielskim, francuskim oraz hiszpanskim a teraz bedziemy takze polskim. Zapraszamy wiec do kontaktowania sie z nami w kazdym z tych czterech jezykow.

Mozesz skontaktowac sie z Sebastianem piszac na e-mail sebastian [at] exoclick.com

It looks like a Google Pagerank Update is going on right now. This blog, which is pretty recent and had a Pagerank 0 has now a Pagerank 4 on some of the Google datacenters!

You can have a look at this forum thread (on DigitalPoint) to read more about it and see what other webmasters are saying about it.

The Pagerank update is something that all webmasters are waiting impatiently. And it happens only a few times a year. Have a look at this page to see the full history of pagerank and backlinks updates. You can also see estimations of incoming updates.

A Pagerank 4 for the Pay Per Click Blog, that wouldn't be bad! Let's wait until the update is stable. So, how are your sites doing?

I just thought I'd share the forums and sites I'm reading to keep in touch with the PPC and SEO community.

DigitalPoint Forums - http://forums.digitalpoint.com/
A reference. Forums about Search Engines, Marketing, Business, Design & Development... A big community with very interesting threads. More than 45,000 members!!

The V7 Network - http://www.v7n.com/forums/
Marketing and Web Development. A very busy SEO Forum. More than 17,000 members.

WebmasterWorld.com - http://www.webmasterworld.com/
Huge site, very known of webmasters. A lot of forums about search engines, PPC and webmasters news. But moderation is pretty strict and some sections are not free.

SEO Chat - http://www.seochat.com/
Lots of articles and nice SEO tools. (keywords density, meta tags analyzer, PageRank lookup...)

SEOMOZ.org - http://www.seomoz.org/
A nice site and blog about SEO.

Webmaster Talk - http://www.webmaster-talk.com/
Forum with a smaller community but growing. And interesting threads.

SEO Book - http://www.seobook.com/
Aaron Wall's blog about SEO.