Black hat SEO is just plain stupid. If someone is willing to just trash a site and start again then it will work. Many internet marketers do this and it does bring results, but a real business should never taint their brand with practices that can earn a Google slap down. Unless you are will to dump your brand, domain and everything and start from scratch you should never do it. But equally it can be just as silly to only follow Google’s webmaster tools Watching black hat marketers will help you find valuable shortcuts for your client. WE use grey hat techniques all the time that bring about great results, but you have to be smart about what you are doing and make sure you are keeping your client safe above all else.
With Google’s most recent algorithm updates, we are understanding that black hat tactics are essentially prehistoric and simply don’t work like they used to. For example, traditional black hat SEO is about loading your site with irrelevant but heavily searched terms, redirects etc. But now not only does onsite search term focus have less of an impact (whether done correctly or not), but also the algorithms are all about building a network around relevancy – incorporating both onsite and offsite search networking methods. The idea is to create an industry leadership around your site, making your brand highly relevant within the industry. Traditional black hat tactics are detrimental to building this leadership and actually work against it in the long run. From what we can tell this trend is only going to strengthen with further updates.
