Ethical SEO
Jezsta Web Productions practices ethical SEO Services (Search Engine Optimization Services). We have strict ethics with guidelines and make sure a website will not be penalized by the search engines. The reason why we state "we know what will get a site banned and stay away from those techniques" plain and simply put, we don't do anything wrong. The following article written by Jezsta Web Productions can help you understand how others have a different view of ethical SEO.
If you feel this article is useful it can be syndicated with having our link. - Search Engine Optimization by Jezsta a New focus in Website Marketing. Please do not use this article without our link and this article can not be altered.
Why Some Ethical SEO Expert's Aren't really Ethical, but Preach Ethics
Ethic/s is described as the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation. Someone who is ethical conforms to accepted standards of conduct. This would make any SEO ethical who performs their tasks with the accepted standard of conduct "ethical". There are some SEOs spewing out ethical banter that they are in fact NOT ETHICAL.
If any SEO puts their link on a website's front page or on all the pages it would be considered an unethical practice. We also feel that any web designer placing a link is also unethical, they need to only state it was designed without a link. Any decent SEO will know that this pulls away from relevancy of a web page, plus making the web page not have the full PR (Google PageRank™) that it deserves. People pay good money for SEO and web design; don't let them put their links up especially on the front page! Stating somewhere with just the name would be ok or even at the bottom of the pages in small print to let people know who did it. If someone is interested in the SEO or web design service then they will search for that particular SEO consultant or web designer. Of course if there was a deal for some free SEO or web design then yeah, a link would be ok. You shouldn't have to have a link unless you would like to.
One might hear of or read about Black, Gray - Grey, or White Hat when looking around on SEO sites and internet marketing forums. A Wiki Page describes the SEO Hats and more on Search Engine Optimization. The main concern for most SEOs is Internet Marketing which would place them not wearing any hat. Logic would put the search engine specialists in a false dilemma as stated in the Wiki article.
True web promotion experts view the search engines as just another website and want to make other sites accessible on them. Marketing websites in ways like advertisements, paid placements, or other search engine (SE) marketing tactics can be ethical. Accessiblity to the internet visitors is what search engine marketing is all about. A person wants not only to have an accessible web site, but moreover be accessible in the SEs to make their website not fail. SEO specialists and Search Engine Marketers (SEMs), have an obligation to get a website that they are working on some visitors. Most stand by a code of ethics which will not put a website at risk that results in a penalty or be banned from the search engines. If they do no harm to a web site then that would suggest that they practice ethical SEO. If a SEO or SEM places a customer's website at risk then they are not ethical.
Ethical SEO Advocates - Preachers Against Link Building
Some ethical SEO preachers or advocates give a load of malarkey about link exchanging and or link building campaigns being unethical. And good SEO or SEM has to know that links to a web site are good. The more the better, as long as they are quality related links. Related can mean business wise similarities not necessarily exact relation.
What is hard to believe is that some ethical SEO experts (activists as they called themselves) that speak about links and link building being unethical, claim websites don't need links. They actually have made web sites and blogs mimicking their counterpart websites just for links apparently. This can be vacation/holiday or any theme sites under different names but filled with links to the other websites that the "so called ethical" SEO expert promotes. It is laughable really when a person thinks about it.
With all the major SE's the most important factor is popularity or trustworthiness. The only way to gain popularity or trustworthiness is with links. To be ethical for any link campaign is to only have related quality links with out neither spam nor buying (gaining) large amount of links quickly to gain high PR. Yes, of course a website owner can exchange links with other sites. A website owner should not have fears with all this foolish talk they have read elsewhere. Actually there isn't to many SEO's or SEM's out there that say this. The majority will tell a website owner they need links.
Here's proof: When viewing Google™ Webmaster Guidelines this is what is said about linking.
- "Have other relevant sites link to yours."
- "Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online."
- "Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites."
Link building that is viewed as standard unethical practice would be blog comment spam, posting on News Groups with the purpose of advertising, building blogs to mimic your websites to post links to for the purpose of linking out, engage with link building software, spamming guest books, linking to anything such as gambling, porn, drug, spamming sites, scraper linking and making rubbish content (the content must make sense) for the purpose of gaining links.
Forms of Unethical SEO - How To Look For a Good SEO
If any SEO makes doorway pages, hidden text, mimic sites with blogs to gain links, post advertisements in Forums and News Groups, they would be highly unethical. Not only does it not do a website any good for relevancy posting unrelated links in forums and such, but it sends the wrong type traffic to a site. A good SEM will market a website to targeted traffic, not posting a website's address anyway to gain any traffic. Any SEO or SEM that uses a page counter for successful visits or hits they call them would be considered an unethical practice. The actual statistics should be used for this. Many SEO practice outdated SEO or techniques that are considered bad SEO like submission links to loads of directories or FFA links and create specialty pages such as Squidoo or other various similar pages. These type techniques are not going to help a website and might put a web site in jeporady.
When looking for a good SEO or SEM be wary of those who preach a lot but don't show you decent SERP (search engine results pages) examples. Many will use trickery and mind games with keyword phrases that are not really a competitive phrase. To learn more please read this excellent article on the subject. SERPs Competition For example: searched in Google™ bold kitchen utensils, notice the results are over 240,000(may be different at the time you look). Now search that phrase with quotes. at the time of writing this article there weren't any results showing. After this article gets crawled by Google™, then this page will show up. If we really tried it would be easy to show up as we would be the only site using that phrase. Getting easily ranked SERPs and using non competitive phrases like these for examples are unethical. Many SEOs and SEMs do this to unknowing clients.
SEO's come and go but when they are new they really show their ignorance. One can not stress enough that SERP competition is important and a person needs to know and understand that some SERPs look good with the numbers but in actual aren't competitive.
Most SEO's and SEM's are ethical. Most gain good rankings and help website owners achieve their goals ethically. Most are honest and hard working. Web site owners should look around carefully to find a real true ethical SEO. SEO's or SEM should be able to tell a client what is needed in layman's terms their web site. A customer needs to be wary of a lot of talk that is confusing them. Granted some of the advice can be overwhelming to some who are not computer literate. Last but not least a person needs to check the examples of work to make sure the SEO can achieve competitive phrases. All in all make sure the ethical are what they say they are.
©Jezsta Web Productions 2006 - Stacey Pettibone.
Hopefully after reading this many will have more understanding about ethics and SEO. We hope that those so called ethical SEO activists / preachers will practice what they preach. It is truly sad to see some boasting about their abilities as an excellent Ethical SEO Expert when they are hiding an array of what others know to be unethical. Our standard of SEO conduct is ethical and we stand by what we do as good and honest, we will remain to keep it that way.