There’s no Such Thing as Advanced White Hat SEO

Lisa Barone had tons of questions after attending SMX

“But at the same time, I couldn’t help but notice that this year’s Advanced show seemed to lean a whole lot more to the grey/black hat side of things. I couldn’t help but wonder: When did advanced search engine optimization get confused with being a black hat?“

Right around the time that Google took this stance solidified it:

“Web spam is when somebody tries to cheat or take shortcuts so that their Web site shows up higher [in search results rankings] than it deserves to show up,” - Matt Cutts

If you are not trying to get your client’s websites to rank higher than they “deserve”, why should they hire you?

She continued:

“Here are some of the “advanced search engine optimization” techniques I picked up during my time in Seattle.

* There are lots of old sites lying around on the Interwebz with great link juice. Buy them and capitalize on that. But do it carefully or Google will pick up on it and reset the score.
* Conditional redirects are teh awesome.
* Search marketers don’t need ethics. They’re marketers. Check the ethics at the door.
* You can never have too many .edu links.
* I need to grow some balls, stop fearing Matt Cutts and start buying links.

Where were the white hat advanced search engine optimization techniques in Seattle?”

Hanging out with the Tooth Fairy and the Loch Nes Monster.

“Why was most of the material presented pushing grey and black hat? “

Because black hat seo is the only place where there is any development. White hat can work, but it’s exactly the same stuff that worked 6 years ago. Why do you need to go to a conference to get 6 year old information?

“Are we supposed to believe that that’s what advanced SEO is - spamming? “

Yes.

“If so, that’s a bunch of crap.”

uh oh, call the wambulance . . .

“Or maybe SMX just thinks there’s no one qualified to teach advanced white hat techniques. I guess those folks were out drinking with all the ladies NOT on the Give It Up panel.”

Is she saying she was out drinking with all the advanced white hats?

“I don’t understand.”

ditto!

“To me, advanced search engine optimization is about analytics”,

i see . .

“it’s about siloing”

Siloing is not exactly news. The top Google result for SEO Siloing is a Grey Wolf Article from Almost 2 years ago.

“it’s about perfecting your site architecture so that you don’t have to even worry about tactics like cloaking for conditional redirects.”

Google Cloaks. The NY Times Cloaks. But I have an open mind: maybe your head-in-the-sand theory on SEO is the best strategy. . .

“There have to be other white hat advanced search engine optimization techniques out there.”

Sounds like what they said about SETI.

“Why weren’t they covered?”

Because if you cover a white hat technique that works, the technique gets banned and the site gets bitch-slapped. Off-topic Link bait will probably be next on the chopping block.

Google does not want you or your clients sites to rank ANY higher than they “deserve” to. Google defines deserve; they are a for-profit company. That means that just about any intentional manipulation will be, by definition, black hat.

Want to sum up white hat SEO? It boils down to:

1) Site Architecture - Can be learned in 4 hours or less.
2) Analytics - Can you install a javascript and log in?
3) PPC - Even though we used to call that SEM . . .
4) Content - which is better handled by copywriters.

Alas! The Emperor has no clothes. There are no advanced white hat SEO techniques.