Search Engine marketing or SEO is all about to how a target audience searches for information, items and services on the internet. Every search is sectioned into keywords. Sufficiently used keywords promote rankings. If a website uses keywords and phrases that match an online user’s search, a organisation has an increased chance of better targeting their audience.

There are different processes of Online Marketing to reach this, they are ‘honest’ (ethical) or ‘dishonest’ (unethical). The MAJOR difference between the two is quite simple: one follows normally accepted processes and the other does not.

Ethical SEO is usually referred to as ‘white hat’ and is generally used to illustrate the use of trusted search engine optimisation techniques or code of conduct. Ethical SEO techniques are generally viewed as those that can be obviously visible to a website visitor. Any hidden tricks are usually indicative of a unseen or unethical approach.

In contrast, unethical SEO is mainly referred to as ‘black hat’ or ‘spam’. Unethical SEO is not necessarily an illegal activity, but is seen as trying to deceive the searches and the search engines. These techniques and practices are viewed as manipulative and devious. Unethical SEO is about cutting corners and cheating the accepted code of conduct for webmasters. Unethical SEO has one fundamental goal, to achieve instantaneous or short-term Search Engine Placement or high page positioning. A great way for an online user to almost immediately recognise unethical SEO processes is to determine the number of links a website uses, as well as their quality.

Unethical SEO practices and online marketing are not typically apparent to a visitor. A SEO Company who makes use of unethical techniques in order to achieve high search engine placement by ‘tricking’ the market can be banned or black listed from all major search engines.

The following SEO practices and techniques are considered ethical:

• Different links for separate website pages can be created
• Keywords and content that are used is information that is relevant to the website visitor
• Inbound links (links within a website) can be built in. These can be useful if Online Marketing is used through a social media website.
• Websites can be updated on a regular basis with relevant information. These can take the form of press releases, articles and blogs.
• Keeping up to date with the sorts of keywords a target audience is consistently using. This way, keywords within content are built to cater for a customer or client, achieving better rankings, as well as giving a website more standing. Using keywords properly and sufficiently encourages a target audience to regard and remember a website as being trustworthy for the information that they seek, and using an established Search Engine Optimization Company ensures these keywords are up to date.
• Links are not exchanged with other website of a low quality or containing information that is not applicable to a targeted audience.
• Adding a sitemap to a website that can be effortlessly found by search engine spiders and helps to better index the entire site.

The following SEO practices and techniques are considered unethical:

• Text is unseen – eg. white text is ‘hidden’ on a white background, text can be ‘hidden’ behind images or a size zero font can be used.
• Links are unseen or made to appear less obvious to a website visitor – eg. links can be made into the same font colour as the main content.
• Making use of automated queries without the permission from search engines.
• Too many keywords and hidden text are used on a website. This is known as keyword stuffing. Online users are typically not appreciative of this.
• Javascript re-directs can be used whereby search engines are directed to a web page that is different from the one that is expected.
• Using duplicated content.
• Trading links – many websites have a habit of trading links. This can be very misleading and troublesome to an online user.
• Creating false doorway passages to direct users to other websites that may contain unrelated content or a collection of more links.

Share on digg