No More Hats: High Risk vs. Low Risk SEO

There are seo techniques that can get your site banned from Google if you're caught or one of your competitors notices and turns you in for spamming. These techniques, commonly referred to as "black hat" techniques, are the topic of many forum threads, and have brought ruin to many an unsuspecting optimizer. Discuss the ethics of using a thread over at Cre8site, removes the black hat vs. white hat seo distinction from the realm of morality and places it into more pragmatic terms: risk. (I also have to credit him for my title - his quote really got me started: "there are no hats.") Throughout the thread I read repeated warnings against using high risk seo techniques - these are tactics that, especially if you're new to seo, you should not use, as you will not understand their actual risk and may end up causing severe damage to your business and livelihood. Beware. Here's part of the thread that caught my attention, and the attention of the techniques that are considered safe. These techniques include content optimization (adding valuable content to your site), link building, and other ideas included in blackhatseo.com. Its creator, awall19 from cre8siteforums, intended the site to