Ethical issues involved in implementing SEO strategies

Question: Are there any ethical issues involved in implementing strategies?

Definitely, There are all sorts of ways to manipulate a website so it can achieve top search engine positions.

There are Black Hat’s SEOs (associated with spam), and White Hats SEOs (don’t spam). It's not so black and white. Some used to say that any attempt to modify a page to improve its organic SERPs is spam. That’s not true! There are ethical ways to manipulate a website to achieve better rankings. The best line of demarcation is drawn in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Black Hats push the envelope by employing non-ethical ways of increasing a pages relevancy. In some of the most competitive areas you see Black Hat SEOs using extensive deception tactics like keyword stuffing, invisible text, cloaking, and more to artificially boost a site’s SERP. These tactics are regarded as unethical SPAM and can get a domain banned for some months. The most unethical thing an SEO Firm can do is employ some of the more risky / spam techniques without fully informing the client.

The preceding blog is an answer to a series of interview questions about search engine marketing practices. Click here to start at the main table of contents page for this interview.