| Ethics
in search engine optimization is a hot topic mostly because
it has been hard for any SEO organization to define what behaviors
are considered ethical and what are considered unethical.
Barring any well-defined criteria, we have tried in this section
to lay out what we believe to be some ethically questionable
practices in search engine optimization.
Cloaking
Cloaking is
the practice of creating one page of well-optimized text
for the search engine/s and serving up a separate page for
the visitors. Through cloaking, your visitors can see a
great design with lots of graphics and little text. They
will never see your ugly page of highly-optimized text.
On the other hand, your search engine will never come in
contact with your beautiful, prize-winning page of dazzling
graphics.
What is wrong
with this? Well, first is creates an uneven playing field
among the competitors for the top position. Most web designers
and web site owners do not know how to cloak and thus are
at a disadvantage for those who do. Second, cloaking breaks
the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) rule that most
webmasters cherish. One, web page, one URL is seen the same
by all the same way. Third, because most people view this
as an unethical practice, it is an unethical practice. If
a search engine discovers you are engaging in cloaking,
many will bury your site deep in the results never to be
found again.
Optimizing
For Low-Ranking Keywords
An SEO company
needs to offer suggestions to newbie customers for the highest
ranking keywords that will work for their site. Some SEO
companies let their customers choose there own keywords
(or keyword phrases) which are low-ranking and not likely
to attract their target audience and do not offer any alternative
keyword suggestions to their customers.
Misrepresenting
The SEO Company
Some search
engine optimization companies do not call themselves search
engine optimization companies, but some other wording in
order to pick up a different set of customers and to avoid
going head-to-head with other higher-ranking search engine
optimization companies. This is both understandable and
ethically questionable.
Here is a theoretical
situation. There is an SEO company that calls itself Potato
Peddlers Optimization Services. This company ranks in the
top 10 in the major search engines for the word "potato
peddler" and then claims because it is in the top 10
(of an unrelated keyword) it is good at optimizing other
people's websites and should get your business. This website
is avoiding going head-to-head with other sites vying for
the very competitive keyword phrases. Yes, it is in the
top 10, but no, not with a viable keyword phrase.
Doorway or
Gateway Pages
Doorway or gateway
pages as they are sometimes called are a part of another
ethically gray area. These pages also violate the WYSIWYG
fair play or even playing field rule. The part that is ethically
questionable is not that they exist, but that they are hidden
from the visitors with an invisible link on the homepage.
If this were an ethically acceptable practice then why hide
the pages? The doorway pages are hidden because they are
ugly pages laden with keyword heavy text, which have two
reasons for their existence. First, they are used to get
to the top of the search engines. Second, when a visitor
clicks on these pages, he or she finds little real content
and directed to venture back to the homepage or further
into the site.
Doorway pages
have been very popular for the last several years. Some
people see the practice as ethically acceptable and so be
it. It certainly does not rank up with cloaking as an ethically
questionable practice. A better way to build a website,
however, is not to have hidden links and pages. Why not
make every page on your website a visible doorway page that
visitors will want to spend time on and that search engine
spiders will easily index?
Check out Avoiding
SEO Scams and Reciprocal
Link Scams for more information on this topic.
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