Online forums

Nearly all readers will be familiar with the online forums. Online forums are topical discussion websites dedicated to a particular category or interest. There are online forums for every conceivable topic from sports, to hotel management, to search engine optimization. You can garner a lot of useful information from online forums dedicated to SEO, but you can also be led down the wrong path, if you're not careful. Some of the techniques you read about in online forums may be frowned upon by the search engines. We've learned about black hat techniques, and in online forums, you'll encounter both purveyors and advocates of these forbidden methods.

Every possible black hat technique ever conceived will be either described or offered in SEO forums: automated content, automated comment posting, link farms, and worse. We've learned, however, that all of the automated shortcuts you'll discover will qualify as black hat or gray hat, and are to be avoided...