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Wear Your Black or White Hat To the Search Engines  

:: Friday, April 16, 2004 ::

Wear Your Black or White Hat To the Search Engines

Cre8asiteForums members take a look at what the terms "white hat" and "black hat" search engine optimization techniques mean.

Here are some comments so far:

     "I associated black hat stuff pretty much with the equivalent of Viagra email spam."

     "Black Hat SEO techniques work fantasticly ... ... right up until one of your competitors notice and report you. That is far more likely and happens far more often that the SE filters detecting it for themselves."

     "If you are going to pour your heart and soul into a site, then whitehat is the only option. If you want to make money and are prepared to practice 'crash and burn' then 'blackhat' works just fine."

     "Doorway pages, gateway pages, hook pages, landing pages, informational pages, topical focus pages, or even zebra pages (that last from Jill Whalen)."

The Usability Effect

For those who wonder why I haven't been posting as much, both in the forums and this blog, I have a good excuse. I'm "expecting" my fourth website child.

My first site back in 1995 was Dancing Thunder's Playground, since my Internet name in those days was "Dancing Thunder", inspired by my Native American roots and inner connection to Tribal Ways. I buried that baby years ago, but the experience took me forth into Cre8pc.com and later, this blog. I own Cre8asiteForums, but don't take credit for much more than that, as that site is a group operation and inspiration comes from its members and the volunteers who manage it every day. So, technically, UsabilityEffect.com is my own personal 4th website and it's a doozy.

I always build my own sites. This means I'm stuck in a time-warp as far as design and coding are concerned because since dropping out of the web design field (I was a User Interface Engineer and before that, a WebMaster, for several companies) I don't have time to keep up. Thankfully, Cre8asiteForums is there to help. Yesterday I posted this Photoshop question, and it felt good to know I could ask my "dumb" questions, and get answers in a short time.

I have the site planned, requirements laid out, target market decided on and a homepage design pretty well locked in. I've spent months worrying about colors and picked up Bryan Eisenberg's great book, Persuasive Online Copywriting: How to Take Your Words to the Bank to help me write better copy for it. Now I'm working on the inside page template.

And I must tell you, even though I test websites and review other sites for a living, I'm the very first one to panic when it becomes MY turn for a site review. Like writing articles, I have to have an editor. Mine is Bill Slawski, who makes sure my articles and ebooks for sale make sense, and when I write for Jill Whalen's High Rankings newsletter, she edits my work. Her suggestions always make perfect sense!

When I launch the new site, things here will get back to normal. I owe articles to places I write for and dear Barry Schwartz (RustyBrick) hasn't fired me yet for not having had time lately to write my Guest posts for his Search Engine Roundtable Blog

I wrote an article about usability and Picasso, which Bill is editing now, for Scottie Claiborne's Successful-Sites newsletter. Look for it in the next month or so...

It's been a long rainy, snowy Winter where I live and Spring has been cold and rainy. I'm grumpy every day. But, now they say tomorrow it will go into the 70's and by Monday, maybe even hit 80 degrees! A bit drastic and dramatic, but I'm not complaining. Pass the tanning butter! I'm ready!

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 4/16/2004 10:19:18 AM

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