Get the blackhat edge

There has been much debate recently on the practice of ethical Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The recent removal of a high profile SEO company from the Google results has plunged the industry into yet another debate on what is ethical and what is not in our profession.

I have been involved in the SEO industry for a few years now and the mention of the word ethics and best practices in what is still an unregulated industry creates a level of confusion the likes of which I have not observed in any other industry. Why does this reluctance to discuss ethics and best practices exist? After all, we call ourselves professionals and as professionals we should strive to be part of an industry which stands for best practices and quality of service.

The confusion seems to come from the way that search engines rank sites. Each search engine has an algorithm which is a complex method of giving a value to a site which will ensure that it is returned in the search results when a relevant keyword is typed into a search engine. These algorithms are kept secret by the search engines for obvious reasons. The SEO industry is highly focused on analyzing these algorithms and using any knowledge gained to modify and rank websites. Ask any two SEO’s what they consider to be ethical in their pursuit of top results and you will most likely get two very different answers. Hence, the lack of agreement on what is ethical and what is not.

So where do we start? Our commitment must always start with the client and our responsibilities to them. An ethical company will always demonstrate loyalty and respect to their client. This is true whether they are an SEO, a doctor or an accountant.

Having sound business practices and a professional approach to all that you do then we can move onto the ‘search engine guidelines.’ All the major search engines and directories publish their own guidelines of use for webmasters. This should be the minimum that any SEO practitioner complies with when working on a client’s site. Search engines have a right to protect the integrity of their results and the SEO practitioners should respect those guidelines.

The confusion seems to arrive with the interpretation of the guidelines. One SEO will interpret the rules to mean one thing and another SEO will see it as completely different. The stakes are high and a top ranking in Google for your site is powerful branding and can lead to a major upswing in your business.

SEO practitioners have been classified as ‘whitehat,’ and ‘blackhat.’ Whitehat practitioners are the ones that try to stick to search engine guidelines while blackhat operate using more questionable techniques and view the search engines as the ‘enemy.’ Unfortunately blackhat techniques can sometimes adversely affect the sites ranking and worse, get their client’s sites banned.

Blackhats traditionally play to the emotional needs of their clients and often convince them to part with their money without giving clear and specific information on the changes they will make to their sites. If a client is fully aware of the risks and is prepared to buy into short term gain then that is their choice. However, many Blackhat SEO’s do not disclose their tactics. Would you hire a CPA who submits your tax return including questionable practices and breaking all the IRS rules? You are the one who will get audited, prosecuted and have to pay huge fines.

Blackhat techniques are just plain bad business practice. They also do the search engines and the search users a huge disservice by contributing to poor quality of results. This adds nothing to the end user experience.

The search engines say that any type of manipulation to get a site ranked is a threat against them and the relevancy of their results. Whitehat practitioners will say that they are not manipulating sites but rather fixing search engine obstacles within a web site. The need for their services is great as many web site designers do not know how to integrate search engine friendly designs.

Last year a prospective customer contacted me after being burned by a “rogue” SEO company who got their site (and others) banned from Google for spam tactics. A few weeks later they were contacted by the same “rogue” SEO company under a new name. Perhaps naively she almost fell for it again. She reasoned that if they had been banned once they would not do anything wrong again! This demonstrates the lack of knowledge that consumers have regarding our industry. They don’t know the difference between good and bad SEO. People are being taken advantage of because of their lack of knowledge.

No matter what techniques your SEO uses; ‘ethical’ , ‘whitehat’ ,’blackhat’ none at all it all boils down to one thing. Doing right by the client? Ethics is often viewed by many in the industry as hype.

I think the focus should be on serving users as opposed to manipulating the search engines. SEO’s who concentrate of making the sites the best that they can be for the end user will create a much better longer term affect. The SEOs who chase algorithms and try to game the search engines get burned when there is an algorithm change. Following search engine updates involving an algorithm shift, the industry message boards abound with posts along the lines of “I hate Google, they have killed my site” If these posters had spent more time improving their site for their clients, and the search users, the algorithm updates would be much less stressful for them.

At this time there is no initiative within the industry to create a trade body which sets a code of best practices. It is down to the consumer to practice “buyer beware” and ensure that they practice due diligence in selecting an SEO. They need to use even more caution than they would use to select any other vendor. I also believe the industry has a responsibility to provide education and resources for consumers and help de-mystify the profession.

Great SEO companies share their knowledge willingly. They hide nothing to either clients or search engines. They know that they have a specialized skill and are proud of what they do. They get their results through hard work and perseverance. They also know that to do the job properly takes a lot of time. This is something which most business owners feel they do not have. They are confident that when it comes to hiring a professional, their honest and open approach to their trade will be acknowledged by organizations who only want to work with the best.

The following are some golden rules I have written on choosing an SEO. If the consumer sticks to these rules then they should avoid the practitioners in our industry who give the rest of us a bad name.

o Only work with a company that follows search engine guidelines. (If I could only make one recommendation this would be it). The three main search engines are Google, MSN, and Yahoo. Look on their sites for their webmaster guidelines.

o Only work with a company that documents the SEO process they will use to rank your site

o Only work with a company that provides a written contract outlining their process and their costs

o Get at least four proposals for your site and compare services before you make a decision

o Do not work with a company that offers guarantees of top rankings. Nobody can offer these types of guarantees.

o Do not lock yourself into a contract you cannot get out of if you are not getting results

o Ask for references and follow up with them. If you still have any doubts ask for more. Ensure that references check out. Check that the suggested site is real and that the contact details given check out against the contact details on the site.

o Do not allow any work to be carried out on your site without your approval.

o Do not give the SEO carte blanche to do as they will with your site. It is your site not theirs. It is your responsibility to ensure that the SEO does not apply any techniques that would result in getting your site banned.

o Check the companies BBB (Better Business Bureau) report. Check for membership of any other established trade bodies such as the AMA (American Marketing Association) Many companies claim that they are more reputable because they are part of SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization.) However this is not the case. All that is required to be a member of SEMPO is a $299 annual subscription.

o Do not work with a company that engages in site wide link exchanges. Question their linking methods. Ensure that they only have a policy of linking with on-topic sites. Remember, your site is built for users not for search engines. If your site is about computers and your link to a site that sells children’s toys how useful do you think that link will be for your visitors.

o Ask other companies doing well on the Internet who they use for SEO. Always ask about the quality of customer service that is offered. It is not much use having a great SEO if you can never get hold of them.

o If it sounds too good to be true. IT IS!!!

In conclusion the SEO industry is a dynamic growing industry. This rapid growth has created some challenges for the industry. One of these challenges is the perception that outsiders have of SEO practitioners being unethical. To counteract this many SEOs are now promoting themselves as ‘ethical SEO.’ However, as the industry is unregulated it is up to the consumer of the service to become informed and exercise caution when selecting a SEO vendor. As the demand for SEO continues to grow the number of unethical practitioners calling themselves SEOs will also grow. To protect yourself, take the vendor selection process seriously. Look for vendors who are willing to share knowledge and partner with you to provide the best possible outcome for you business.

James Peggie is the Director of Marketing for Elixir Systems – a search marketing agency located in Scottsdale, Arizona. http://www.elixirsystems.com

BBC NEWS breaks search engine sp*m news, while this story has
been making the rounds of SEO/SEM forums and newsletters for
the past couple of days, since matt cutts posted about it in
his SEO blog on February 4th:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ramping-up-on-international-webspam/

… at first there was little international press (and none in
the US) on the issue, but the BBC story has started a
landslide of news and commentary on search engine sp*m by
major corporations. It is also likely to brand all SEO’s
universally as bad guy Black Hat SEO’s and ignore the good
guy White Hats. Legitimate techniques and resulting ranking
improvements rarely gain the attention given the bad guys.

I’ve reported major Fortune 500 corporations for sp*mming
through the Google sp*m reporting link a half dozen times
over the past year and am happy to see actions being taken
against the worst offenders.

http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

bmw germany targeting the term “Used Cars” on it’s new car
site using javascript redirects is a blatant abuse of doorway
pages and cloaking for inappropriate search phrases.

Cutts shows screen captures of the BMW offense, but mentions
only peripherally that Ricoh.de would be banned as well, then
sends a direct message to a separate US automaker at the end
of his sp*mming post, telling them that they’ll be
re-included following a 30 day ban for similar offenses
they’ve apparently cleaned up from their European site.

Search engine sp*mming is certainly not limited to Europe,
although one of my complaints to the Google sp*m reporting
link is for a European company site, which 5 months after
reporting, STILL ranks #1 for a highly competitive phrase in
US results. They use different search engine sp*mming
techniques employing invisible code full of links, H1 tags
and keyword phrases which are intended for surfers with
javascript turned off – the tag. Search engines
see this invisible text, while surfers don’t as it is buried
in the HTML code.

The home page of one site I reported for sp*mming is made up
entirely of images and has no hope of ranking well for any
search phrase from the home page due to complete lack of
text, so they may feel justified in using tags to
rank for an admittedly appropriate search phrase, by using a
technique recognized as search engine sp*mming. When any
large corporation sees fit to use sp*mming techniques, it
encourages EVERYONE to do the same, simply because they feel
justified for whatever reason suits them, reasonable or not.

This lesser known technique, filling tags with
H1, tags, keyword phrase hypertext links, and invisible text
within tags, is effective and is used by many sp*mmers. I
believe that smaller offenders would be instantly banned if
this were discovered in use on their site, even if they were
using appropriate keyword phrases for their topic or site
subject. The big boys should be penalized as well.

I’ll feel better when ALL search engine sp*mming techniques
are penalized equally, regardless of the technique used or
terms targeted, or any rationalized justifications. When that
happens universally, then sp*mmers will stop sp*mming the
search engines. But not until then.

This BMW case has become high profile for a major offense and
is likely to gain attention in hurriedly called meetings in
boardrooms of major corporations, with webmasters and
marketing departments in attendance. “Are we doing this!”
CEO’s will rage at befuddled webmasters or in-house SEO’s.
But until ALL methods of search sp*m are penalized publicly,
those lesser offenses will continue at all levels –
especially large companies with more to gain (when they get
away with sp*mming) and to lose (when they get caught and
exposed/banned).

Copyright © February 7, 2006 Mike Banks Valentine

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4685750.stm

Mike Banks Valentine blogs on Search Engine developments from http://RealitySEO.com and can be contacted for ethical SEO work at: http://www.seoptimism.com/SEO_Contact.htm He runs web content distribution site at: [http://Publish101.com]

Black hat Seo approaches could sound tempting for a speedy surge of visitors but will in all probability obtain you in trouble – possibly larger trouble than you bargained for. Just look at what lately happened to US retailer whose Seo corporation didn’t support them excel with Google but instead got them in some hot water. They said they didn’t know what their Seo enterprise was performing. As a corporation owner or a person responsible for advertising and e-commerce at your location of work, you require to be certain that you know what’s happening with your web site so that your web-site doesn’t fall off the face of the google earth unexpectedly due to what’s perceived as inappropriate Seo tactics.

Black hat Seo actually doesn’t pay off. search engine algorithms are continually tweaked to aid them remain ‘honest’ in letting the cream rise to the leading. It\’s very best to commence as you mean to go on, even if it takes a bit longer to rise to the leading of the search engines. So, how do you identify black hat Seo techniques so you\’re certain to prevent them?

Avoiding Black hat Seo – Recommendations:

• Be careful about dealing with Seo corporations who make outlandish promises. If they’re telling you that you can obtain your way to the leading with paid links, this is a red flag.
• Look into the reputation of the Seo organization that you\’re talking to. Make positive they’re identified as legitimate and have beneficial testimonials from actual customers to back up what they tell you.
• Be certain your web site navigation is transparent. No doorway or cloaked pages. No hidden text in an attempt to keyword stuff, and so on.
• Ask to see your reporting. The single most essential factor you can do as a site owner is frequently review your visitors reports. A excellent indication of black hat Seo is, for example, an excessive number of high PR backlinks from non-relevant internet sites.

Successful Seo, specifically in a competitive niche, can be like a full time job and that’s almost certainly why you need to purchase some support. Hire an professional Seo consultant but look for transparency in their approaches. If one thing doesn’t sit appropriate, ask questions. It doesn’t hurt to brush up on basics of white hat and black hat Seo so that you can carefully monitor what’s happening with your enterprise. Search engine optimisation is an evolving world and a reputable topic matter professional can support your firm make the most of it by way of proven and ethical approaches that work.

Oracle Digital are dedicated to helping other people find out about Seo. You can visit our web page and understand all about Search Engine Optimisation.

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