The Best Way to Explain SEO from a Magazine Publishing Perspective

About a year ago I wrote an entry on why or why we should not have sexy girls grace the cover of gadget magazines.

It dawned on me after a year of enlightenment that the issue of sexy girls can be the best way to explain white hat SEO tactics. White hat SEO — as opposed to black hat SEO tactics.

The actual line between the two is quite thin, but, Black Hat SEO refers to things that are considered dark, or spammy, while White Hat SEO refers to “good” SEO. I determine Black Hat SEO as anything that, A. breaks any search engines rules, B. effects the users experience on the site for the worse, or C. shows different content to different user-agents. [source]

Liken your magazine cover to your website and the magazine stand to the search engine. Sexy girls on the front cover of gadget magazines (or any magazine that holds a demographic filling in the “prime of youth”) is supposedly a magazine stall differentiator – the “sexiness” is supposed to “make the magazine rank higher in terms of visibility on the news stand.”

So how then do you differ black from white hat SEO in this case? Well the clincher is all in the context (again) of how the sexiness was executed. Bikini for summer issue? Check. Bikini for no reason at all? Ugh. The “black hat” comes in when the magazine becomes invaded by sex when in fact its focus is actually far from what its niche is supposed to be. A gadget magazine that has boob-clad “lady sexy” can surely ruin the reading experience.

Buy the latest issue of Mobile Philippines with the attractive, wholesome and geeky Iya Villania on the cover 🙂