If you’ve never heard this terminology before then let me quickly explain why digital marketers sometimes claim to have different colored hats! White-Hat SEO is essentially search engine optimization that comes risk-free because it doesn’t break Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, while Black-Hat SEO is the antagonist. Traditionally, black hat techniques involve a lot of automation and spam while white hat techniques involve doing far more quality manual work. Even Grey-Hats SEO is a thing on the internet where they claim to utilize a combination of the two strategies that walk a fine line between playing by the rules and breaking Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Of course, the differences are far more complicated than this, but I think you got the gist of it.
Isn’t it all just Black Hat in the end?
Recently there has been something of an uproar against digital marketers identifying as either a “White-Hat SEO” or a “Black Hat SEO.” They say that labeling yourself as a “White hat” is something that only amateur SEO’s with partial knowledge do. This argument stems from the belief that many supposed “white hat link building tactics” such as bulk guest posting are not actually white hat at all because the intention behind them is to manipulate search ranking which is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, which is true, but the fashionable thing right now is to take this a step further and state that according to Google “ALL LINK BUILDING FOR SEO IS BAD” because of the intention to manipulate one’s search ranking. Furthermore, the claim goes as far as to say that if all link building is bad then choosing a side right is a moot point altogether. I’d say be careful to jump the gun, and honestly, I feel a little silly having to argue the other side to this but neither the less I’m going to explain why both of these assumptions are untrue, and hopefully, reassure you that one can remain confident in calling themselves a white hat SEO.
First, let’s quickly examine Google’s own description of what it considers a “link scheme.”
Let’s get down to brass tax here, in the first section Google is trying to tell us that we should be careful when building backlinks because the vast majority of traditional “link building” done by SEOs, or going out of one’s way to build links with the intention of manipulating your site’s ranking, “MAY” be identified as a link scheme and thus negatively impact our site’s rankings in search results. Google uses the words “may” and “can be” to expresses the POSSIBILITY (not with certainty) that any links intended to manipulate a site’s ranking may be considered part of a link scheme. Now, this is further evident in the bullet points because Google is showing us examples of what they consider link schemes. Notice how the second bullet point says “EXCESSIVE” link exchanges, this implies that occasional link exchanges may not be considered link schemes. If that were not the case, and any and all backlinking for SEO is a link scheme, then why are examples even needed? Instead, they could just say that any and all links intended to manipulate a site’s ranking are considered a link scheme, but they clearly don’t. While they don’t list every little thing that they consider a link scheme, they give us specific examples of the more common ones.
One of my favorites and the one that’s more relevant today than ever before is the 3rd bullet point. “Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links.” Sorry, but that quote alone puts all the major so-called “100% white hat outreach services” like Fat Joe, The HOTH, Rhino Rank, SEOJet, etc. all in the realm of link schemes. So buyer beware, and if you’re unsure if your SEO agency or outreach service is involved in a link scheme I’d recommend you read my 5 link building red flags article and investigate.
Can we be sure that these guidelines still apply today?
If you didn’t already notice, Google needs to update this piece because it still mentions “PageRank” which was eliminated by Google back way back in 2013. With that being said, as of writing this article, the link scheme guidelines were last updated by Google on 11-11-2020 meaning they’re still relevant, but I digress, take much of this with a grain of salt as we later examine Google’s more recent comments on this matter.
“I think it’s tricky because, on the one hand, it is sometimes useful to reach out to people and say like, “Hey, look at my website, it’s like you have a great website, I have a great website, take a look at my content, our content kind of aligns… maybe you’d be able to recommend my content if you like it as well.
I mean there are different ways of framing that, there are lots of really kind of more spammy ways of doing it, like you mentioned like people just saying, well look I have this web page that matches five keywords on your other web page. Can you link to it?” Like, that’s not really that useful.”
Google’s Senior Webmaster John Muellar in a 2019 webmaster hangout
I might have been involved in a link scheme, should I be worried?
In the wake of negative SEO, we’ve seen Google preference devaluing bad links with regular algorithmic updates over issuing widespread manual penalties. The worst-case scenario goes a little something like this: a website has thousands of bad links that are eventually devalued one day and they lose rankings. What’s important at that point is not to freak out and go buy a bunch of new links on more authoritative domains like your link seller wants you to. If you do this, then you’ll greatly increase your chances of having to spend years recovering from a manual penalty. Look, losing your rankings is a terrible feeling no matter how it happens, but I’d much rather lose money on useless backlinks than lose sales because my website will no longer rank due to a manual penalty. Remember, Google doesn’t have to necessarily be the one to detect a link scheme to issue a penalty, anyone (including your competitors) can report spam, paid links, or malware to Google’s webspam team, there’s even an official app for that!
