Super Affiliate Marketing Blog

I’ve been meaning to address this topic for a while now, but hadn’t had the chance up until now. On Wed & Thurs of last week I was brave enough to venture to SES NY 2007, a melting pot of the seo world. It was actually a really good conference, one that I had never gone to before this one, because being that I’ve been involved in SEO for so damn long, I figured why should I? I mean, I’ve been around and manipulating pages and sites for SEO purposes since 1997′ish. Ten years of SEO is a long time, much longer than most others, hell, that’s even before Google was started! The glory days is what I remember them as, and spoke about with people at SES for those two days. The days back when you could get any site ranked for just about any keyword (except maybe not for ’sex’ or ‘porn’) in a day or two at most. Back when the dominant search engines around were Netscape, AltaVista, Excite, HotBot, Dogpile, Lycos, etc. There was no Google, Yahoo or MSN really, and in 1998 and 1999 only tech/seo people used Google (no one ever dreamed it would become the search engine powerhouse it is today).

So without getting off of topic course, we are thrust into a debate that has waged on for almost 8 years now, White Hat SEO’ers vs Black Hat SEO’ers. It’s like the big purple elephant in the room. It’s like trying to argue who’s religion is better. There will never be any clear winners no matter how often we debate it, and at the same time, the argument will never go away, regardless of how strong a point we each make towards the other party.

But I would like to raise one valid point that I hope we can all agree on. Whether you call yourself white hat or black hat, we are all a bit of black hat if you are practicing any type of SEO. I figure this because according to the rules and guidelines of the engines, any type of page/site code manipulation to assist the spiders and algorithms in finding your page more “relevant” than a competitor’s means you are altering the code on purpose with the sole goal of getting your site on top. That my friends, is the first rule of Black Hat SEO. I don’t care how much you argue your point and how evil you think BH’ers are, YOU, even as a WH, are breaking or even bending the rules so to get your site and pages ranked better than people who don’t have a clue as to what SEO is.

So when it comes down to it.. which one is better? Well, that’s just up to you and your goals. Are you in it for the longterm or short term? If it’s a longterm goal you seek, White Hat is where it’s at. If it’s quick profits and rankings you’re after, Black Hat is where you should be. But remember, white hat or black hat, or even blue or gray hat, SEO is an art, no matter what color hat you’re wearing, and instead of just trying to get the minimum rankings or cash flow from your project on the engines, if you’re not aiming to be an artist at SEO, then you’re just going to end up in the same pool with the peasants and the ones who play follow the leader. Mastering SEO is something many of us will never accomplish, because here on the internet, things move and change far too quickly for any of us to stake claim on mastering it, but you can definitely become an immortal at it, far better than any of your peers and competitors, and that should be the goal of everyone. To be the damn best at whichever hat you’re going to wear.

Wow, that was a deep post.. I’m not on any sort of drugs or alchohol, I promise. It’s just been my view of the whole SEO world, and my absolute love for it over the years. With that said, I’d like to give a few shout outs to some people I met and spoke with at SES NY last week. I had a really good time, and even though I didn’t attend any of the sessions (I’m too cool for school, remember?), I went there specifically to network, and what a great time I had!

Big up to…

(listed in no particular order, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some people, so drop me a line and remind me because my memory blows)

1. Tom (not from Myspace)
2. Andrew Johnson
3. Andrea Schoemaker
4. Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker
5. Joe Whyte
6. Mike Demby from AC Lion
7. The entire Copeac crew
8. The entire AzoogleAds crew
9. Kris Jones
10. Joel from Magsforless
11. Graywolf
12. Stuntdubl (I love the blog!! Not a Jew though..)
13. Jimmy Boykin (this guy was everywhere!)
14. John Katoved (who told Jesse Jackson to his face that he was Al Sharpton)
15. The entire Webmaster Radio crew (much loveee)
16. Bruce Hodge (one hell of a programmer)
17. Daphne Dayday (Daphne rocks!!)
18. Milind Mody (my first seo brother from India)
19. Tara McCommons (great meeting you and talking shop)
20. Kristin from PrimeVisibility (you suck!)
21. Nicola Young from Scotland (loooove the accent)
22. Chris Hooley and John (two awesome guys to hang with)
23. The Joebucks boys from LA (water convention in New Orleans lmao)
24. Scott Sklar (thanks for the Japanese taffy thing)
25. Chris Graham from Syntryx (smoking is for cool people!)
26. Ekram Ashgar from Party Poker (coolest name ever)
27. Jarrod Hunt from TextLinkBrokers (advertise with WF already punk!)
28. Ania Dzladon (hottest Polish girl I’ve ever met)
29. Becky Ryan from Trellian (you fucking rock!)
30. Guillaume from Montreal (sorry you didn’t make the playoffs)
31. Matt Haag from DirectTrack (it’s nothing personal, just business)
32. Jeff Quipp (I owe you a beer next time)
33. Muzaffar from True (BH PPC?)
34. Rick from Looksmart (Fellow Devils fan and cool guy)
35. Chelsea from ClickTracks (I may have to use CT just because of you killer!)
36. Dave VP of DoubleClick (Another fellow Devils fan and very cool guy!)
37. Neil Patel (congrats on speaking for 3 sessions in a row)
38. Lisa from BruceClay (thanks for reading the boring blog!)
39. SugarRae (come back to WF where you are needed!)
40. Rebecca from SEOMoz (you best join WickedFire sucka!)
41. Peter & Josh from RepriseMedia (Water under the bridge, you guys rock)
42. Danny Sullivan (late night adventures to find BofA ATM’s)
43. Brett Tabke (you’re a real good sport mate!)
44. All of the people from Yahoo, Ask, Marchex, Google and MSN that were cool and laid back with me.
45. The VP of Miva and SearchFeed for listening to my advice and hopefully taking it.

Yeah, that’s enough for now, I’m sure there really are a lot that I’ve left out, not on purpose, just have a not so great memory (blame the HS days of too much pot smoking).

To anyone thinking of going to an SES show.. It’s more of a family gathering than a conference. It’s the only conference I’ve ever seen in my life where the sessions are packed to full capacity and the showroom floor is nearly empty. Pretty wild to see that!

Until next time, I’ll try and be more active with the SEO community and see if I can chill the fuck out with more people.