16 May

Ethics, Best Practices and SEO – A Crisis in the Profession? (part 2)

Bad SEO Can Get A Site Banned

The search engines say that any type of manipulation to get a site ranked is a threat against them and the relevancy of their results. Whitehat practitioners will say that they are not manipulating sites but rather fixing search engine obstacles within a web site. The need for their services is great as many web site designers do not know how to integrate search engine friendly designs.

Website Toast

Last year a prospective customer contacted me after being burned by a “rogue” SEO company who got their site (and others) banned from Google for spam tactics. A few weeks later they were contacted by the same “rogue” SEO company under a new name. Perhaps naively she almost fell for it again. She reasoned that if they had been banned once they would not do anything wrong again! This demonstrates the lack of knowledge that consumers have regarding our industry. They don’t know the difference between good and bad SEO. People are being taken advantage of because of their lack of knowledge.

No matter what techniques your SEO uses; ‘ethical’ , ‘whitehat’ ,’blackhat’ none at all it all boils down to one thing. Doing right by the client? Ethics is often viewed by many in the industry as hype.

I think the focus should be on serving users as opposed to manipulating the search engines. SEO’s who concentrate of making the sites the best that they can be for the end user will create a much better longer term affect. The SEOs who chase algorithms and try to game the search engines get burned when there is an algorithm change. Following search engine updates involving an algorithm shift, the industry message boards abound with posts along the lines of “I hate Google, they have killed my site” If these posters had spent more time improving their site for their clients, and the search users, the algorithm updates would be much less stressful for them.

At this time there is no initiative within the industry to create a trade body which sets a code of best practices. It is down to the consumer to practice “buyer beware” and ensure that they practice due diligence in selecting an SEO. They need to use even more caution than they would use to select any other vendor. I also believe the industry has a responsibility to provide education and resources for consumers and help de-mystify the profession.

Great SEO companies share their knowledge willingly. They hide nothing to either clients or search engines. They know that they have a specialized skill and are proud of what they do. They get their results through hard work and perseverance. They also know that to do the job properly takes a lot of time. This is something which most business owners feel they do not have. They are confident that when it comes to hiring a professional, their honest and open approach to their trade will be acknowledged by organizations who only want to work with the best.

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