SEO copywriting: Searchwritten

So the last two weeks the discussion about blackhat versus whitehat SEO erupted again. Good. It’s a relevant discussion, and I always enjoy following it, because we’re actually discussing the fundamentals of our industry.

But the topic of discussion itself is wrong, because it’s too crude.

When I see quotes like ‘blackhat SEO is not SEO’, ‘whitehat is not advanced SEO’, ‘blackhat is pure evil’ or similar, it always seems just … so … A Long Time Ago, In A Galaxy Far, Far Away…. Good against evil, white against black, results against morality, left vs right… But get real! These are simple stories. Fairytales. Way too simplistic for real-life.

When the discussions are heating up, you can see that confusion arises about what ‘blackhat’ or ‘whitehat’ actually is.

This is always the case with complex discussions, because no one really knows what it is about. And the reason we don’t know that is because we haven’t defined the topic properly. And we haven’t defined it properly because we use words that are way too general.

Many clever people already talk about stuff like:

• the question if following guidelines automatically means that you are ‘right’;
• the assumption that blackhat doesn’t scale (you know what they say about assumptions, don’t you?);
• what to advise your clients (follow guidelines or not);
• what to do if following the rules doesn’t get you the rankings you need (be aggressive or accept second place);
• the fact that Google is not the same as ‘the internet’;
• more philosophical discussions about the place of ‘morality’ in SEO and whether or not pragmatism can be combined with that;
• etc., etc.

These questions are hard enough! We discuss all kinds of very valid topics under the denominator of ‘black vs white’. But in the meantime, we’re also wasting a lot of time arguing about what, for example, blackhat IS.

My two cents: you cannot catch complex subjects in such simple terms. So let’s stop trying.