It’s Wednesday and time for another hypothetical. This week I figured we would bring it back to our industry. It’s something that everyone in our industry is up against at one time or another, but let’s see which direction you go.
You come up with a new idea that you think will do really well online. A website is put together, product developed and you’re now at the point of promoting your new site and product. You’re faced with two options:
- Black Hat Techniques - You can apply a few black hat techniques you know are against the search engine terms but the techniques guarantee you’ll be put in the number one spot for all of your search terms for a minimum of 3 months. The problem is, your site can be dropped out of sight at any moment after the 3 month mark.
or
- White Hat Techniques - You go strictly white hat and stay so far away from anything shady, other white hats look at your site and think you’re the cleanest webmaster on the block. The only guarantee is you’ll be in the top 20 for a few of your search terms after 6 months of hard work. The problem is, 50% of the sites ranking higher than you are using black hat techniques and you’ll never be able to out rank them and the other 50% are large corporations and wikipedia that will always be ranked higher.
Which way do you turn and why?
15 comments ↓
:/ Whitehat!
If it’s a good idea, that will last the test of time, I’d go white hat for sure. If it has a shorter lifespan, might be best to make a quick buck and go black hat and hope for the best.
The way I look at it, I have a brand new product and while I think it’s awesome, 99% of the world may hate it, so I’d rather spend less time and resources to get that answer. If it is well received and everyone loves it, then I make my statement, drop off and attack it with white hat at that point.
I sometimes look at black hat as a unique “focus study group”. You don’t have to go find them, they find you and answer the question.
But yeah, if it is a product I feel is what I’ll be doing when I retire, most definitely build it up with all of the right ways.
Since we are being hypothetical and given strict black/white options, why not do both? Domains are cheap. Make two websites - one black hat and one white hat.
The black hat one will show you if others also like your product and generate some starting capital. If this indeed is a good product the white hat one will prevail in the long time ensuring a steady flow of income.
Keep in mind that something today is considered white hat may be marked as black hat in the future (sounds familiar?). So why not make the best of both worlds?
I’d be 100% GRAY HAT…which according to the bounds of this hypothetical would probably put me in the BLACK category. But this wouldn’t be detrimental for my long term status, so screw it!
I certainly wouldn’t cloak, redirect, hide text, etc. for starters. Any “questionable” measures I’d take would be off-site so the worst thing that could happen would be that I might waste a little time and money.
How much money did you say each would generate…?
Given what you describe, I would probably go with the black hat method because I could get away with it for 3 months and make some bucks, and because who is getting hurt? Only others that are also trying to make some money and they will make less.
But in real life, I would continue with only white hat methods and just report the black hatters so they don’t stay there for 3 months.
My gray hat is off to both sides: I admire the ethics of the white hats, and I admire the creativity and hard work of the black hats.
Go white hat for the long term. Once I go top 20 I report all the black-hatters to google and see a nice ranking bounce to top 10 within a couple weeks.
Muhahaahahahahaha.
MegaD
HA! Put your boots on folks. It’s getting deep in here.
Oh, I’d go strictly white hat so no one could point fingers.
Then I’d surreptitiously email photos of boobs to every male Google employee I could think of and see if that helped.
White hat.
Boobs always help Kate
Kate, that’s called unfair competition. I will sue you once your site ranks higher than mine.
Yes, definitely. If all else fails go with boobs. I’ve found Google Boobing to be a very effective seo strategy.
Put it another way, I would prefer to earn a million dollars in 3 months rather than in 10 years!
whatever works to accomplish my goal
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