Pssst ... Look at the ads. The word hat has been used so many times in this page I get AdSense ads with hat sellers :) Ads finally changed and point to appropriate content.
As in the fight of good versus evil you have to label the combatants, in this case the Search Engine Optimizers and Search Engine Marketers. This is why SEOs have been awardedhats based on their methods used for ranking and cashing in.
The colors are the established symbols of good, evil and in-between. So you have the good the Whitehat SEO, the evil the Blackhat SEO and the undecided which is the Greyhat SEO.
Usually there is no moral bone in the body of the black SEO. He is willing to do anything to get the bucks. He will use any method, espcially illegit methods to achieve the desired ranking.
I guess 99% of the times Blackhat seo work for themselves. No company is interested in hiring Blackhats for a quick rank but most of the time very short. And Blackhats earn way more money working for themselves.
They are usually experts in both web design and web programming. Most Blackhat SEOs create their own tools and their knowledge is not limited just to the creation and marketing of a webpage. They can code and that is the most important assest of a SEO. I personally do not think you can call yourself SEO if you are not an expert webdesigner and coder.
The blackhats search engine optimizers are also those responsabile for scraping and content theft . When your original content appears somewhere you should know a Blackhat dugg it!
The blackhats are always connected with the news, they learn new flaws and new spam mtheods and quickly create the tools and hit them hard. They always have an eye on competition. It is not easy to be a blackhat. The amount of work the the blackhat seos is enormous. Any of their site can go down in an instant and always have to be ready and run several projects at a time. Many blackhats own more then 1000 domain names at any given time. The Blackhat Search Engine Optimizers embrace the Carpe Diem life-style. They live for the moment and usually their websites have the same life timespan. But they win by quantity and not by quality/
The blackhat community seems somehow open but do not be fooled. A real blackhat does not expose his methods unless they are considered expired or obsolete. Even if the forums where they participate seem very active real posts that carry some weight are very few.
I do not label mail spammers as blackhats just the webspammers. Mail spammers are the real scum and are not SEOs.
These are the nice guys that play by the book and by the rules. They do it right, do it slow and the results last longer in time when done properly.
They have more relaxed lifes then the blackhats and usually work for clients compared to the blackhats who are lonewolves. They only use legit methods and comply to rules imposed by all search engines and common sense.
They are not usually coders, a coder is tempted to slip in the dark side. They have knowledge of marketing and basic webdesign. They usually handle just optimization and not the actual creation of the website unless they work on their own.
The greyhat seo is the half-breed, caught between two world he owns features from both of them.
You can consider the greyhats the smarter blackhats. They usually employ blackhat methods in offsite optimization and whitehat methods in onsite optimization. They tend to keep a site alive for a longer period and have several moral bones in their body.
They resemble the Blackhats more but tend to avoid taking risks a little more then the blackhats.
The greyhats also try to minimize damage when defacing other websites with spam.
I consider the Blackhat SEOs the Rock Stars of SEO. The Greyhats are the smart and true SEO role models for future Search Engine Optimizers and the Whitehats, well, they stay on the safe side of the game and I do not consider them as skilled or interesting as the Darkerhats. No pain, no gain!
By the way,
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