Re:Sequoia-Backed Chinese E-Commerce Company's Black-Hat SEO
by karamazov on Friday April 29, 2011 @10:55PM
(#2499760)
The issue is that Google is (or at least appears to be) actively pursuing this type of black hat SEO and trying to remove it from its search results. That's an uncomfortably high risk margin, especially since it seems that this company's business is highly dependent on those search results.
(Certainly, I wouldn't want to invest in a company that relies so heavily on black hat SEO, whether my own or someone else's.)
Re:Sequoia-Backed Chinese E-Commerce Company's Black-Hat SEO
by byrneseyeview on Saturday April 30, 2011 @10:29AM
(#2500690)
I just see it as a business decision. From the outside, a black-hat SEO campaign just looks like a really successful SEO campaign. "Oh, you're ranking for 'cheap dresses' a couple years after you started. Awesome!"
I'm basically helping investors figure out if their investees' rankings are sustainable. Ideally, I'd see a site like Mint (ranking for "money management software" because that's what they're good at) or OKCupid (#1 for "online dating"), rather than Milanoo.
Everyone takes the same risk that Google will change their algorithms, black hat SEO just ensures they'll stay at the top rather than artificially limiting the techniques they use to gain ranking to those that Matt Cutts approves of.
Google itself engages in 'black hat' SEO as defined by Matt Cutts which is why his team needed to change the algorithms and/or make them not apply to Google's own properties such as Google Local after the panda update.
I think this is possibly the best indication that black hat SEO works.