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| - Doug Heil (born ?) is a controversial search engine optimization consultant who is a strong advocate of "white hat" SEO. Heil operates the SEO Best Practices Search Engine Forums, which is considered one of the top web sites for discussing SEO. Heil was one of the SEO consultants who publicly exposed Traffic Power, a notorious firm that had hurt many small business owners. Controversy surrounds Heil because he advocates the practice of publicly exposing search spammers and "black hat" SEOs. Many within the industry feel that Heil is a white hat "fanatic." At times, Heil has criticized industry players, such as Danny Sullivan and Jill Whalen for "protecting" spammers. 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." Heil currently resides in South Carolina, United States.
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