black hat seoThe answer to the question above is incredibly simple: black hat SEO definitely will go away. As soon as the Internet and or search engines disappear completely. Until then however, black hat SEO will continue to be part of SEO. Here’s what you need to know:

Human Nature

In another recent post, I just got through writing about human nature and how we inherently feel jealousy of the rich and famous on a certain level. It’s just the way we’re made and there’s nothing wrong with it as long as we are able to keep that jealousy in check (i.e. reading about the rich and famous in a magazine and wishing we were them is fine – stalking Julia Roberts and or trying to hurt her because she’s rich and famous would be wrong).
Another facet of human nature is that most of us are inherently lazy, at least on some level. After all, how many of us would decide that we must grind our own wheat into flour when baking a cake rather than simply buying a bag of flour from the grocery store?
A handful of people may do this for health reasons, but no one does it because they simply relish the idea of standing them with a grinding stone working the thing just because they want to work the grinding stone (and no, those doing it for exercise or because they’re curious to see what it’s like don’t count either since they’re not doing it just for the sake of doing extra work).

Black Hat SEO Is a Way to Bypass Hard Work

Now, to take our analogy a bit further, black hat SEO isn’t like buying flour at the grocery store. It’s more like baking a cake using a cake mix rather than doing it from scratch and then claiming that the cake was made from scratch. Of course, the cake mix saves a lot of time and effort and also makes it easier to make a decent tasting cake. However, it still won’t achieve quite the same results as the cake that you make from scratch (with your store bought flour).
Black hat SEO in essence makes it easier for you to get to the top of the rankings. However, just like our mix based cake as opposed to the from scratch cake, it’s not real and is going to be somewhat artificial. When Google catches you doing it, it’s like the guy at the dinner party who declares that your home made from scratch cake is actually nothing but a Dunkin Hines mix.

It Will Never Go Away

However, no matter how much we know that it’s entirely possible we’ll be caught in the lie of claiming that our Dunkin Hines cake is actually made from scratch, many of us will continue to do it. In fact, when caught, many of us will defend our efforts as being legitimate since the cake was still “from scratch” in the sense that you didn’t simply drop by the local bakery and buy one which was ready made.
Similarly, black hat SEO will never go away because there will always be people who don’t want to do the hard, from scratch work that it takes to get your website to the top of the rankings. And there will even be people who indignantly complain when Google catches them doing it, claiming that this is legitimate.

When You Get Caught

Well, just like our dinner party guest who calls you on having used the Dunkin Hines mix isn’t accusing you of committing a crime by claiming it’s from scratch, Google isn’t accusing you of a crime when you use black hat SEO.
However, just like a discerning dinner guest who prefers not to eat the processed junk food of a Dunkin Hines cake mix (mind you – I like Dunkin Hines myself, though I don’t eat it because I’m diabetic, but I’m trying to make an analogy here), Google is simply saying that if you want to come to their dinner party, they don’t want black hat SEO to be part of your recipe (and when they catch you doing it, they’ll politely refuse to partake of your site, just as the dinner guest politely refuses to take part of the Dunkin Hines cake).