SEO Ethics: Which Hat To Wear
seochat.com"Wayne Hurlbert discusses 'white hat,' 'black hat,' and 'grey hat' SEO ethics, and the reasoning behind each stance. If you care about how your website is perceived by the search engines, read on"...always bear in mind that "the issues involved are very complicated, and highly subjective. What is good “ethical” SEO to one person might be stooping to the deepest depths of evil to another. Defining “good,” “bad” and “best” practices is at best aiming at an undefined moving target. At worst, it is an impossibility due to the lack of complete knowledge of the search engines and their respective algorithms....
Hurlbert concludes that "There is little doubt that all of the major search engines have room for improvement in the area of spam site detection, penalties, and removal from the SERPs. That problem on their part doesn’t automatically translate to meaning a webmaster or SEO can violate the stated terms of service with impunity, however. Noticing an unpunished spam site doesn’t mean it can be duplicated freely, but simply that the search engine has not found and penalized it yet...
.. white hat methods might appear slower at first, they provide long term staying power that can survive any shifts in the search engine algorithms. White hat techniques also let a person rest easy, knowing the site is safe from penalties and banning, while providing useful information and products to the site visitors.
Instead of worrying about other sites, take care of your own site, and you will do well in the search engines. You can then safely ignore any shade of hats."
Hurlbert's main points are that SEOs
Must consider:
Whether to assume the risk of search engine penalty or even an outright ban
Relative competitiveness of the keywords and keyword phrases being contested
Whether or not to compete without bending, let alone breaking, any ethical rules or guidelines at all
There are three main groups: "the “white hats,” their polar opposite “black hats,” and the more loosely defined “grey hats”"
White hat SEO means using generally accepted optimization techniques and scrupulously avoiding even a hint of practices that are listed as problems in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
Black hat SEO is described as using "ranking techniques that are clearly outside of Google’s stated Webmaster Guidelines, and even outside of the published guidelines for the other major search engines. Methods used to achieve higher search rankings include cloaking, hidden text, link farms, and intensively cross linked sites."
Grey hat SEO falls somewhere in the middle...use of some linking tools and content generating software are often placed in this category
Working as a SEO means considering "ethics" from two often opposing points of view:
First, there are the ethics in relationship to the website owner client
Second, are the search engines themselves
So the SEO has to ascertain the website owners real goals, and what level of penalty and banning risk they are willing to assume
Long term 1: build a reputable site, using only best practices optimization techniques
Long term 2 : far less concerned about the techniques used to achieve rankings. Reckon that most sites avoid the various spam filters anyway, there is little concern about penalties or outright bans
No concern at all about long term implications: any technique that raises rankings is fine...if the site is penalized or banned, then a new domain name is boughtand the process starts all over again... the abandonment of the banned site is even part of the plan from the start
Failing to inform the client of the possible results of grey or black hat techniques is not in anyone’s best interests. In fact, a lack of full disclosure of possible filters, penalties, and outright banning as a result of proscribed actions is not acting in the interest of the client.
SEOs have various opinions re the search engines:
As friends: Search engines provide free customers, SEO works to provide best possible sites optimized within the search engine TOS
As THE enemy; reckon Search engines reward heavily spam and black hat sites with high rankings so why stick to TOS if the engines themselves do not...
Pragmatists see Search engines as a necessary evil or just one more tool in Internet marketing: "the search engines are businesses like any other, and as thus not entirely benevolent. The search algorithm is neither good nor bad, but is merely a computer program. The algorithm owes the website nothing, except to attempt to place the pages correctly in terms of search relevance....these SEOs argue, use of their business and products requires the user to follow the business’s rules. In this case, the webmaster guidelines and terms of service are the business rules. In the same way that a restaurant can refuse service to patrons not wearing shirts or shoes, the search engines can deny listing at any time for violation of their rules of use..."
posted by Jen @ 7:17 AM
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