Can White Hat SEOs Compete With Black Hat SEOs?

usedcarforsale · #1 (**permalink**) 09-24-2010, 07:32 AM

A HighRankings Forum thread has a nice black hat verus white hat discussion. These types of discussions were more popular in the old days, so it is nice to see one spring up again.

The thread creator basically said, the problem with white hat SEO is that it can't compete with black hat SEO. Especially on the very competitor keyword phrases.

The issue with this debate is that it is not true. There are plenty of white hat web sites that rank incredibly well for competitive keywords and would out rank any black hat site in the long run. I believe the main issue is semantics or how one defines white hat versus black hat techniques.

What makes an SEO blackhat? Hacking? Spamming? Cloaking? Many black hats would never hack into a site or inject comment spam on a web site. Many black hats would take offense to classifying criminal activity as black hat, it is criminal. But at what point does white hat SEO turn black?

Without defining black vs white, it is hard to answer the above question.

But in my opinion, white hat sites can indeed compete and do better in many cases.

Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.

arthur · #2 (**permalink**) 09-24-2010, 08:58 AM

well i dont think so, because if we see all high ranking websites, they are concerned with white hate SEO, and the second thing is that, the website they have black hate SEO, cant run long live.. search engines can through them in spam as soon they get know.

carriethomson · #3 (**permalink**) 09-24-2010, 08:59 AM

I think white hat seo is the legal or ethical way you can say for doing seo, on other hand black hat seo involves deception and doesn't follow search engine guidelines, But thats true white hat seo can compete and do much better than black hat seo.

merabasera · #4 (**permalink**) 09-25-2010, 11:16 AM

Hi Every One,

I am agree with carrie thomson comments that black hat technique never compete it but its also true by doing black hat technique we achieve results fast.But i always suggest white hat technique because its legal and ethical way.

MeraBasera Dot com

eyanharve · #5 (**permalink**) 09-27-2010, 12:52 PM

white hat seo techniques are the best seo techniques because black hat seo count as spamming techniques.

SexyTracey · #6 (**permalink**) 09-28-2010, 01:18 PM

well, no doubt, it is really true that black hat can make your website rank high on search engines but the problem with it, is it will take some risks and might get your website penalized.

flyingstone88 · #7 (**permalink**) 09-29-2010, 02:09 AM

I agree with you.So,white hat and black hat have a A similar purpose.

seattleseo · #8 (**permalink**) 09-29-2010, 11:09 PM

Blackhat are typically crackpot marketers (read: script kiddies) who don't know anything about SEO other than backlinks are good mmmkay.

Not only does blackhat have a very limited shelf-life, any good white hat can QUICKLY identify blackhat techniques, and report them. From my personal experience, Google will penalize for cloaking within 48 hours.

infoman66 · #9 (**permalink**) 09-30-2010, 01:02 AM

White hat or black hat, it's a question ...

Imagine having the best product on the market, but you can not sell it because competitors better optimize your site. Is it ethical?

If you use black hat to promote your product, which is the best on the market, it's good for customers, because they get what is best.
I think it should be the ethical message - the product would need to sell quality, not advertising ...

Regardless of black or white hat, the only quality that can survive the first page of Google and make money, everything else serves only as decoration ...

mypaperplates2 · #10 (**permalink**) 09-30-2010, 08:49 PM

Google continuously improves it's search algorithm and is making almost 100 changes a day! So blackhat can never compete with whitehat cause someday Google will find it!

john1386 · #11 (**permalink**) 10-02-2010, 06:46 AM

White hat seo is always better than black hat seo technique.Though white hat is time consuming,it gives long lasting result for a site.While black hat gives temporary result.

robinjackman · #12 (**permalink**) 10-02-2010, 06:53 AM

white hat and black hat seo both are different than each other because black hat seo techniques counted as spamming techniques and search engine give importance to only white hat seo.

Siyal · #13 (**permalink**) 10-07-2010, 12:16 PM

White hat SEO techniques that search engines accept. White hat SEO techniques are beneficial for site visitors as well as for search engines. The best method to get good traffic to your site, but it is very time consuming method. ..Black hat SEO is the use of techniques that are unacceptable to search engines to boost a page's position in search results. They have no benefit to site visitors. That can lead their sites penalized by search engines.