After a few months of playing around in a few Webmaster Forums with SEO threads, I have found that a High majority practice & preach BlackHat techniques - Even their whole administration / Moderation is 100% supportive of it.

I find it sad in a way that all the supported SERP's manipulation tactics are being Professed by individuals that portray them self as an Authority in the field in question.

Webmaster-Talk has been one of the only Forums thus far that mainly focuses on Whitehat techniques. Supported by Administration & Moderation. It's a forum like this that gives hope to the industry & points to the light at the end of the tunnel.

Just wanted to reach out & Pat you guys & Gals on the back & say Good job! You have one of the nicer SEO threads out there....

Don't let it go to your heads though!

Originally Posted by scorpionagency

Webmaster-Talk has been one of the only Forums thus far that mainly focuses on Whitehat techniques. Supported by Administration & Moderation. It's a forum like this that gives hope to the industry & points to the light at the end of the tunnel.

That's the main reason I'm here and not on DP.

Thanks Eric. We certainly give more advice here leaning to the white hat side of things. In truth most everyone is really wearing different shades of gray hats.

The ironic thing is that usually when you see a black hat technique on a forum it's because it stopped working or will soon stop working. When someone knows a secret that can make them a lot of money only if they don't share that secret they tend not to talk much.

vangogh: When someone knows a secret that can make them a lot of money only if they don't share that secret they tend not to talk much.

It's more ironic that you pointed that out. I mean, even when you think about it on the level of common knowledge, If someone was banking in a secluded, targeted, Unique, Niche market that seems to be Untapped, Once letting the cat out of the bag (Sharing the "Secret") wouldn't that simply create a market flux in direct competition with oneself (Thus leading to less revenues)?

I formed that as a question, yet I meant it as a self answering point in support of what you already said.

I suppose after reading 50+ SEO forums that are filled with self proclaimed Guru's (Blind leading the Blind), It astonishes me that more don't look at it that way, In its simplicity.

Again, I am Happy that there are still Forums left out there such as these that not only encourage, But stop the misinformation dead in it's tracks before it adds to the already overly saturated Guru Syndicate - (Ha, "GU" - Guru Syndicate, I think I just made a funny)

And Yes, I do have to agree that you can't have good without evil or Vice versa, Hence Grey hats utilizing both techniques in order to secure the objective. I just like the fact that this forum tends to focus on the lesser evil with a predominance in accuracy (Or as close to it as possible).

Thanks again!

We only talk about whitehat stuff in here because it's a scientifically documented fact that spammers are idiots. Since blackhat stuff is spam, blackhats become idiots as well.

My role here at WMT is to constantly remind others how stupid spammers truly are, and it's a role I take VERY seriously, as you may have noticed.

There are quite a few forums that do NOT tolerate the so called "black hat" techniques.
HighRankings and IHelpYou being the most notable.
<full_disclosure>
I moderate at both
</full_disclosure>

Both have different styles, but are equally packed with good threads on SEO/SEM for the LONG term rather than a short term, high risk monetary gain using the build then crash & burn, build then crash & burn cycle.

Yeh there are a few others that support whitehat methods over blackhat methods, just like Webmaster-Talk. One I'm a member of is webforumz - mostly geared towards web designers. The mods over there share similar opinions on SEO to us over here

Hi there

Im glad you posted your feelings on this scorp I often think shall i post thanks and then it might sound like im *** kissing lol, I feel the same i have been on other webmaster forums and they simply dont compare with this forum at all.

I always manage to get to the point, logical answers, to my probably quite misguided questions lol as often its just common sense, I was unfortunate enough to pick up bad habits by listening to people, who simply didnt know what they were talking about, I have had to challenge my own thoughts and am slowly learning.

This forum has changed my whole view on how SEO works, and has given me new found optimism for my sites.

Woc

Glad it's changed things for you Woc.

I don't want to make a long speech but....

I came here being very enthusiastic about link exchanges (seems a long time ago now) but thankfully, people like Adam and others have guided me in the right direction

Thanks again to all of you here at Webmaster-Talk

Dan

Now that's a great complement this forum receives. I agree to all those been said. I really find this forum very knowledgeable and the moderators are very eager to reply even to those simple things.

GROUP HUG !

hehehe....

Yeah Cheers Guys,

I have personally got much better information on this Forum than elsewhere (that mainly being DP).

Feel free to have a cyber-beer on me!

Alright guys, let me ask a question or two if I may.
Question #1 How old is SEO & SEM roughly?
Question #2 Where do you think its headed?

The reason I ask this, as I have been a web-nerd for sometime now, and until recently found out about these two topics. I wish I would have known back then, that way I could have provided a better service to my customers, and maybe be leading-edge like you fellas.

Open discussion, I like to hear from multiple parties of experience, and for the record, webmaster-talk owns all others.

I'd say they're slightly younger than search engines. I don't have an exact date (I want to say 1997 or 1998) but basically seo and sem were born as soon as someone realized the potential traffic and revenue a search engine could send.

People were practicing seo and sem before there was a name for it. My attempt at a date above is really a guess as to when the term seo was coined, which I think was 98.

Where is it going? That's going to be a big topic with many different answers.

I think we're going to continue to see personalization in search as well as more blended search where results are pulled from more than just standard web pages.

I think search engines would ideally like to be able to answer your question ideally on their site so you don't leave, but still see them as the source to find the answer.

I think social properties are going to enter the equation even more and search engines are going to add a human equation to their algorithm in the sense of how real people tag certain content and how they vote on it.

I think search engines will continue to emphasize authority as a key ranking metric. Bigger, older, more popular will get a larger share of the results so PPC becomes more attractive to smaller sites.

I think local search and mobile search will become more mainstream.

Those are a few things off the top of my head now, but I'm sure I can think of more given time.

http://www.highrankings.com/forum/in...howtopic=26193 for the first one

We've got to remember that Google was actually the first search engine not to rank web sites in alphabetical order (I don't remember those days as I didn't come online till approx. 2002 earliest).

SEO was born very soon after Google started doing this.

Chris I think that thread is where I was getting my date from. It's been awhile since I read it.

Dan I think SEO predates Google.

Yeah, Google is just a upstart newcomer

I recall comment stuffing optimising for AltaVista back when I first got interested in search engines and how they worked in mid '96

I agree too... Because in DP there are too sensitive....

Originally Posted by ForrestCroce

That's the main reason I'm here and not on DP.

Nothing wrong with being sensitive. It's the misinformation that keeps getting repeated that is the problem.