The last session of SES Chicago Day 3 proved to be one helluva entertaining discussion on black hat, white hat SEO.  However while listening to the panel, I couldn’t help thinking about the 5:30 PM Chicago traffic and the 4-5 inches of snow that was expected (and had started!).

My recaps will include some useful tidbits that I picked up during day 2 of SES Chicago.  Tweets were made from @marketwire as well as my personal handle @shinng using the hashtag #seschi and #rt2eat.  So what is the meaning of the latter hashtag?  Well, the creative marketing team @marketwire wanted to give back for the holiday season so we decided to take advantage of the Marketwire presence.  For every ReTweet of our tweets that include the hashtags #seschi #rt2eat, Marketwire will be donating $1.00 per RT for a max contribution of $500 to benefit the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

SES Chicago Session – Black Hat, White Hat: Does it Really Matter Anymore?

Moderator:  Frank Watson (Kangamurra Media)
Speakers:  Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz.org), David Naylor (Bronco), Matthew Bailey (SES Advisory Board, Site Logic Marketing), Todd Friesen (Position Technologies), Bruce Clay (Bruce Clay, Inc)

This session was truly a roundtable.  It wasn’t as organized as the other sessions where one person presented with a powerpoint followed by another.   This session was more like the every-man-for-himself mentality, but considering it was the last session, that was a good thing.

The most memorable quotes are outlined below.

What is black hat SEO?

• Black hat is what’s prohibited by guidelines.
• When it comes to black hat, the only tactic left is buying links.
• Amateur SEO is keyword stuffing.
• Black hat SEO is the risk and fear of risk model.
• Black hat is aggressive link building.

Regarding spam…

• Spam and black hat aren’t one and the same.  When you’re playing cards, there are professional card players and there are card cheats.
• The definition of spam is, “What would Matt Cutts think?”  If you’re on your laptop and Matt Cutts walks behind you and you immediately close your laptop, you’re a spammer.
• Google should be thanking the black hats for finding all their holes and closing it up.
• The fundamental problem is that people don’t know when stuff is wrong.  Google hasn’t defined all the things that are wrong.
• Example: search for “flights to Chicago” on Google.  The first couple map listings are black hat SEO tactics.  (Notice the web address and redirection)

Is Google assessing intent?

• They can’t!

Do you think the Google public DNS is going to have an affect on the web?

• It gives Google a lot more access to data traffic, but I’m not sure what it does for them.  Not sure if it will impact SEO.

Is it black hat to do stuff that will push Ripoff Report to the 2nd page?

• Although both Yahoo! and Bing banned Ripoff Report, the consensus was that it is not a black hat tactic.

Does Google AdWords spend affect your ranking?

• AdWords and rankings barely know each other even exists.  They don’t collaborate well between projects.
• It’s intentional that they don’t collaborate well.  It’s their culture.