Search Marketing Blog
Ethical SEO . . . Which Hat Do You Wear?
Posted by Sean McMahon on 09.19.2008This morning, Search Engine Land published a thought-provoking article written by fellow search marketing professional Shari Thurow, author of the book Search Engine Visibility, titled ‘SEO Ethics Are In The Eye Of The Beholder’ that astutely points-out that one person’s definition of ‘ethical SEO’ may be considered ‘black hat’ by another individual. This difference in opinion is obviously created by the fact that there is not a standardization of optimization techniques within our hyper-evolving industry.
In other words, that which one search marketing company touts as ‘legitimate’ Natural optimization techniques can be viewed as ‘black hat’ strategies by another SEM firm.
‘Black hat’ refers to optimization efforts that are recognized by the major search engines as techniques implemented to purposely deceive their relevancy ranking algorithms. For example, Google posts the following notice on their site, warning site owners and marketing firms about techniques they consider to be ‘black hat’:
Quality guidelines
• Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
• Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
• Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.
It’s important to realize that if Google detects that you are employing one or more of these ‘black hat’ techniques listed above, they will penalize your site within their index. This penalty can range from a reduction in your PageRank score, all the way to having your site permanently banned from their index.
Because of the potential severity of these penalties, we at EngineWorks strictly abide by Google’s Quality Guidelines. Even though Shari Thurow conveys in her article this morning that the line between legitimate optimization techniques and rouge behavior may sometimes be ‘gray’ (i.e., not ‘black hat’ or ‘white hat’), it is in the best interest of professional search marketers to diligently adhere to published search engine guidelines. This requires continuous attention to search engine policies, ardent reading of search marketing publications, and routine attendance at industry conferences and presentations.
In addition, daily contact with the major search engines enables you to receive direct insight into the most current approved strategies.
Let me know your definition of ‘ethical’ SEO, and I will let you know how it compares to our standard here at EngineWorks.
