A Blog by a career In-House SEO for all the SEO Pros and Wannabes…

If you have been following the latest buzz in the SEM industry lately, you should have noticed, or even participated in the great black hat vs. white hat vs. your hat vs. my hat debate. If you still haven’t heard, you better start subscribing to a few of the top SEM blogs to enhance your knowledge for your own sake.

More on Knowing What Tricks Are In The Black Hat Is Good For You White Hats

Recently, I have been engaged into a huge debate about whether to report black hat SEO tactics and borderline SEO activities conducted by our competitors. You know, things like paid links, link farms, etc.

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It is a known fact that many websites are getting away with black hat SEO tactics like buying links, cloaking and spamming, and you would believe that, in a perfect world, Google is really serious about swinging its ban stick at sites that violate the rules.

After all, there are plenty of horrific stories about Google penalizing legitimate sites for various marginal or wrong reasons. Yet, there are miraculous stories like this one about an insurance site not only running black hat tactics under the nose of Google, but also rising to the first page in a short period of time. It really makes you wonder if Google is colour blind?

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