The morals of Search Engine Optimisation

May 4, 2009  FILED TO: Search Engine Optimisation, Web Design

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but every time I get an email offering reciprocal links or paid website reviews, I immediately hit the “spam” button and sigh a deep sigh.  In the “real” world, it takes time to build a good reputation, for individuals and for businesses; in the Internet world, it seems that people don’t have the patience for this, they’re happy to follow immoral or unethical Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) practices in order to grow a false reputation for their website.  And the smarter search engines get, the smarter the schemes get.  “Black Hat” SEO used to involve reams of hidden keywords at the bottom of pages and keyword stuffing (adding large numbers of irrelevant keywords and phrases to pages).  Search Engines now penalise pages if they find this.  Instead, we’re seeing practices like duplicate sites and paid reviews (website owners pay a company to write a review of their site with a link to it). 

However, (thankfully) this doesn’t guarantee a good result because while these practices continue to evolve, search engines continue to evolve also.  They are continually tweaking their algorithms so that their search results award higher rankings to sites that actually deserve them – sites that have built a good reputation, that are competing with similar businesses and are not trying to quickly boost their results by cheating.  They now take into account the freshness of content, the accuracy and volume of keywords, and the ranking of inward and outward linked sites.

So, why should we avoid black hat SEO practices?

• They’re immoral, it’s cheating – if you wouldn’t do it in the real world, don’t do it in the online world
• Search engines catch on to immoral practices and penalise sites for it so your site may not rank as highly as you’d expect
• Not only will you get a more accurate and deserved ranking but you’ll get more respect from your readers because the site is targeted at them and not written for search engines
• Mileage varies – some industries have highly competitive search results (e.g. “web designer” as opposed to “plumber”)
• As search engines get smarter, you will keep paying more for smarter black hat practices, whereas white hat practices will change much more slowly
• You can sleep better at night knowing that you’re making the Internet a better place

Here are some do’s and dont’s to consider if you want to avoid unethical SEO practices and still build a good ranking.

Don’t

• Pay for links or reviews – it’s cheating, don’t do it
• Duplicate content or sites – Fresh, original content ranks higher than duplicate content
• Spam keywords – consider carefully the most accurate keywords and then select the best places to include them. Don’t overuse them.
• Steal content
• Optimise pages for unrelated searches

Do

• Follow search engine guidelines to make your site indexable – use “meta” tags, include a sitemap.xml, ensure that the code is standards-compliant and valid
• Use your carefully selected keywords in relevant places – e.g. page URL, title tag, heading tags, content, “meta” tags
• Add fresh content written for people, not search engines
• Seek backlinks from relevant, reputable websites only
• Optimise your site for relevant queries only (e.g. if your site is about cake decorating, ensure it doesn’t appear for interior decorating)
• Have patience, it takes time to earn a decent ranking, just as it takes time to earn a good reputation in the real world