Stuntdubl Interview - Todd Malicoat über SEO-Ethik, die Industrie und neue Ziele…

Okay, hier gab es lange nichts zu lesen. Asche über mein Haupt. Aber ich möchte wenigstens Wort halten. Hier ist es also, das Interview mit Stuntdubl Todd Malicoat, Internet Marketing Consultant und regelmäßiger Sprecher auf internationalen SEO/SEM Konferenzen:



First off, some general questions. Todd. What´s your opinion about the German seosphere? What´s the influence of German SEOs and especially German BlackHats on international SERPs, spam and development?

Well, to be completely honest, I am very clueless about what the German SEO sphere is like. I only know a couple folks from Germany that are active SEO’s including my buddy Thomas Bindl, and Marcus, aka Mediadonis, who has a new show on webmaster radio called “Webmasters on the Roof” which should be very good.

Well, it is…

Aside from that, I’ve only heard second hand that the filters are a bit easier to beat on the big three search engines from an international perspective. It’s kind of difficult for me to cross the barrier of understanding with no understanding of the language unfortunately.

Have you ever worked on a project with someone over here?

This is a real easy answer. Nope

What is your opinion about BlackHat SEO and web spam? Where does WhiteHat SEO start to become grey? Does it start when using article archives or web directories for artificial link growth? Where does it start to become complete BlackHat?

The whole blackhat/ whitehat debate is really ridiculous to me. My opinion is that there are no hats, only goals. The goals of SEO’s is generally to get optimal results for their sites, or the sites of their clients. There are certain levels some people will go to that are beyond what others will go to. Blackhat/whitehat are just labels used by the search engines for scare mongering in my mind. Any GOOD “whitehat” will study and understand the techniques of folks practicing “blackhat” SEO to understand the competition they are up against. I think these terms often get tied to ethics, which is an entirely different discussion in my mind. To me, unethical SEO is giving clients false expectations, doing damage to other’s sites, or publicly (or even privately) outing people’s sites. I always think of the quote made by Yahoo’s Tim Mayer, “don’t bring a knife to a gun fight”, when speaking about trying to use whitehat techniques in very high risk, high competition industries.

I would say the one area I see as a big gray area is the purchase of links. I think a very good arguement could be made for the fact that all links are bought in one way or another, and the idea that links shouldn’t be bought is a short sighted solution by the engines. Web directories kind of qualify as link buys, and have been abused, and thus get discounted as an illegitimate technique. I’m past the point of debating if it is right or wrong myself, and I just accept that it is a given. Directories aren’t as good a solution for link growth as they used to be. Adapt or die.

In terms of “where does it become blackhat” it’s very hard to say for me. I don’t think breaking SE guidelines is “blackhat”, though it is certainly risky. I guess to me blackhat would be techniques that push the envelope in very high risk/ high reward industries. Like I said, I think the whole terminology is fairly poor since it is traditionally equated to hacking.

What about cloaking to gain advantages in search? And what the difference to cloaking flash-pages with textual content to solve technical disadvantages?

I hope it’s not offensive, but cloaking is another poor choice in terminology. Cloaking has turned into the SE’s term for selectively delivering content with ulterior motives. From a technical perspective, cloaking is just selectively delivering content. I prefer to use euphemisims for cloaking - since there are several legitimate applications for selectively delivering content which include geo-targeting, keeping engines out of duplicate content, and many other applications that are not meant to be malicious.

Do you think the decision if something is BlackHat or something is WhiteHat should be based on ethical or technical criteria?

I’ve heard search engineers mention that spam is determined by “intent and extent”. Since search spam is such a subjective term, many times it is determined by the intent of the publisher, and the extent to which the technique is used or abused. I think “blackhat” should probably be based on “intent and extent”.

Can you name any SEO, whose expertise you really appreciate, but whose blog is not as popular as it should be? Here´s some space to promote his site….

The only trouble with mentioning one is that I’ll miss several others. Some of my most recent favorites include: Andy Hagans, Brian Provost, Brian Mark, and Neil, Cameron, and Muhammad at Pronetadvertising. While these aren’t all REAL new, I figure some haven’t made it over there yet, and all are pretty interesting. Here’s all the other blogs that I peruse.

Last Modified : March 30th, 2007
Filed under : SEO & Netzwelt
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