I confess I read the black hat SEO forums regularly…I learn a lot from them, even though I don’t employ black hat methods. Those guys are the ones who know how to make serious money on the Internet, although it’s high risk, and most of us can’t afford to take those risks. It’s kind of comical, how black hats are portrayed – as though they should go to jail or something. The only laws they are breaking are the “Google” laws.

Granted, a number of them make money off porn and gambling sites. However, they’re the ones that keep several steps ahead of the search engine police, and guide the way for the rest of us. Because, let’s have a moment of gray hat honesty here, if we were all good little Google-ites, none of us would be ranking particularly well. We wouldn’t be blogging like mad, obtaining links wherever we can “legally” scrape them up, writing Squidoo lenses, and paying lots of money (Yahoo: $300, link value: priceless) to join directories that don’t really bring us traffic, just a fat fancy links with lots of juice.

So I have a lot of respect for them, read their blogs and forums, stretch my mind, and come up with new ways to promote sites while remaining within the “legal” boundaries. Well, pretty much, anyway.

Related Posts

1. 10 Best Types of Links
2. Google’s Temper Tantrum
3. Building Links to Your Site