SEO + Ethics = A Possible Mix?
Let’s face it; there are a lot of ethical issues facing the online world. From privacy to fraud, anything can happen in the internet because the people transacting with each other usually do not see each other and their only vehicle for communication is through the internet.
Even a primary marketing tool like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not safe from being hounded by these ethical issues. There is actually a great debate among SEO practitioners and experts when it comes to determining where to draw the line in terms of ethics regarding SEO.
To have a better understanding of ethical SEO, let’s try to comprehend first the qualities of unethical SEO. This is usually referred to as Black Hat SEO. This type of SEO employs techniques which are outside the Google standards when it comes to SEO. There are techniques that are being used under Black Hat SEO and these are keyword stuffing, putting invisible text in websites and link farming. Keyword stuffing happens when webmasters put in the same keywords in their site over and over again, exceeding the percentage of keyword saturation which is required in SEO. Putting white colored text on a white background is another way that webmasters fool the spiders of search engines. While the website visitors don’t see the text, the spiders can still read the text which will allow the website to climb up the rankings because of the presence of keywords. Link farming happens when the website hosts a lot of links of other websites for advertising purposes. The links are not necessarily related to the website hosting it.
One of the main problems when it comes to the extent of role that ethics play in SEO is the lack of set of rules and guidelines. There are no enforced regulations when it comes to SEO and ethics and this is one of the reasons why it is very hard to avoid unethical SEO being employed by other webmasters. Of course, you need to keep in mind that as an SEO practitioner, you HAVE to follow the search engine rules and regulations when it comes to SEO. If you are a company who is providing SEO for your clients, then you must do so ethically and responsibly.
In order to know if what you are doing is compliant to ethical SEO standards, you must educate yourself and read the guidelines of search engines when it comes to SEO. Keep in mind that employing Black Hat SEO can have your website banned from being indexed in the search engine.
There are many things that have been said and done about SEO and ethics. It is arguably one of the more controversial issues about SEO. It is difficult to gauge SEO ethics because ethics per se is relative to each person. What may be ethical to me, might not be ethical for you and vice versa. The main goal of SEO is to increase the ranking of a website. If you want to employ ethics in your SEO campaign, you must do everything which is bound by ethics. It’s okay to be ahead of the game, but if you do not employ dirty tricks and you’ll go a long way.
