SEOs come in all colors. The black hats game the system. The gray hats sort of game the system. The white hats play by the rules.

SEOs constantly assess the mood of Mother Google (as well as the lesser search engines, such as Yahoo!, Ask, etc). And, yes, it pays to pay attention to what the SEs like and loathe — what spiders find interesting and what they pooh-pooh. But don’t lose sight about what this whole game is about. Your SEO should deliver something of real value — that doesn’t yet exist on the web — to a niche group of customers. That something could be a service, a product, or even just good information. But whatever you do, do it (ultimately) to benefit people in some way.  (more…)