Top 10 web design firms use black-hat SEO

[Web-Design-Guy]

I've just posted an interesting article revealing how three of the top 10* web design agencies we compete with are using black-hat SEO. (*all three are in the top 10 in Google search results)

Hope you find it interesting (and it encourages you to wear white hats !!! )

Top 10 web design firms use black-hat SEO : iOnline - Musings of a Perth Web Designer

[Peter (IMC)]

They´re web design agencies,... Probably they do know that it is not completely the way the search engines prefer it, but I doubt they give it that much importance. Different way of thinking.

[Web-Design-Guy]

Yes - design / development primarily ... but they_all_promote their SEO expertise/services !!

[crankydave]

Define "black hat". If you can do so without using "Google" or any other companies "guidelines", companies whose business model is derived upon, predicated upon, making a profit based upon their "product", you win a cookie.

If you cannot, then you're simply "outing" your competitition rather than outperforming them.

Dave

[janeth]

According to Google anything you do to your website with the search engines in mind is black hat.

[Peter (IMC)]

According to Google anything you do to your website with the search engines in mind is black hat.

That's not true anymore. They updated their guidelines and now say not to do anything primairily for the search engines.

[janeth]

That's not true anymore. They updated their guidelines and now say not to do anything primairily for the search engines.

Thats fine to. In the article were he is accusing others of being blackhat he says.

It’s perfectly reasonable to have a heading at the very top of your page like this (and notice the use of <h1> and <strong> tags which are important in SEO):

That would be black hat because the only reason he says to use it is for the search engines.

I wish people would spend more time running their own business and less time pointing fingers.

[Peter (IMC)]

yes that I can agree with. But you can be sure that there are many more real business people that don't point fingers. But those you never hear anything from...

[Webnauts]

From my experience, you can have the best results with search engines, if your optimize sites to be accessible to people with disabilities.

Appropriate implementation of the markup elements and web navigation, is what people call today on-page SEO.

[Web-Design-Guy]

Interesting debate.

If you cannot, then you're simply "outing" your competitition rather than outperforming them.

I think if I'd named them that would be outing. I could have made up examples of 'dodgy' tactics but I felt it was more relevant to use actual snippets to illustrate the point.

I wish people would spend more time running their own business and less time pointing fingers.

Pointing fingers? This was certainly not my intention. Pointing out, was where I was coming from - as a prelude to encouraging more above-board SEO methods (than hiding keyword-stuffed elements from all but search engines).