How Important is Ethical SEO

User's find content on the web either from searching via a search engine or directly going to a specific website. When this content is found from a search engine this is done by typing in “keywords” relating to the subject matter that is being searched for.

The search engines then provide a list of relevant sites relating to the “keyword” that has been searched for. The ranking of these sites is determined by their quality of content, their current numbers of visitors, and their relevance.

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the means by which online businesses improve their site in order to provide that high ranking when searched by potential customers. The focus of SEO is on ensuring that high rankings are organic rather than via a "Cost per Click" method such as Google Adwords. This is usually done by optimising the site for the keywords or “onsite optimisation”, other “offsite optimisation” covers activities such as providing links from related sites either through the use of content, directory listings or bookmarking. The more quality and relevant places a site has links from the more it is crawled by the search engine spider which is now predominately Google's spider known as the Googlebot. This spider then searches for keywords that are relevant throughout the site and to find the relevant content and relationships between the different pages on the site.

Over time as the importance and value of the internet has grown and companies have realised the increased profits they can make, some Search engine optimisation experts have started using unethical SEO techniques designed to trick search engines. These types of SEOs are called “black hat” SEOs and inversely those that adhere to accepted and progressive methods are called “white hat” SEOs providing search engine positioning improvements . The SEOs using unethical techniques and methods to manipulate rankings can sometimes succeed in the short run but invariably their activities result in the banning of the site. On occasions customers also actively participate in these activites with their SEO seeking shortcuts and do not realise or concern themselves with the long-term impact on their rankings.

However our experience has shown that the same effort spent on ethical or organic SEO techniques yields equally high rankings in a similar time frame but the main difference being that it is sustainable over the long-term ensuring that customers onsite presences has an accumulative effect. In any field the consensus is that when you utilise shortcuts there is invariably a price to pay.