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Blackhat - not what it’s cracked up to be

In the past year or so there has been A LOT of hype surrounding blackhat. If you go on any webmaster forum occasionally someone will mention blackhat as if it some sort of magical solution to ranking well or making lots of money in a short period of time. But this coudn’t be further from the truth. While blackhat can be effective, is is very difficult to master and the vast majority of people who try blackhat will fail.

The main issue with blackhat is that too many people are doing it. between 2002 and 2004 there was a lot of money to be made with content generators, edu spamming, splogging, and other blackhat methods. Then as more people joined the bandwaggon blackhat became more difficult.

Google also began to implement various filters to help combat blackhat spam. In 2003 a spammer could use a content gnerator to generate thousands of pages, points some high PR links or spam some blogs, and achive high, long term ranking. The spammer would then reap thousands of dollars from various affiliate programs.

Now there are thousands of spammers from all over the world using content gnerators. In addition google is banning spammish sites or cloaked sites indiscriminately. This makes it much more difficult for most blackhatters to gain an egde.

Dot edu spamming is an example of a blackhat method that has become oversaturated. Litterally there are thousands of spammers using highly sophisticated scripts, spamming numerous university message boards and forums. Trying to compete with these spammers is next to impossible. Since the barrier to entry is so low anyone can set up a blackhat opperation and start spamming. Subsequently, your edu spam will be drowned out by everyone elses. Only ten sites can rank on the first page of google or msn, but there are thousands of spammers spamming thousands of sites. Also colleges are becoming more vigilant for spam and have intrduced additional moderation for forums and message boards.

Overall, while there is a lot of money to be made in blackhat don’t get your hopes up. And don’t expect to find the answer on forums either. Those who are highly proficient in blackhat aren’t going to spill the beans so you will have to learn backhat on your own terms. My advice though is to target easy, less competitve keywords. Viagra and Cialis may generate high commissions but ranking for those keywords is extremely difficult. You are better off making a little money with less competitive keywords than none.

2 Responses to “Blackhat - not what it’s cracked up to be”

Comment from NED IS TOAST
Time May 18, 2009 at 4:45 pm

PREPARE TO DIE

Comment from NED IS TOAST
Time May 18, 2009 at 4:46 pm

SORRY TO HEAR YOUR PARENTS ARE GOING TO GET FIRED BECAUSE OF YOU