My Hat Was Never White: Musings of an SEO2Troll
Many members here at TW have long believed that those promoting "ethical" SEO techniques were firm believers in self promotion above all else.
Some members wanted to know what planet SEO2Troll came from. The answer is still uncertain, but recent investigative journalism has caused this page to be Doug up.
You have to love the content:
Because my policy is to match content to audience, and not claim anything I cannot deliver. Sounds simple, but how many websites, amateur as well as professional, are knee-deep in drivel and superlatives?
There are a few ways to read that, but the fact that nobody has been reading it means he must not have been able to match up his content and audience too well.
As of writing this, his site is PageRank 0, with a hit counter stuck at 3 (and 2 of them were me). But to be fair, the page has only been up for about 5 years.
As far as keeping with claims, and the nature of ethics, how ethical was it for him to list his own sites as clients?
Lovely little network he has
Lovely little network he has there ;-) BTW Aaron do yuo realize you have just quadrupled his traffic, like? He owes you some off his AdSense check!
The mesothelioma article is
The mesothelioma article is my favourite :)
http*://www.realnurse.net/articles/mesothelioma.shtml
Probably the most poisonous
Probably the most poisonous individual I've come across in this sector, makes Aspen look a sweetheart.....
here today, gone tomorrow
The page linked to is already been taken down...
Did he remove it in embarrassment, or did the Geocities overlords turn it off?
tisk tisk...
Not very white hat trying to cover up deceptive marketing practices.
Pointed the link at the Archive.org version of the page.
Screenshots have also been taken and are located on multiple hard drives in multiple countries.
is he
is he the quadrilla thrilla?
yup
yup
If I was pissing in the
If I was pissing in the cold, I wouldn't give him the steam from my stream!
But personal feelings aside I am very happy there are (so called) SEOs like that cos it sure makes my job easier
No comment on the person
But I did want to address this:
I don't want to get into one of those damned ethics arguments, but I do want to say that I see nothing wrong with promoting one's professional ethics in one's marketing. Whether you choose to define professional ethics based on your techniques, your honesty about your techniques (whatever they may be), or both, I absolutely believe it's a valid selling point.
I still have trouble
Understanding the whole white hat concept, I guess if it helps to sell SEO services it makes sense. But what about the half assed white hats, who don't even sell SEO services?
I'm not talking about hats.
I'm not talking about hats. I probably shouldn't have brought it up, since it was a bit off-topic. Editors, I won't mind if you delete my posts in this thread.
Hats and Ethics
Hat color should have nothing to do with ethics. Let's not get too full of ourselves here... we manipulate text on web pages. We get people to link to web pages. We aren't extracting white blood cells from baby elephants and inserting them into chimp fetuses. (Feti?)
White Hat SEO -- improving a client site rank and traffic, employing only methods that probably won't result in a ban.
Black Hat SEO -- improving my Viagra site rank and traffic, but only because Google puts unfair age filters on my wholly ethical and above board web 2.0 erectile disfunction community. Will probably result in a ban.
Just because you don't comment spam to get IBL's for Xavier's Christian Auto Sales doesn't mean you're particularly ethical, it just means you're not an idiot. (Complete idiot?)
Here we go with the hat colors again!
WTF? Those two terms; Black Hat vs. White Hat have become so viral in nature. It's a shame our industry has been labeled like that. I guess we have the many who continue to classify themselves as Black or White who propogate the labels. Thank you for doing this industry an injustice.
there is definately a
There is definately a difference between helping the search engines and trying to fool them.
I do both at different times. Does that make me a grey hat?
pageoneresults, wasn't it Googleguy who coined the terms black and white hat 1st on WMW? I guess you should be thanking him. Divide and conquer :)
seo ethics
People, who worry about hats and SEO ethics, remind me of those Japanese soldiers lost on pacific Islands who still think WWII is still going on.
>I see nothing wrong with
I see nothing wrong with promoting one's professional ethics in one's marketing.<
I don't think anyone would disagree with that statement, but promoting oneself using one's own ethical convictions isn't exactly what is casuing this on-going circular debate. Or cirgular link bate as it may be called.
The fuel for this fire is not claiming you have ethics, it is claiming someone else does not."OUTING" someone you claim to lack ethics is trying to "prove" your ethics are superior to the "theirs". This puts the outing person in the position of importance as judge and jury without being elected or asked to represent all the good people who think the same but just aren't available to speak up for themselves.In other words, can't be attacked because they can't be proven to not exist. I haven't checked the dictionary, but I believe this is pretty close to the classic definition of a fanatic.
One of the main underlying problems with this tactic is that THEM being bad, doesn't make US good. But of course, anyone using this tactic of self-awarded superiority never seems to get that. THAT is the reason it is easy to elicit interest in a topic such as this. I will likely never convince you I am superior to you and the more I try the more motivated you are to argue.
As humans we all have the desire to be right and it is difficult to admit to being wrong regardless of the topic at hand or your position on that topic. So, the more you claim to be superior the more inclined you are to defend that position. The more you are "ouoted" as being inferior, the more inclined you are to "prove" you are not.
The only way to win this game is not to play.
Good post Bob
Some good points Bob, but the zealots and fantics won't be moved, becuse thet are RIGHT, and the rest of the world is WRONG
Thanks Bob
Yes, I agree with that.