Ethical SEO Marketing

As I am get­ting more into this area of mar­ket­ing a site through “organic search,” or “SEO,” I began to start ques­tion­ing some of the prac­tices I started to do. Do I feel right doing things that go against the intent of the mak­ers of a sys­tem, just because I can, and I will get a result from it? When is it right to cre­ate a pseudonym?

I am read­ing from the book The Art of Power, by Thich Nhat Hanh. He always speaks about the impor­tance of look­ing deeply into the moti­va­tions for our actions. If we do this, we can pre­serve our per­sonal trust in our­selves. Do I want to trick peo­ple, just because I can? Some SEO prac­tices veer into this ter­ri­tory, even when most peo­ple might call them “white hat,” or “grey hat.”

I have to think about the inten­tions of oth­ers, so that I will be con­tribut­ing to a civ­i­liza­tion where peo­ple can trust one another. I made a per­sonal list of things that I con­sid­ered eth­i­cal, ver­sus grey area, or black area, for me. Many prac­tices in SEO involve work­ing with the way Google (and other search engines) intend to find good infor­ma­tion, and doing things that way. On the one hand, align­ing with that way, can be a good way to get valu­able information–your information–found by Google.

On the high end, it could even be a ser­vice, because Google does want its search results to be rel­e­vant. It does every­thing it can to make the high­est search results reflect rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion by gen­uinely inter­ested peo­ple, with a good inten­tion to help vis­i­tors. So, if I have a good inten­tion to help my vis­i­tors, and this inten­tion aligns with a busi­ness inten­tion, then I am mov­ing towards hav­ing a really eth­i­cal business.

On the other end, how­ever, it is easy to try to “trick” Google, to get bet­ter results. The dif­fer­ence is between align­ing with the way Google finds rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion, and trick­ing the intent of that same for­mula, or algo­ry­thm. In the for­mer, you find out how to line all the parts up, to gen­er­ate a win-win solu­tion for every­body. Every­one wins.

In the lat­ter, you look for holes in the algorythm–exceptions or rules Google hasn’t thought of, to get past Google’s rules.

I began to con­struct a list of things that I felt were pos­si­ble to align with, grey areas, and ones that def­i­nitely weren’t. Now, none of these things go into the realm of what would nor­mally be called “spam.” It’s just that for me, some of the greyer things still don’t feel right. They don’t feel like a good way to con­tribute to the kind of world I want to be liv­ing in, where we can trust each other, and we are hon­est even when we don’t have to be, to avoid “get­ting in trouble.”

Here is a breif sum­mary of the things I came up with:

OK: Pay a writer to write a gen­uinely infor­ma­tive, or enter­tain­ing, arti­cle, about your sub­ject, with the key­word you’re opti­miz­ing for show­ing up in the text.

OK: Sub­mit that arti­cle using your real name, to any num­ber of arti­cle sites, with the bio point­ing back to your tar­get page.

Or pay­ing an assis­tant to sub­mit that same arti­cle for you, with that same author information.

Maybe OK: Sub­mit­ting that arti­cle under a pseu­do­nym that rep­re­sents a delib­er­ate iden­tity, with a full pro­file, for pur­poses of cre­at­ing an on-purpose per­sona around a par­tic­u­lar topic.

Feels weird: Sub­mit­ting that arti­cle under a per­sona designed to decieve the reader in some way, or hide my iden­tity. For exam­ple, because I don’t feel good about the topic, or the sub­mis­sion involves prac­tices I don’t feel really good about.

OK: Gen­uinely using social book­mark­ing ser­vices to socially book­mark a page I have helped to mar­ket, which I feel good about, and using com­ments I gen­uinely believe in, and stand by, for the pur­poses of hav­ing other peo­ple know about this.

Maybe not OK (feels weird): Automat­ing the sub­mis­sion of these same book­marks, or pay­ing an assis­tant to sub­mit them.

Feels weird: Cre­at­ing mul­ti­ple accounts on the dif­fer­ent social book­mark­ing sites, designed to cre­ate the effect of mul­ti­ple peo­ple show­ing inter­est in the page, where it is really only one. Sub­mit­ting to sites whose con­tent area does not reflect the page’s con­tent, just to get another link. Sim­u­lat­ing the feel­ing or organic inter­est with­out any real interest.

Online ethics is weird. Where do you draw the line? But what I can say is: vio­lat­ing the writ­ten terms of any social book­mark­ing site, because you can. It is impor­tant to pay atten­tion to the inten­tion of the site, because that’s really one of the main means of assess­ing what the align­ment would be with that site.

The temp­ta­tion to not tell the truth is great, because the rewards are high. Every­body wants to be first. The moti­va­tion is to veer towards believ­ing you have the most rel­e­vant con­tent (eas­ier), rather than hav­ing the most rel­e­vant con­tent. This will cause one to attempt to take short cuts.

I feel if we have the intent to cre­ate the most rel­e­vant con­tent, then things will go bet­ter: “We want to become the very best resource on the inter­net for lawn­mower repair.” Rather than, “we want to get to #1 on Google for ‘lawn­mower repair’.” The first is a means of get­ting bet­ter, and plac­ing more and more value in the world, and the sec­ond is about try­ing to trick the sys­tem, to get some­thing as quickly as we can, as if there’s noth­ing left.

Being a facil­i­ta­tor of great con­tent, aligned with Google’s guide­lines, feels like a good mis­sion. Help­ing peo­ple trick Google so that they can get more hits is not a mis­sion I want to become involved in.

One vision is one of facil­i­tat­ing great con­tent, and earn­ing atten­tion. The other is a vision of steal­ing attention.

OK: Post­ing a rel­e­vant com­ment on a forum or blog, that gen­uinely adds to the con­ver­sa­tion. Then, adding a link back to the rel­e­vant tar­get page. Put atten­tion on pro­vid­ing valu­able con­tent, con­tribut­ing to the dis­cus­sion, and then giv­ing your credit. Maybe 45–65% of the atten­tion on pro­vid­ing the content.

Feels weird: Post­ing a com­ment that is really just a filler, in order to cre­ate the effect of a gen­uine com­ment, with 95% of the atten­tion on get­ting the link. Pay­ing some­one to get a link, when they don’t care about it.

OK: Using your mar­ket­ing activ­ity to attract the gen­uine atten­tion of oth­ers, to cre­ate more traf­fic. For exam­ple: using a Stum­ble­Upon cam­paign to gen­er­ate traf­fic from organic vis­i­tors, to an excit­ing and inter­est­ing page.

Feels weird: Cre­at­ing the illu­sion that a group of dif­fer­ent peo­ple are inter­ested in something.

The first method involves cre­at­ing spikes of inter­est that can pre­cip­i­tate a flood of inter­est in some­thing of gen­uine value. The sec­ond involves sim­u­lat­ing interest.

OK:

• Automat­ing sub­mis­sion to video sites, pod­cast, sites, press release sites, etc., of gen­uinely valu­able and rel­e­vant content
• Arrang­ing arti­cles to enhance the per­cep­tion of rel­e­vance to Google (based on its gen­uine relevance)
• Pro­fes­sional asso­ci­a­tion listings
• Rel­e­vant Craigslist post­ings, aligned with their rules
• Cre­at­ing actual soft­ware related to a pro­duce, to sub­mit to soft­ware list­ing sites

Feels weird:

• Cre­at­ing “soft­ware,” that’s not really soft­ware, to trick the soft­ware sites into giv­ing you a backlink

The over­all feel here is that there are dif­fer­ent visions of an SEO’s role.

The first, is as a con­tent pro­ducer, aligned with the pur­poses of advanc­ing the value of infor­ma­tion on the web, and in my client’s con­tent area. It places most of the empha­sis on pro­duc­ing qual­ity, and then uti­liz­ing tech­niques aligned with the inten­tions of the sites’ vis­i­tors and the sites’ inten­tions, to direct atten­tion to my client’s site.

It encour­ages me to encour­age my client to pro­duce some­thing of real value. To align with the way the web is intended to work. It puts my client in the busi­ness of pro­duc­ing real value. And I sus­pect, like all aspects of life, the net effect over time, will be, that more and more out­side peo­ple will begin to praise this site, and give it gen­uine atten­tion, which is what Google wants, and what the world needs more of.

By con­trast, the other vision of the SEO is rather like a car­ni­val barker to me, a kind of a huck­ster. Some­one who knows how to work the sys­tem. Anway, that’s how it feels to me.

As I explored this, I felt a renewed excite­ment to play the for­mer role for my clients, and help them pro­duce great qual­ity, under­stand their mar­ket well, and get the full credit due for it!