Interview with a White Hat Fanatic

Posted by JohnCarcutt
April 21, 2006

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I consider myself a White Hat SEO. I have had my brushes with Black Hat as I am sure we all have, but as the years past I came to understand that there is much more to this job that gaming the engines. I am sure I owe this to my fortunate choice in SEO communities. I spend much of my online forum time at the IHelpYou.com SEO Forums where I am a frequent poster and volunteer moderator. IHY is probably in the top 5 most active SEO communities and is without a doubt the #1 dedicated White Hat SEO community.

IHY is also probably the most controversial community in the SEO industry as well. It has gained a reputation as “Fanatical” due to its total distain of any SEO practice that resembles search engine spam and its willingness to “out” others in the industry. Unlike most other SEO forums, IHY does not hesitate to identify (by name) members of the SEO industry or web sites that are spamming or participating in unsavory marketing practices.

The driving force behind all of this is Doug Heil, owner of IHelpYou Inc. a full service web development and marketing firm. Doug is well known in the SEO community as a White Hat activist and frequent pot stirrer. Since Doug and his forums have been a significant influence on me, I wanted to see if I could dig a little deeper into his brain getting his perspective on some questions that have been on my mind. I was very happy when Doug agreed to let me interview him via email.

…….Email Inverview Begins…….

John – In your opinion Doug, what is the current state of the SEO industry?

Doug – Thanks for asking me to answer a few of your “tough” questions, let’s see if I can be of some help by answering as thoroughly as possible.

What’s the state of the SEO industry?

First off; I don’t see this industry as being “SEO” at all. I see it as being much more than that. This industry involves the search engines, the webmasters, the programmers, the designers, and the internet as a whole, which includes every new person who decides they want a website of some kind. I see the state of this industry at a fairly crucial point in time. The regular “joe website” person is getting smarter. It almost seems the smarter they get, the more “out there” those in this industry get. All sides have a big stake in the direction we are heading. All sides have different views on how this industry should proceed.

John – You are known to many in the SEO community as a “White Hat Fanatic”. Why? Does it bother you?

Doug – I feel the main reason that “circles” of people view me as a “fanatic” is because I’m certainly just that…. A fanatic. I’ve always been that way with anything I have done in the workplace. As a “salesmen” working for 84 Lumber, and just a young lad at 21 years, I consistently scraped with the sales manager. At the same time, and just being with the company for one year, I was one of 15 people in the whole company nation-wide to win a trip to the 1984 summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California. At that time there were about 300 stores in the country which employed 8 to 15 per store. I thought I did quite well. I simply do my own thing, even when it conflicts with the people above me.

John – Was there any specific point in time or an event that pushed you into a higher level of white hat activism?

Doug – Back in 1997 I had just started out with one of those “free” websites. I can’t remember now which host it was. I remember being interested in the search engines like infoseek, altavista, and excite. I started helping my friends and family for free with their free websites as well. I quickly found out that a free site was not the way, so I got a domain name and looked for a real web host. I also got more and more interested in the search engines and tried real hard to study and read about them. Around 1998 I had started to charge a small fee for helping people. I believe it was like 17 bucks for SEO. I was listening to someone back then… can’t remember the name, and they told me about a great new thing to do. That great thing was to make the text of one paragraph “almost” the same color as the background, and put in certain phrases and sentences about what the page was targeting. I asked them if it was okay to do this and they said it was fine as the search engines did not care if it was slightly different. They only cared if it was exactly the same color. I thought great! I immediately shot up in Altavista for my targeted phrase.

It was about one month later and my referrals from AltaVista dropped to nothing. I did not know why so I emailed them to ask. They actually replied back saying that I was spamming them by using hidden text on my pages. This was the first time I had really heard about search engine spam, so I asked them for more detail. They gave it to me. I was very upset with the person who told me to implement that great thing. That’s probably when I really started thinking about the search engines and the public in general. I was new to things, and I got burnt in a big way.

John – Ok Doug, what is your definition of “Ethical SEO” and why do you think so many people hate the term?

Doug – I view things differently than most; I am very aware of that. I feel ethics involves much more than simply the vendor/client relationship. I feel many of us have a big responsibility to the internet in general, which involves many more people than your immediate client. “Every” industry has rules/guidelines that one should follow. This industry has claimed for along time that it’s a “baby” industry and that rules and guidelines have not been put into place yet.

How long are we going to say this is a baby industry? I don’t think it is. Since there is no “body” of people who are looking out for “you” yet, I feel the only real guidelines we all should be following are the guidelines from the very websites we all want to receive “free” referrals from. That’s been my belief now for a long time. Unless or until there is a stated body of “overseers” that we all can look up to, the guidelines of the search engines are what we have.

John – Now the other side of the coin, what is your definition of “Search Engine Spam” and why do you think so many participate?

Doug – It’s easy to respond to a client who does not want his pretty design changed by saying stuff that allows your client to keep his pretty design.

It’s easy to say to clients that you and your clients have never been penalized by a search engine.

It’s easy to simply do things that are the easiest way out. Instead of re-designing that ugly site, you simply do some things that may not be following those se guidelines. That’s much easier than actually fixing the existing code, or re-designing the website, or writing better content. It’s much easier to take someone’s money when you just do as that someone says with no regard to the future consequences.

It’s much harder to actually try to educate that client in why they need a new website. It’s harder explaining to that client why getting lots of links leading to their site is not the way of the future. Its harder explaining why you don’t want to write content that looks like it’s for the search engines. It’s just overall much harder to do things the best way possible while keeping the client’s best interests in mind “at all times”. These are all the reasons why firms and people in this industry do as they do. It’s simply easier that way.

But is it right? Not in my opinion. Our future reputations are going to be based on what did you do for this industry to help in the education of this industry. Keep in mind this industry is everyone on the internet who has anything to do with a website or websites.

Search engine spam? In short, it’s whatever the search engines say it is at the time of your asking. I’m a firm believer that if you are doing something for your visitors, it cannot be spam. I know some out there will say things like this:

“You change Title tags and Meta tags and those are not for your visitors.”

The difference is that those particular things are actually wanted by the search engines to help them index and present to users the most relevant pages possible. Of course they have something to do with visitors in general, but they also help with your website’s categorization in the search engine database. They act simply as a “feed” of some sorts, but with the agreement and okay of all the search engines. Doing something without the search engine’s acknowledgement or doing things strictly for the search engines is what is called search engine spam.

John – You have said on a number of occasions that you are (and I am paraphrasing here) “going to fix this industry”. How do you plan to do this, and frankly, what gives you the right?

Doug – My forums and I have just as much “right” to try and fix this industry as others have to try to keep this industry in a state of confusion for the general public.

Hmm. How? Okay fine:

Launching a totally “different event” that is already on the schedule. It’s like a party in many ways. We know there are a few “seminar” type events out there right now, but this one is going to be of a different sorts. More details are coming real soon. The forums will be the first to know.

One thing I totally disagree with Google and Yahoo about is the fact that they allow any kind of firm to buy their advertising. They allow almost any type of software to advertise with them, and allow any type of firm to advertise with them. My firm will be doing something very different. There will be more to come about this later.

John – As probably one of the most controversial personalities in the SEO community, you claim to be working to better the industry, so why do people react the way they do towards you and your ideas?

Doug – Some people react that way. You have to remember that my firm and my forums do not cater to anyone out there who doesn’t want to learn best practices. If they want to learn, then we can help them. Some out there are also very set in their ways, so they really don’t want to hear from the likes of me…… the fanatic.

I don’t feel that the people out there who take money from those who go against the search engine guidelines are doing this industry any favors for the “long term”. Confusing all the issues and giving some people great visibility and advertising opportunities is not any help at all to the well-being and longevity of this industry. We are for “helping” people achieve long term success and knowing how to do it while sleeping real well at night. We aren’t for a short term fix, and we are not for “doing as the client says”. That client should be educated. They look to others for help.

Does someone really jump online and get a domain, and build a website, and then think to themselves…. I want short term success? I want it no matter the risks? I really doubt that most people think in terms of short term. If the bad out there is limited, the well-being of this industry is assured for the long term. At the same time, web designers, programmers, copywriters, web hosts, and even ISP’s are educated. How can any of these different parts be educated when high profile people are taking monies from anyone, no matter what that firm is all about?…. and this includes Google and Yahoo. It’s the one big beef I have with Google and any search engine who takes money for advertising…. Yahoo and MSN as well.

John – Doug, its common knowledge that you have an adversarial relationship with a number of popular personalities in the SEO industry. Won’t this hinder your progress and can you do anything about it?

Doug – I don’t want to do anything about it. My goals are much bigger than wanting a few peers to like me. Or wanting to take money from firms I don’t feel are being a help to the industry. My firm’s biggest goal is the overall education of all the groups involved. There can be many types of people involved in the process of “website development”. Some of those “popular” personalities you ask about really only cater to “others” directly involved with other industry peers. This includes everyone in it no matter how they do things. I don’t want that at all. I want to reach the new person, the new search engine, the new web designer, the new programmer, the new anyone who has something to do with a website, and the person who truly wants to learn. I really don’t care who out there does not like my ways or how I go about it. I’ve not been one to shy away from much of anything and that includes my years in college and being a manager of “Dominos” pizza at 19 years old. lol

You may be referring to people like Danny Sullivan. Let me tell you something; I personally really like Danny. My personal feelings have nothing to do with the issues in this interview. I’ve talked face to face with him. He is a nice guy. The fact he works for a larger company with an agenda doesn’t mean he has not worked hard at what he does. His goals for his company are simply very different from my goals. These goals involve “everyone” to like him no matter what they do or how they do it. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as that’s just the way it is. He has always been a publisher. That’s something completely different than my firm. I might possibly have the same thoughts and feelings about this industry if I had to cater to “everyone” no matter what.

Human nature is as such that most people have to feel like they belong to something “big”. Right now, Danny is pretty big stuff. The conference he runs is big as well. Most people don’t like to make waves. They find it very uncomfortable when they find themselves going against the main stream. I’ve never felt like that, and I have always been the one to buck the system. As a manager of many stores for 84 Lumber, I found myself disagreeing with the bigger bosses on lots of things. That didn’t stop me from doing my own thing anyway. If change is to be made in any industry, someone or something has to drive that change. Nothing has ever been done without something behind the movement. It’s the people who stand firm with their beliefs who will be the very people driving any changes.

I really believe that change is inevitable for this industry. It’s only about 10 years old or so. The general population will demand changes as more and more people out there are truly educated as to what this stuff is all about. Danny is not a bad guy. The company he works for simply has different goals. If a firm really wants to educate, why would that firm accept monies from self-proclaimed search engine spammers, who then get the opportunity to sell their services to the very people the firm says it wants to educate? This is the very same reason I have a beef with the search engines; they say they don’t want firms who practice search engine spam, but at the same time they take monies for these same search engine spammers. I find that quite contradictory. The same goes for the engines allowing any and all types of websites to show their ads. IE: Google Adsense. The huge amount of garbage pages on the internet just because of Adsense is astounding. It’s only getting worse instead of better.

My firm’s goal is more involved with things other than how much advertising monies we can generate, while at the same time trying to teach about the industry. I’ve never felt that taking money from anyone is going to achieve the real education needed for the industry’s long term reputation. I feel that giving anyone the podium or the opportunity to tout their wares, no matter what those wares are, is not doing a fairly new industry any good.

John – What about SEO organizations? Do you belong to any? Could support from one of these bodies help you obtain your goals?

Doug – My firm is not involved with any SEO organization at all. I do think the only group we would be involved in would be our own. J I do think I would/will want the support of www.seopros.org and www.seoconsultants.com at some point. They both seem to vet and screen their members to some degree.

John – If you could pick one thing to implement instantly to help reduce the number of search spammers or lack of ethics in the SEO community, what would it be and why?

Doug – I feel the major search engines need to step up to the plate in a bigger way. By major I mean; Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. I think the only real way to help them is for them to help themselves better. They all know that search engine spam is the biggest detriment to the integrity of their search results. They all know that visitors will seek out up and coming, and “better” search results if the search engine spammers of the world are allowed to continue on at their current pace. I feel the actual search engines need to get involved in a big way with doing something “different”. I have many ideas about how that could be achieved. They simply should get with me about it.

There you have it. This was long, so I hope people did not fall asleep while reading. I know that many out there will want to pick all of this apart. Go for it. I could have written a book about this stuff and still not have clearly spelled out what I mean.

You ask some tough questions John. They are questions that I certainly have an opinion on.

…….Email Inverview Ends…….

I want to thank Doug Heil for taking the time out of his day to answer these questions as honestly as he did. Just possibly this may help someone understand the “Fanaticism” a little bit better.