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subject: The Ethics Of Search Engine Optimisation [print this page]


Should money have any bearing on where you rank in a search engine? Typically, the individuals who possess a significant budget for SEO are the ones who rank the highest. As far as ethics goes, this is something that should be troubling, since those websites that rank the highest, may not be the best. Google often goes to extraordinary lengths to prevent this monopolisation from occurring, and since Google's business is based upon providing their users with the most informative results, it's naturally something which the company takes quite seriously.

White hat search engine optimisation can be divided into two sections -- onsite and offsite. Onsite optimisation requires tweaking the website, such as the header nodes and title nodes to contain the keywords which the website wishes to target. The offsite process is a long-lasting process whereby links are acquired on many other websites. This could involve purchasing links on blogs, writing articles with links in the footer, and free links in website directories. All of these are acceptable on the internet, and are considered to be white hat -- which are techniques that are generally approved of. Nevertheless, they still increase the website's ranking somewhat artificially.

In the past, Google have removed thousands of free directory listings from their indexes. This was due to the fact that many free directories will allow any nonsense in their indexes, and their link anchors would be for something blatantly unnatural, such as "Search engine optimisation". The desired effect would be to increase the website's ranking for the aforementioned keyword. This is a link which is inevitably intended entirely for search engine spiders, and not for the general public coming along to the directory. The internet was in turmoil for a few days when Google removed thousands of directories, but people soon learnt to adapt.

For instance, if there were two cafs side-by-side, and one had a budget for SEO for their website, whilst the other caf did not, then any other factors, such as the quality of food, pleasantness of the staff, and the cleanliness of the premise, would have no bearing whatsoever, at least in the short-run, on the rankings, since the SEO process for the caf would increase its ranking, and many people would find caf A, instead of caf B, when looking on the internet. Whilst word-of-mouth in the local area would certainly prefer one caf over the other, if each caf offered deliveries, then the word-of-mouth would have no bearing on people's purchases from a distance. Whilst quite a simple example, it still highlights the unfairness of SEO, since caf A, in this instance, is inferior to caf B, yet caf A would rank higher for a key-phrase such as, "Cafs in London".

This is why for websites, it is imperative that you do not over-optimise your websites. Google are always vigilant about the tactics employed by your website(s). If they deem something to be blatantly optimised for search engines, without any regard for the human visitors, then you would likely be penalised for this. Google recommends that you optimise your website for human visitors, since a natural website is what Google really cares for. In this day and age, SEO would not be considered deceptive, because it's merely a dimension of marketing. Marketing employs the same general tactics, and whilst all marketing could be considered quite unethical, it is nonetheless a part of the world in which we live in.

The general rule to follow is, create your websites for human visitors. If you then decide to employ an SEO expert to increase your rankings, do so carefully, otherwise Google could penalise your website for over-optimisation, and rightly so.

For those uneducated in SEO, Google's SEO guide is a fabulous place to begin your education: http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

by: Harriet Henderson




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