tutorials,tips,tricks and IT resources

Post Page Rank

What is ethical SEO?

Ethical search engine optimisation has become somewhat of a buzz word in recent years but what exactly does it mean?

In a nutshell ethical SEO is any practice that might help to improve your rankings naturally while staying within the guidelines of the popular search engines. Techniques such as viral marketing and producing exciting content are good examples of ethical SEO whereas link buying and adding lots of keywords to your pages would be unethical.

• Google Guidelines
• Yahoo Guidelines
• MSN / Microsoft Live Search Guidelines
• Ask.com Guidelines

When we take on a new client here at Branded3 Search the first step is to make sure the site adheres to the guidelines and doesn’t have things such as hidden text or doorway pages that might have been added to the site in the past (we have seen this on a number of occasions). These can be discovered by the search engines at any time and could result in your domain being blacklisted.

Once the site is clean we work within the guidelines to improve rankings in a sustainable manner. That mean that once your site reaches the top it stays there rather than disappearing after a few weeks.

Most people believe that Google relies 100% on their famous algorithm to rank the search results but they are increasingly using human editors and taking notice of spam reports to improve results. This means that if a low quality or sneaky site using unethical techniques suddenly starts ranking highly for a competitive query it is likely to be reported by a competitor or found by one of the thousands of editors employed by Google. Once this happens your future rankings are in the hands of one person who may or may not decide to move your site down a few places.

As Google becomes better at figuring out which sites should be ranking highly a lot of companies that have used deceptive techniques will see their rankings start to drop dramatically. Google is quite happy to penalise large sites and has banned both BMW and Ricoh from the results in the past.

Ethical SEO. Get to number one and stay there.

Before you decide to hire a search engine optimisation company we recommend meeting them in person and taking a read of the Google information about SEO companies.

Here are some key points to remember:

• Talk to many SEOs, and ask other SEOs if they’d recommend the firm you’re considering.
• Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send bulk emails.
• No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.
• Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do.
• You should never have to link to an SEO.
• Some SEOs may try to sell you the ability to type keywords directly into the browser address bar.
• Choose wisely.
• Be sure to understand where the money goes.
• Make sure you’re protected legally (choosing a company in the same country as your business helps in this respect)