An introduction to SEO ethics for marketers

It's not simply a case of black hat or white hat

Ethics in SEO is, as in other cases, divided into two categories: the right way and the wrong way to do things. In SEO this shades from good (White Hat) to evil (Black hat) as explained in this classic article on Shades of SEO:

In SEO, the right way means following the guidelines set down as the “bible” of the Industry, the Google Webmaster Quality Guidelines. Although all full time SEOs will know these and often discuss ethics, I’m summarising these since not all marketers are aware of them and it’s useful to know about them when discussing what is ethical and what isn’t with agencies - it’s a discussion all clients should have with their agencies, particularly when selecting them.

The Google Quality guidelines are designed to maximise the ease of use and quality of search for web users, while also giving folks scope for ethically promoting their website and improving its search engine rankings. Breaking the Google guidelines can mean excommunication, or in other words, a ban from Google’s results. As the guidelines say:

“…we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the “Quality Guidelines,” which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index or otherwise impacted by an algorithmic or manual spam action. If a site has been affected by a spam action, it may no longer show up in results on Google.com or on any of Google’s partner sites.”

The commandments of ethical SEO

So what do these guidelines say? Well, in summary they are against anything that seeks to artificially influence or manipulate Google’s results. Well if they were commandments they would look like this:

1. Thou shall not make pages primarily for search engines, but only for users
2. Thou shall avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings
3. Thou shall not participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s Page Rank
4. Thou shall not use hidden text or hidden links
5. Thou shall not use cloaking (showing different content to search engines than you show to users)
6. Thou shall not load pages with irrelevant keywords
7. Thou shall not create duplicate content (pages with the same content)

So, a “white hatter” is an SEO who follows these guidelines to the letter, and tries never to artificially influence the search engines’ algorithms.

A “black hatter” is a much less ethical SEO who uses crafty SEO magic, typically programming tricks, to achieve page one rankings by artificially influencing the search engine results.

An example of famous SEOs who are white hat are Eric Ward and Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz. These two constantly promote white hat SEO tactics, citing the dangers of punishment by Google as a good reason to not break the rules. It’s harder to name many notable black hatters, for the obvious reason that they seem to keep themselves off the radar.

The implications of the range of ethics in SEO?

In reality, most SEO’s are somewhere in between the black and white hat poles; for this reason many SEO’s would be described as “grey hat”. So, for most SEOs, the job does entail using paid promotional link or anchor text manipulation, as well as grey hat tactics such as guest blogging or link baiting. If you used a “Pearly White Hat” approach in the terminology of the Shades of Grey article I mentioned at the beginning, then you’re probably not marketing, just creating an accessible site and hoping for the best.

So, to summarise, being good is the right thing to do simply because it is the right thing to do. The benefit of doing the right thing is in the activity itself; as they say, “virtue is its own reward”. This applies generally to SEO as well as to other spheres. But there’s more: being ethical (white hat) is good in SEO not just because it’s the right thing to do (not clogging up the web with spammy rubbish), but because it is good for business.

The best and fastest way to be number one on Google is not to pretend to be the best; to imitate the ranking signals that the number one sites have and try to copy them; the best way to be top of Google is to actually be the best – to have the best content, the best tools, the most amazing resources that encourage other sites to link to you in large numbers and thus boost you to the top.

The takeaway: not only is attempting to manipulate and fake your way to the top of Google bad for the Internet and likely to get you banned, but it is actually a harder and slower way to top rankings than actually trying to follow the ethics of the internet, and provide real value to your customers, which after all, is what marketing and business is all about.

Kevin Morley is lead SEO at SearchPath; he specialises in advanced link building and link baiting strategies for SME’s in the South West. Follow him on Twitter