Why do people think they can cheat SEO?

[MrJohn]

It cracks me up when I hear people talk about the fact that they want shortcuts to getting on the 1st page of Google. You want to know what really works?

-Build content that people think is worth linking back to.
-Get the word out, advertise your website/forum yourself, it starts and ends with you.
-Make sure people can easily link back to you by adding plugins/mods to help move the process along.

If you are trying to trick Google into putting you higher than you should be, you will get caught eventually. You will be better off putting in the leg work and doing it yourself. Don't count on some SEO company that is going to give you 10,000 crap links and ruin your SEO permanently.

This is just a rant that I had, but it is true. If you want people to come to your forum/website through the search engines, don't take shortcuts.

 

[Gimgak]

It's possible to cheat it short term, unlikely long term.

 

[MrJohn]

It's possible to cheat it short term, unlikely long term.

My point exactly.

 

[Delirious]

Not only that but blackhat seo is frowned upon by the big search engines. It works for a short amount of time, then in the long run it will hurt you. Some SEO companies that give you 10,000 backlinks give them in the wrong niche/genre...that might boost some PR and give you some juice, but in the long term of things it will be negative for you.

 

[IAAM Radio]

Cheating will only get you caught. I have seen PR3, 4, 5 sites drop to 0 because of some of the methods they used for short term gain.

If you are in the game for the long hall, just have fun, get the word out as said before, promo you site, do solid clean linking and you will be fine.

Too many boards are focused on the stats vice the content and that will only cause issues further down the road.

 

[Gimgak]

It's possible to cheat it short term, unlikely long term.

My point exactly.

Yeah in which case a black hat endeavor might as well cheat but any legitimate projects that are meant to last should refrain from doing so.

 

[Delirious]

True. If you have decent content good PR will come of it anyways. If you do proper SEO and check to make sure you keywords are not in heavy competition you should make it to the first page anyways.

Not only that but even though google is the most popular search engine, I still manage to get a good amount of hits from Bing and Yahoo.

 

[froggyboy604]

I heard a large majority of people who use black hat SEO are promoting viruses, fake anti-viruses, conterfeit goods, fake drugs, scams and spam, so they are in it for the short term until they make enough money of their scams, or get arrested by the police.

Submiting hundreds of different links to your originally written article to "all" of the big social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpn, etc, article marketing, guest blogging, forum and blog commenting, pinging services, link wheel, buying text links from related websites, and telling users to link back/promote your site for word of mouth promotions can be considered Gray hat since you are posting useful content with your embedded link, but it is not natural linking since you are posting the articles and backlinks on related sources to get notice by search bots and users instead of visitors linking to your site out of kindness for providing useful content.

It can sometimes be difficult to know how Google works, and what you should and shouldn't do to please search engines since a lot of the white hat SEO can be considered Blackhat if you do it excessively like writing thousands of unique useful articles with your embeded link with descriptive anchor text to submit to EzineArticles, ArticleBase, Squidoo, Hubpages, etc for SEO purposes which a lot of White Hat SEO used to do, or still do Article marketing as part of their SEO strategy.

I think making useful content and using social bookmarking, free blog sites, and networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Squidoo, Digg, YouTube, Reddit, Yahoo Answers, Wordpress.com, livejournal.com, and Myspace to advertise your site is safest since if your content goes viral like Justin Bieber, Rebecca Black, NigaHiga, RayWilliamJohnson, etc you could get more people to notice your forum in a few days or less then aday instead of weeks or months for search which can be very competitive, and most social networks are trusted sources by Search engines compared to some link directories, and sites with no editorial value meaning anyone can post a link as long as they make an account.

 

[Assad]

There is no shortcut of getting your site on Google 1st page. You must have to work hard for it and you get your goal steadily. Using shortcuts may harm your site reputation and may be your site got blacklisted by Google.

 

[Zenrer]

I don't necessarily think people try to cheat SEO, they just think spamming their link in every 'backlink generator' they can find will get them in the #1 spot for whatever keyword they want.

 

[Assad]

This is exactly that i want to say and spamming may cause harm to their site reputation.

 

[Zenrer]

This is exactly that i want to say and spamming may cause harm to their site reputation.

And quite often the owner of the site does not know that, they hear SEO, think backlinks and see an 'amazing' offer that they can't refuse.