Doug Heil

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Doug Heil (born 1957) is a search engine optimization consultant who is an outspoken advocate of strict white hat SEO. Heil operates the SEO Best Practices Search Engine Forums, a long-established forum for discussing SEO.^[1]^[2]^[3]

Heil was one of many SEO consultants who publicly exposed Traffic Power, a notorious firm that had hurt many small business owners.^[4]

Controversy surrounds Heil because he advocates the practice of publicly exposing search spammers and "black hat" SEOs. Heil came to hold his controversial views on spamming after he received advice that using "... text of one paragraph 'almost' the same color as the background..."^[5] would help a page's rankings. After Heil implemented this text, his site was subsequently banned from Alta Vista, and he became interested in search engine spam and protecting the public. Ironically, this makes Heil one of the few SEOs, and certainly one of the few white hats, to have admitted ever being banned.

Many within the industry feel that Heil is a white hat "fanatic."^[6] At times, Heil has criticized industry leaders, such as Danny Sullivan and Jill Whalen, for "protecting" spammers.^[7]

In an interview with ZeroMillion, a popular web magazine for entrepreneurs, Heil said, "Naming spammers does two things; It 'informs' the general public as to 'who' might risk your website, and it informs the spamming SEO that they have a problem. 'Many' times SEO's have contacted me saying they made changes to their business model because of what was discussed in my forums, and have become a true 'Best Practice SEO' who follows the guidelines of the search engines."^[8]

Heil currently resides in South Carolina, United States.