Brighton SEO 2011 – Is there a Black Hat in the room? – a controversial talk by John McElborough

Written by  – 13.09.11

The full BrightonSEO 2011 Round Up is the most comprehensive available. We feature our pick of the best round ups alongside our own round up with video, slides and comments.

The second speaker at BrightonSEO 2011 got everyone talking and tweeting.  John McElborough gave  his advice on building a private blog network and added a pinch of controversy to the morning. The usual twitter  buzz was rising to a crescendo and #BrightonSEO was trending, but spattered amongst the “Best ever” tributes and tweets of resounding praise were a few disgruntled SEO’ers in the audience tweeting about lack of ethics and Black Hat tactics. I’d like to point out that this is a FREE event. If it were highly priced, superbly slick and full of uber expensive Key Notes we wouldn’t see the likes of John McElborough and his honest account of Quick fix SEO. He didn’t claim to be ethical, and he was quite open about the fact that in the near future this may not work, he was aware that the Panda Update was still being tweaked and that tomorrow he could be wiped off the face of Google. More about surviving the Google Panda Update here.

He also admitted that Fake Whois identities may not be a great long term plan. I loved his honesty. If it were expensive we probably wouldn’t have the privilege of seeing John and having a good debate about it. We probably wouldn’t see people like Dave Peiris  - @sharkseo. See #BrightonSEO 2011 – Attracting Quality Links . I like the eclectic mix of speakers. If Brighton SEO continues to grow the way it has over the last two years (far from it’s humble beginnings upstairs in the pub) we may begin to see less of the Johns of SEO and more high profile Keynotes and polished presentations, then we might be missing something.

I think Kelvin Newman put on a great show. He “owned the stage” as Simon Cowell would say, “he nailed it”, Kelvin has the XFactor.

Don’t forget to watch the video – juicy debate recorded as well as the presentation.

Building a Private Blog Network – a controversial talk by John McElborough at #Brighton SEO

John McElborough - Brighton SEO

John McElborough – Brighton SEO

McElborough told his audience to leave ethics behind, asking them to make their own minds up on whether his strategy is white hat or black hat.

John McElborough’s method (building a private blog network) is to create a network of anything from 20-100 private blogs, all linking back to a main site. He went on to tell you how to make the domains all look as if they are on different servers with unique IP addresses, and even suggested that you fake your ID on Who-Is when you register the domains. The idea is to build up lots of easy links from each of the domains to each other and to your main site, as well as building up the authority of each private blog using traditional link building techniques.

Black Hat tactics?

He started by talking about the content of the blogs, starting with 5-10 posts on each site, he suggested using  interns, students and writer samples. The acquisition of content by these means didn’t sit well with the copywriters at the event as explained on Ensign Jen’s blog. He is obviously going with the quantity not quality angle here.

Then McElborough mentions the controversial tactic of hiding the ownership of the blogs. He does admit that this is a bit dodgy and by using a fake name and opting out of Whois you are risking having your site taken away by Nominet. Just a bit of a risk then!  Dan Barker points out that McElborough isn’t really doing anything different to the big media companies but does have different ideas about  the quality and value of content. I have read that blocking Whois data  is a bad idea because it could be used as one of the trust metrics in the Google algorithm, and even if it isn’t now, it may become in the future.

Finally, the third of the SEO Black Hat tricks is instead of using your own AdSense code and leaving a digital footprint that will lead back to you,  instead use somebody else’s numbers – John suggests pinching code from the Daily Mail! Go John!

Although the process of creating 50-100 private blogs under fake names solely for the purpose of linking to a main site, filled with content of unreliable quality, is a dubious business. I know this used to work, I’ve seen it work, using many domains optimised for certain keywords. It used to be possible to apply this method work and achieve #1 rankings for popular keywords using content of dubious quality.  If you watch the video you’ll see him talk about “using textbroker level 4 or 5″ for content, and that the content will never be great but he tries to avoid “crappy”. It was, and apparently still is,  a very powerful way of boosting the rankings of a main site, but is it worth it?

Many attendees of Brighton SEO thought not!

twitter-feedback-brighton-seo

Twitter Feedback Brighton SEO

 

With the Panda updates shaking up everything, it is clear that Google is getting more sophisticated in tracking down such networks, identifying good content and penalising content of dubious quality. So, would we use these methods to increase ranking until we get caught? Well no, it’s just not worth the investment in time or money for something that could be so short lived.

However, how about this – set up a smaller number of blogs,  all niche sites dedicated to a particular service or product. Make sure they are well designed and keep them updated with real quality content. Link to your other sites sparingly using appropriate and varied anchor text links in the body of good and relevant text. Do not over link, make it look and feel organic and link to other great resources. Practise ethical link-building to these sites and concentrate your efforts into creating content that users want to share socially. Then what you will end up with is a few good quality sites that follow Google Webmaster guidelines. These will gain authority over time and provide you with an outlet for all those lovely anchor text to your main site, and connection points for your social network.

So instead of worrying about the black hat trickery, you could follow this advice and just do it in a White Hat way. Take what you can from the ideas presented, and create your own ethical solution.

Blog networks are seen as spammy by many but John McElborough believes that any successful blogs can eventually be monetised and that quality writing can be very cheap. This may be an upsetting thought for writers, he does have a point that interns and students can be found cheaply and are fully capable of producing quality content, however unethical this practice is. By the way a while back we put together some SEO insights on the subject in our post Do microsites work for SEO.

It’s too risky for us – Google is always updating and finding ways to root out those trying to trick the system and so could backfire in the long term, but as a short term solution it would probably work.

I take my White Hat and Black Hat off to John for being brave enough to share his tactics, may he network blog his way to the top until he gets caught.

Silicon Beach Training provide ETHICAL SEO Training courses as well as Google Analytics Training and Advanced Google Analytics Training. For those who need to know more about Web App development for Mobile we have a range of suitable courses including HTML5 Training, JavaScript Training, JQuery and CSS3.

Don’t forget to check out our full BrightonSEO 2011 Round Up featuring takeaways, videos, slides and comments. Also our blog ‘#BrightonSEO 2011 – Attracting Quality Links’ for an in depth look at the first presentation.

Building a Private Blog Network – by John McElborough – Part 1

Building a Private Blog Network – by John McElborough – Part 2

Similar posts you may like

  1. Brighton SEO 2011 – Round up Round up
  2. Brighton SEO 2011 – Round Up Part 2
  3. #BrightonSEO 2011 – Attracting Quality Links
  4. Brighton SEO 2012 Round Up – Top 5 Takeaways from Every Talk (Afternoon Session)
  5. Brighton SEO 2012 Round Up – Top 5 Takeaways from Every Talk (Morning Session)

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17 Responses to “Brighton SEO 2011 – Is there a Black Hat in the room? – a controversial talk by John McElborough”

Danny Whitehouse says:

2 part 1′s !

Dan

13. 9. 2011 at 12:44 pm

Heather Buckley says:

looking into that Danny!

13. 9. 2011 at 12:52 pm

Koozai says:

We’d definitely agree this is risky as a long term strategy as it looks at ways to avoid the currently known tricks. As the Panda update proved, Google can change the rules at any time even for strategies that seem perfect. Hats off to John for sharing and making it work for now…

13. 9. 2011 at 1:59 pm

JWilson0 says:

You guys worry far too much about Google, first of all it is not out there looking for naughty children, it simply wants to deliver quality content to it’s users. If you want to understand Google better go read “in the plex” by Stephen Levy, their mantra is “don’t be evil”, so don’t be.

Build your blog network if you want, hide your IP’s through SEO Hosting if you think that works, (it does not, I have been able to completely unravel this and I do not have any of Google’s resources).

Consider this, build yourself a bunch of blogs but instead of filling them with crappy content for the sake of a few pathetic backlinks, create some really good quality blogs, create quality articles every day or two. Then as you start to get PR, syndicate your blogs, but have your SEO team approve every article to keep the quality high.

Then use social networking to add juice not to your site but to your pages. Of course if this all sounds like a lot of work you can look me up via my name above @ ymail.com and I will manage it for you!

Seriously, don’t worry about Google, they are only after the people who seriously game them. Just focus on delivering Quality and Relevant content on all your sites and of course you will need backlinks and Social because Authority comes from that. Simple!

14. 9. 2011 at 5:19 pm

Alison Wren says:

Interesting to get an open insight into a technique which won’t come up in the plethora of best practice articles.

Too risky and short term for any business looking to build a sustainable web presence.

15. 9. 2011 at 10:09 am

Parallel Project Management Training says:

What a lot of effort to develop your own network, and you run the risk of it being listed as spam. However we have had lots of success with a much smaller range of manually build blogs, including places like word press.

17. 9. 2011 at 9:44 pm

Brent Rangen says:

We are currently in the process of building a private network in all major industry types.

Rather than build your own, we plan on letting you manage your own within our platform, however, we will have an API completed very soon.

One step further, we have plugged in social profiles with each domain for the domain’s given industry type. Looking to send social signals as well as “juicy links” yet demand all posts to be high quality so we do not have to hide from Google at all.

I’ve been this industry for over a decade and have always had networks. Thought it was about time all the set up steps no longer had to be replicated for each and every network/site/domain.

Interesting topic.. I think whether it is ‘black hat’ or ‘white hat’ depends on you, the network admin, and the way they process links.

Links:
http://www.linkorbit.com

22. 9. 2011 at 7:25 pm

BobsYerUncle says:

Gimme a break. Look at this guy! He reeks of Eau de Douche-Bag. He’s a sleezy guy selling a sleezey idea. Buy in or don’t, it all depends on what kind of person YOU are.

23. 9. 2011 at 6:18 am

Brent Rangen says:

Bobs,

I’m sorry you feel that way. I apologize if my excitement for something better “reeks” of self promotion to you.

Actually, I’m not a sleezy guy. And for you to make that assumption from one 75 word comment is quite unreasonable. I’ve been in this industry since 2001. I have many clients who have been with me nearly that whole time. I have won awards, helped newbs in the industry, and have the trust of many leading experts.

Since we have been building a new blog network for the last 8 months, doesn’t that give me the authority to talk about the subject here?

23. 9. 2011 at 2:23 pm

Brent Rangen says:

Just wanted to add one more point,

Blog networks do NOT have to break Google’s TOS. It’s just been the case that they usually break many terms because people slap up sites, don’t moderate content, and allow mass spinning.

Look at NetworkedBlogs. It’s huge now, it’s basically a blog network. What I tried to convey in my first comment is that we will definitely see blog networks changing as the business world gets more money behind it. It will become more of a community of users, rather than a network owned and managed by one person.

Because they became so widely popular in the affiliate marketing industry, we hear “blog networks” and that’s the type of blog network we picture in our heads.

23. 9. 2011 at 3:18 pm

Someone says:

Check out Build My Rank if you want to have access to a huge blog network of this nature, but which only accepts quality content.

Now, at the end of the day, it is all about getting business. Frankly, the issue is that most White Hat techniques take a very long time to bear fruit and cost a lot more than a small business can afford.

I use techniques and services that are similar to this and have been successful in getting decent rankings. I also back that up with manual high-quality link building and a lot of blogging which has attracted in links from authority blogs etc.

I think if you are balancing the quality with the quality, you get the ultimate ranking boost.

I also think that if you leave these so-called “dubious” techniques on the table, you are sacrificing your business at at time when you really cannot afford to wait for Google’s #1 blessing.

1. 10. 2011 at 6:54 pm

THE DEPTH PROJECT: Search Engine Optimisation « Thinking out loud says:

[...] in my ‘black hat SEO’ research was a controversial presentation by John McElborough at Brighton SEO2011 which is given the following [...]

26. 11. 2011 at 6:52 am

Craig Charley says:

We definitely think he should be given a platform to speak! The uproar that this presentation caused in the SEO community provided an engaging debate around white hat/ black hat SEO. While John’s methods are certainly controversial, a number of SEO’s do use them and it’s good that everyone is aware of this.

19. 1. 2012 at 9:55 am

Sherry Chandler says:

I think white hat is dead. There are so many internet maketers enguaging in blackhat techniques and the web is quite mature now, it is way too expensive and near impossible to get your website up the serps with white hat only

21. 3. 2012 at 3:39 pm

Craig Charley says:

That’s a very sad view to take Sherry. Have you read our most recent blog post? Google don’t take kindly to Black Hat and are doing everything they can to penalise those who do it.
As recently as last week, Matt Cutts himself announced that an update is on the way that will hit over optimisation on sites – http://www.siliconbeachtraining.co.uk/blog/sxsw-google-bing-search-update/

How does this affect your opinion on White Hat/ Black Hat?

21. 3. 2012 at 4:31 pm

Sherry Chandler says:

Hi Craig

I hear what you are saying, but how does a person who is starting out get up the search engines, it will take years.

21. 3. 2012 at 8:39 pm

Craig Charley says:

Luckily it doesn’t take years, it’s about finding a niche and building on it. Don’t go after extremely competitive keywords straight away. Local is a great way to start as the most recent updates have favoured small local businesses. As Cutts said in the post above, the upcoming changes will penalise black hat and will allow sites that only use White Hat techniques or even no SEO at all to appear in the rankings!

The best way to rank these days is through social and local SEO as they are the results that Google displays.

Black hat techniques may work for a couple of weeks but once Google notices it can lead to heavy penalties!

22. 3. 2012 at 8:57 am

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