Much has been said about SEO ethics before, and I support the opinion that ethics in SEO should not be any different from ethics in any other business – in our case, this means that you should be perfectly honest with your clients, no matter what techniques they decide to employ. It’s not your job as an SEO to enforce the search engines’ TOS but it IS your job to inform the person you’re doing SEO consulting for about all the possible scenarios resulting from employing those techniques. It is, on the other hand, unethical to deprive your clients of their right to rank where and when they could by dismissing certain techniques despite the client’s consent to employ them and their understanding of risks connected with these techniques.
I mentioned here before that I started an SEO consulting site. When working with clients, I try to provide them with a detailed analysis of their situation and industry first of all. After that, depending on their goals and the value they place on their site, we develop the whole strategy – and only their goals can dictate the methods used by the SEO working on their sites. If they choose the white hat way – fine, but even then my knowledge of black hat SEO methods is very helpful all through the project – from analyzing the tactics used by the competitors to making sure nothing is actually done to bring the wrath of Google upon my clients’ heads.
Another side of this story is there is no definite line betwen black hat SEO and white hat SEO any more – and I’m not completely sure it has ever been really well outlined. Now, more than ever, many black hat techniques are making their way into white hat SEO practices. And not only that. Much depends on how you do things and for what purpose and how legitimate it ends up looking. It’s not nough for SEOs any more to just know all the tricks – to succeed, they should use their imagination as well.
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