When Black Hat Becomes More Ethical Than White Hat

Let me preface this post by stating that I cannot be unethical to an object. A rock doesn’t care if I throw it and a toaster doesn’t care if I use it as a hammer. Likewise, an algorithm doesn’t care if I game it. The toaster people might be disappointed to see how I am using their product, just as Google may not like me gaming their algorithm, but my view is, if it works it works.

I am not suggesting that all black hat techniques are ethical, since techniques like hacking another’s website would clearly cause problems for that webmaster. However, I have no moral qualms about buying links, spinning my articles, purchasing expired domains and link farms. In some cases, I believe it is in the client’s best interest to use those techniques as long as they are aware of the consequences.

White Hat versus Black Hat

For example, let’s pretend I am a car mechanic and I have three different customers come into my shop. The first customer is an old woman driving a beautiful Cadillac who needs some standard maintenance performed. The second customer is a teenager driving an older Honda Civic who wants some upgrades to make his car go faster. The third is a wealthy person who will be competing in a race tonight and wants me to do everything possible to make sure he wins. After tonight, he really doesn’t care what happens to the car.

White Hat vs. Black Hat

Should I as a mechanic have a one-size-fits-all approach to how I treat these customers? Of course not!

For the woman and her Cadillac, I most definitely use only OEM parts. For the teenager, I explain to him that what we are doing will void his warranty. But if he is OK with that, we can install a new supercharger, intake and exhaust. For the man with the race tonight, I would install every gadget and crazy gizmo, warning him that after he wins his car might blow up.

So why should search engine optimization be any different?

If you have a major client (i.e. JCPenney) you better stick with pure white hat practices. But with my own sites I do what is probably considered gray hat, and have had a lot of success as a result. If you had a client who wanted to optimize for “Snooki Halloween Costume,” specifically for 2010, and after the holiday they didn’t care what happened to their website, I would have no problem taking pages out of a black hat playbook.

A custom SEO strategy should be focused on what is best for the client. Ignoring strategies that have been proven to work because you don’t want to offend an algorithm is absurd to the point of being unethical. If I insist on pure white hat SEO, and take a client’s money every month knowing they will never rank or see any return on their investment, then I am putting a real person ahead of an algorithm.

And as I said before, you cannot be unethical to an object.