White Hat article sites - are they truely?
Wed, 9 August, 2006 – 4:44 pm
You hear various buzz words being thrown around on blogs, MFA (made for adsense), scraper (the same as MFA essentially), White Hat etc. I have 4 sites (2 inherited) created by NPB Software (Niche Portal Builder), I have 1 site created by RSSGM. The style of the NPB ones work on pulling in visitors by the means of a links directory. A page of links, each page runs off a keyword and the links are usually the top 10 links off a web search, which means you repeat your keyphrase several times on the page thus ranking for it yourself. The RSSGM site uses RSS feeds to give content, again the feeds are pulled using you keyphrase for that page so essentially should contain that phrase a few more times - just quick info for anyone who's not looked at or seen these type of sites before.nnI also have a one page adsense site. It uses Google news to supply up to date news snippets, there's a couple of paragraphs written by myself, an adsense block and a few links. And then I have some sites that are being created manually. The information and articles are written by myself, there are a small selection of links along with some adsense to compliment the articles and affiliate links.nnQuestion is, although the hand created sites are essentially White Hat sites, are they really? What determines a site to be White Hat? I've been reading a lot of stuff across a few blogs and forums about creating White Hat sites, and how building them with unique or rewritten PLR articles is the way to go and will create pure White Hat sites. I've seen these sites, I've seen the subjects for other sites. But despite them being considered White Hat sites, I would still consider them MFA sites! White Hat MFA sites. These are sites being created with one goal in mind, to make money from adsense. Heck don't get me wrong, I'm hardly concerned about that, but trying to make these sites sound like they're worthy of a place on the web is no different to having a scraper site or a parked domain page.nnI've read about some people making stacks of income via adsense through churning out site after site full of articles. But honestly, does the web need another Get out of Debt web site or a Mesothelioma site? Surely these sites are not adding worth when there are plenty of sites out there that do the job? If the site really makes a difference then that's great, but most of these sites don't. If you had an idea for a new car you wouldn't never get it built unless it had that extra umph, yet plenty of niche websites go up on a daily basis with no extra umph than the one next to it. Hey as I said, I'm not saying don't do it, as I have sites that are not adding value, the part that's winding me up is that people seem to think these 'White Hat MFA sites' are better than others, are providing a worth, but they're not.nnMy single page adsenser has no worth whatsoever. Out of the 5 MFA sites, 1 could be considered worthy as it's essentially a one of a kind, so even though it's scraped it could still be considered worthwhile, especially with a 35% bookmark rate. A second MFA site is undergoing changes. I want to manually add my own links to the links directory - does this become White Hat because it's not scraped? Does it become worthwhile? I think on the basis of links alone it still wouldn't be worthwhile. There are plenty of sites out there doing the same thing. However the products for sale on the site will hopefully make the site more worthwhile. The research and effort put into the site will make it seem worthwhile. But if it wasn't for being a good niche I doubt we'd be running it, so in the end it is still a MFA site with a few products and affiliate links on too.nnOut of the manually created sites I have running, both are essentially created with the idea to make money off them. They wouldn't be running otherwise.nnI inherited 2 scraper sites off a friend who had no time for them (and I do?!). There are around 150-200 pages on each. Far too much if you ask me. My idea? To work out the 8-10 most popular pages on each, use some keyword analysis on Wordtracker and redo the sites to just include these top 10 pages, plus the product and front page. There are articles on the site so I could just use an excerpt from each of those with perhaps a few manually chosen links. So there's a scraper site turned into a White Hat site - but it's still MFA. I wouldn't be paying attention to the site if I didn't think it could make me some money.nnWhat's the point of this post? Just to say that anyone getting on their high horse over White hat sites need to sit back and realise that they're not much different to black hat sites. Ask yourself a question - Is the site an improvement over the best site out there for the subject, and would you create it still if it didn't make you money? I'm happy to admit that I have sites that I would never in a bluemoon have created if it wasn't for the cash.
9 Responses to “White Hat article sites - are they truely?”
Sorry for two things. Rambling so much and not following a path on my posting. I think I've been reading too much recently and just needed to get my own opinions out on screen.nnI forgot to mention, or give praise to, a site that's selling a product or products that are not available elsewhere, are competitive on the price or offer a range not found elsewhere… But then essentially my post is on article and adsense sites as opposed to product sites
By Sarah on Aug 9, 2006
If you are using your own content to create a site and you are using no "tricks" like Blog and Ping etc etc, then I would say it has to termed "White Hat".nnWhether or not a site runs Adsense (or any other form of monetisation) has no bearing on whether a site can be termed WH, BH or "Grey Hat"…nnI would class any site that uses ANY content not created by one-self as BH.
By Burty on Aug 9, 2006
Sorry, my point wasn't as such the difference between the colours (I'm bad at getting the point across), but more what's the difference besides manual content and say scraped content when it comes to the sites that we have an abundance of (debt consolodation etc) unless either produce something that's more worthwhile.nnI'm going to spend the next couple of weeks taking one NPB created site and removing all scraped content (the links) and replacing it with my own hand selected links. However whilst I'm hoping this will improve the average CPC I can't really see it improving its worthiness by doing this.nn
nnWhat about a parsed RSS feed? Especially if it provides 50% of the sites content like one does for my 1 page adsenser.
By Sarah on Aug 10, 2006
I include RSS as scraped content - my 1 pager also uses a RSS feed for 50% of it's content. It's basically a BH site.nnDoes a site need to be more worthwhile than the next to be useful ? I don't think so. It rather depends upon the context of the content - eg a site bout Mesotheliema in the UK would be more useful to UK'ers than a site about Meso in the US (what with their compensaton culture). Same content, different angle…nnMy keyword for the week is "perception"
By Burty on Aug 10, 2006
You're right, it depends on the context and who it's aimed to. So let's take the battle WH vs GH (a BH with some manual input). Is the WH always better? I think the suggestion of the context of the content plays a role along with the subject and target audience.nnOf course a BH site selling a top end product that isn't available anywhere else can really skew the thought!
By Sarah on Aug 10, 2006
nnAmen! I think if you take one of those white hat, hand-crafted, slowly cooked informational website and compared it to a black site that can be generated in minutes you'd have a hard time telling the two apart.
By Will on Oct 17, 2006
Will I'm not sure if you're being serious or sarcastic! I'm guessing without the inclusion of a wink you're being serious, if you are then I agree. Some information heavy WH sites still come across similar to BH sites when they're on a certain subject, perhaps this is just down to the subject matter. However people talk about MFA sites as if they're spammy BH sites when they can just be WH sites created with rewritten PLR articles.
By Sarah on Oct 17, 2006
As someone who has produced both flavours of website and has had other people categorise them the other way around, I'm very serious!nnWebsite built by hand with unique content aren't necessarily useful and websites based upon scraped content aren't necessarily junk. Some of the most useful websites I know are based upon scraped content e.g. the biggest MFA of them all, Google!nnWho gave Google the right to take my content and then display it on pages with contextual PPC ads on them? Okay, I'm pretty happy about them doing it, but sometimes just presenting information in a different way can make it useful.
By Will on Oct 17, 2006
That's a good point about Google! I agree that some BH sites can be good. One of my sites was originally generated however once it got a fair few visitors in I realised it could be a really good site and have spent time on redoing it and hand picking articles and sites to go onto it along with selling a product only the original owner sells.nnI think it all boils down to how it's presented, the subject and how useful it is. Not how it was created and how much time went into it by the owner.
By Sarah on Oct 17, 2006