There's never a good time to use Blackhat SEO as the penalties can be very severe for a site, including ban from Google search. And, often it's difficult to tell what constitutes blackhat SEO.
However, Google usually prefers quality content on a site, so you are always safe when you publish content that helps out your reader.
Yes I do agree with the opinions of the other fellow members that it is better to avoid Black hat techniques for SEO as sooner or later those who practice these methods will get penalized.
I am in favor of the white hat tactics, although it takes time but the results are favorable and long lasting.
Black Hat SEO is also a technique of promoting a website but with the help of unethical means. This technique does not follow any guidelines set by search engines, instead, misleading search engines by manipulating criteria’s and guidelines defined by them.
Well I consider it to be the worst practice as you will surely get banned by the search engines if caught. So it is always better to practice white hat techniques.
Absolutely White hat, with the latest Google Penguin update there is no way that Black Hat techniques will pass and your website will be hit by Google, it's better to stick with white hat.
Black Hat SEO are ways to manipulate Search Engine such as buying a lot of backlinks with specific keywords to rank higher on search engine for those keywords, while those backlinks are being creating by third party and from non relative website, Google penguin latest update are strictly fighting Black hat SEO.
Anytime you try to trick Google into thinking your site is popular, such as with massive backlinking schemes (where the links are not earned or given editorially by site owners), that could be considered black hat.
Whitehat is following Google's webmaster TOS fully.
White hat is doing it the way search engines want and will work out a lot better for you in the longer term. Black hat is typically illegal or against regulations. This may get you quick traffic but will harm your sites search ranking in return.
I've only ever used Whitehat methods for my blogs and forum. However, once I was hired to do SEO on a site that was about four years old but not ranking well for any keywords. After doing some investigation I found the site had been backlinked from hundreds of spammy link farms and also had numerous duplicate content articles on site. Apparently the site was a victim of blackhat practices used by the previous owner. I took down the duplicate articles; posted original content; disavowed as many spam links as possible and got some very good backlinks from a few credible sites like Google+ and blogs and within a few weeks the site was ranking for select long tail keywords.
Whitehat SEO: Ethical SEO practices -- the kind of SEO practices you want to do to improve your Website..
Blackhat SEO: Black Hat search engine optimization is customarily defined as the practice of using unethical techniques to make your search rankings go up.
If you're serious about your site then whitehat. If you are a scammer then blackhat. I won't go near the blackhat stuff. I like my sites too much, they make me money.
I use only Whitehat, I build my own backlinks and I am not to much worried about keywords as they will come from post and tags, but I focus on one keyword I want to rank for.
If we follow the search engine guidelines for website is known as white hat SEO and if we don’t follow the guidelines and make spamming is known as Black hat SEO.
Don’t ever follow Black hat SEO to boost your rankings though it gives an immediate effect on your results but will stop crawling pages when it's found and don’t ever crawl again if you try also.
Well, I would say that black hat seo gives result in short period of time and it can be used for earning money too, once you are caught by Google and other search engines your site gets penalized.
So it is better to use white hat seo to gain ranking, earning for long time.
If you're going to go with black hat methods do it with a website that has a high return of investment, e.g a pricey product, at least that way you have some extra surplus to reinvest into a site that's purely white hat, also buying a few services that offer legitimate reviews of your site on their blog is also a great way to increase SEO ranks,
I personally love my way, visiting major news networks like CNN and commenting on their articles and leaving my website on my profile, that way I have a high quality back link though this is soon going to be scrapped so you'll need genuine users talking about your site and linking in.
Whitehat SEO: Takes longer, benefits are better than anything else.
Blackhat SEO: You see the benefits quicker, and can lose them quickly.
The way I see it...
Crappy websites / uneducated administrators use Blackhat SEO and smart administrators / potentially successful websites use Whitehat SEO.
Whitehat is ethical and blackhat is not. Blackhat could make you lose all your results if the search engine catches you, while with whitehat you are safe.