When it comes to marketing, how often do you question what you believe?
Black hat – White hat
I was prompted to write about this, when I read a very interesting blog comment earlier today. It really made me think.
Here’s the gist of it. The commenter stated that in his opinion, all SEO could be defined as black hat (or unethical.) His point was that Google claims it wants only the most valuable sites to rank the highest, yet Google actively encourages so-called white hat (or ethical) SEO tactics. In other words, business owners who learn SEO or pay for professional SEO, are welcome to gain an advantage over sites with better content, with Google’s blessing.
The interesting thing for me there, was NOT whether black hat SEO is worse than white hat SEO.
The interesting thing for me, was that until I had read that comment, I’d never really thought about things that way before. I saw SEO as a very black and white thing (excuse the pun). White hat was good, black hat was bad – period. Now, I see there are shades of grey, too.
In short: It’s so easy, maybe too easy, to become stuck in our thinking. It does us all good, from time to time, to question our beliefs and check we’re not making decisions based on incorrect assumptions.