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Which side are you on? With an SEO strategy, is there really a better side to be on and what are the consequences? Are we creating a role of “good” versus “evil” when it comes to search engine techniques? Both sides are actually attempting to manipulate something, but does that make one side better over the other? Clearly search engines have a defined set of “rules” to follow and attempting to circumvent these rules can be costly.

Take the instance of John Chow’s site. He recently lost his Google ranking for selling links – bad SEO strategy. No only did he lose his ranking but his credibility was shot as people came out of the wood works to comment on his demise. Googling “John Chow” now brings up “John Cow” which seems to be a spoof off the original site. Regardless, John Chow was effective when he was on top.

The problem was that there was a price to pay with his strategy. Black hat SEO techniques are deceptive and mask’s the actual relevance of a site to search engines. When using a black hat strategy, you have to consider the consequences of your actions. It may take Google years to find you, but eventually, everything that goes around comes around.

How do you determine which SEO strategies are considered black, white or gray? Sometimes it’s hard to tell especially when you’re new to the field. Dan Thies from SEO Fast Start writes an easy to understand explanation of what the different colored “hats” represent and how you can clean up your strategies to inherently become more “white hat”.

Then there are the problems with the “no hats”. You know you’re a “no hat” if nothing is going on with your site – no visitors, no click-throughs, no comments. You’re lucky if you post on a consistent basis. Get on board the SEO train and start doing something with your site. Even if it’s black hat or somewhat gray, at least you’re doing something and you’re going somewhere. Now, we’re not advocating “black hat” techniques, but rather, the point is start doing something.

SEO and SMO strategies are complex in nature and they take time to build. The original question was “whose side are you on” and “is there a better side”? The answer to that question would be another question, “how can you risk losing something that takes so long to build?” As for John Chow, don’t worry about him. He’ll be back.