A HighRankings Forum thread has a nice black hat verus white hat discussion. These types of discussions were more popular in the old days, so it is nice to see one spring up again.
The thread creator basically said, the problem with white hat SEO is that it can't compete with black hat SEO. Especially on the very competitor keyword phrases.
The issue with this debate is that it is not true. There are plenty of white hat web sites that rank incredibly well for competitive keywords and would out rank any black hat site in the long run. I believe the main issue is semantics or how one defines white hat versus black hat techniques.
What makes an SEO blackhat? Hacking? Spamming? Cloaking? Many black hats would never hack into a site or inject comment spam on a web site. Many black hats would take offense to classifying criminal activity as black hat, it is criminal. But at what point does white hat SEO turn black?
Without defining black vs white, it is hard to answer the above question.
But in my opinion, white hat sites can indeed compete and do better in many cases.
Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.
Note this post was written on September 22nd and posted today automatically.
