There Are Some Things I Can’t Fix
Some of you who are reading this may be depending on one “scheme” or another to sustain your business. Maybe you’re running “made for Adsense” websites, with automated content generation software. Maybe you’re using cloaking or JavaScript hacks to hide your site’s true content from the search engines.
Here’s some bad news: one day, these schemes will stop working. I can’t fix that. I can’t help you. If you’re trying to outrun the search engines, don’t come crying to me if they catch up to you one day. Enjoy your run while it lasts… but you might want to start thinking about a more sustainable business model for the long haul.
A Note about Hats
White hat… black hat… gray hat. People have been arguing for years about the “right way” to do SEO.
“Right” might mean a couple of things. There’s “right” in terms of whether what you’re doing gets results, and there’s “right and wrong,” in terms of ethics. Even when you boil it down to getting results, you can argue about the importance of short term vs. long term results.
I am a little tired of the conversation to be honest, but I can’t write an entire book about SEO without at least talking about this stuff once.
I call what I do “white hat” because I would have no problem discussing every detail of SEO with anyone from any search engine, telling them the URLs of every site I own, etc.
If you’re doing things that you wouldn’t want the search engines to know about, I’m going to call you a “gray hat.”
To me, it’s really that simple. Either you’re doing things the search engines are trying to detect and block, or you’re not. We can all use common sense to decide what these things are.
I hope that this post will move a few more “gray hats” a little closer to the “white hat” side, when they see how a “white hat black belt” like me gets things done.
So what makes someone a black hat? If you’re trying to deceive people, “hijack” websites, or “hack” a competitor out of search results, I’ll call that “black hat,” because it’s truly evil.
If you don’t like these definitions, I am not going to argue with you, and I don’t want to hear about it. I have books to write.
Do yourself a favor right now! Install Mozilla Firefox to use as your primary browser. Firefox is the safest browser in existence, use it.
“But This Guy Told Me…”
Be careful where you get your advice: I met a guy at a conference a while back, who thinks that he’s getting special treatment because he put a Google search box on his web site. He was planning to publish an e-book, with all his “secrets.”
He has a great site with an active Blog, which is always getting new links from other web sites, but that was just an afterthought to him. It couldn’t be that simple, could it? There just has to be some trick to it!
If you believe that there’s some secret that the “insiders” aren’t telling you, you’re experiencing normal healthy paranoia. Good for you. Your ancestors were the same way, and sometimes it helped them survive.
Back in the Stone Age, if one of your caveman buddies drank some yellow water from the hot springs, and got sick, you all stayed away from it. The ability to learn is a big part of why we’re all still here.
On the other hand, if you killed a gazelle with white spots on its tail, and then there was an earthquake, you might have thought twice about killing another one like that.
Today, we know better… but we still have superstitions.
Don’t get me wrong. Some people really are better at SEO than others. Their success, though, is mostly due to more experience and better processes. The people who are exceptionally good at SEO also have a lot of knowledge about the technical side of search engines and web sites.
I think I’ve proven over the years that I am one of those people… and I want to help you.
Stay Tuned Up,
Dale
