Last Blogger

There are a lot of people out there who talk about black hat and white hat SEO. They generally all claim to use “white hat” SEO tactics, by which they mean tactics that fall within the guidelines that search engines set out. I’ve got news for you, your hat’s not as white as you thought it was.

By even knowing what search engine optimization is, you’re already in a state where you are now influenced to develop your pages differently to help them rank better. That inherently means that your hat is already a little grey. If you’ve ever gone back to an old web page and tweaked the title in order to get it to rank better for a particular search phrase, it’s darker still. The search engines don’t want anyone to optimize anything. It’s in their best interest to try and classify an uninfluenced system because it makes it a lot easier on them.

The world of SEO is not a good guys vs. bad guys world. It’s not all black and white, right and wrong. The world of SEO is just like the real world, it’s messy. There are lots of shades of grey, no one thing is going to lighten or darken your hat but rather the cumulative strategies that you’re going to employ. Then there’s the question as to who’s painting our hats in the first place. The answer is both ourselves and the engines. It’s in their best interest to allow us to believe there’s such a thing as “white hat” SEO because then the people who feel they are “white hats” will report the evil black hats to the search engines, making their job easier. I know this sounds a little like a conspiracy theory, but that’s not what I’m suggesting. We’ve done this to ourselves, the search engines have simply helped us along when convenient.

So where does this leave us? First off we have to realise that no matter what it is that we do to manipulate our rankings, we are manipulating our rankings. There’s nothing wrong with that. Search engine indexes are simply one companies perspective on what is and isn’t important on the web for a given phrase. We’re not altering reality, simply one companies perspective on it. It also doesn’t mean that you need to go out right now and break all of the “rules”. It’s up to you as to whether or not the risk/reward equation is worth it.

The rules are fictitious as are the hats and their colour. The indexes are simply one opinion. Don’t get caught up in the good vs. evil discussion. Webmasters and search engines have a symbiotic relationship. We need them, they need us. Know that and work from there.