Are these ethical SEO? - was RE: Hidden link directory ethical?

Again, for these companies delisting looks unlikely now, that these companies would be barred for this. Using phrases in footers is widespread and arguably difficult to detect. But who can say about 2 years time, or if a competitor reports them.

Dave

On 08:59:30 24 March 2006 AndrewAllfrey wrote:

 

Hi Dave,

Obviously it's becomming extrememely difficult to get a good ranking within the major search engines and in particular Google, which lets face it, is the only engine that really matters these days. With so much competition and commercial pressure is it any wonder that companies are forced to resort to slightly dodgy tecnhiques in some instances. 

Having said that I still believe that if you set up a website with a good structure, that is both logical to the user and to the search engines, there is no real reason to use unethical tactics to create pages that aren't part of the main site structure as in the examples you provide. 

Both these sites are badly structured and although on-page optimisation only accounts for about 30% of ranking criteria these days, I still believe that a well structured site will avoid the need for any additional pages to be designed specifically for the search engines, which many people believe to be unethical, myself included. 

If proper keyword research is carried out at the beginning of a web design project, as opposed to as an after thought, which is the norm, a proper site structure can be developed around what people actually search for. This surely can't be considered unethical, it's just good business practice  The fact that the keywords you want to rank well for are part of the site structure cannot be considered unethical in any shape or form.

In summary I would have to say that designing content specifically for the search engines, even in the examples you have given, is bad practice and should be considered unethical. The marketeers involved with the project have not considered the importance of proper keyword research and have then had to design pages for additional popular keyword searches.

Anyway just my opinion. Think we basically agree although it 's certainly getting harder to identify what is and what isn't ethical. 

Andrew Allfrey
www.e-prominence.co.uk
Search Engine Marketing Services

t: 0871 550 0046
m: 07970 607197


On 08:03:14 24 March 2006 DaveChaffey wrote:

 

I'm the co-author of the E-consultancy Best Practice Guide to SEO and we have had some interesting discussions about SEO ethics - its a massive decision when selecting an agency and then reviewing their performance. 

All agencies will say their ethical, but what does it mean in practice over the hundreds of optimisation techniques we discuss in the guide. How do you balance the risk of unethical practice against the lower visits/sales that will definitely result from a purely ethical approach where pages are created by content editors without any thought for SEO other than creating appropriate meta data / titles for the document. 

While most would see the example discussed here as unethical, there are some more challenging issues. Here's a couple of examples:

1. Creating content and site link structures specifically for Search.
An increasingly common SEO approach is to create different SEO entry pages themed around a keyphrase which reflect users behaviour when typing keyphrases (not doorway pages which are not part of the main site structure / nav and most would agree are unethical).

For example, these two companies perform well on these phrases and related ones (see the links in the footer) for which specific entry pages have been created.

http://www.admiral.com/a-insurance-quotes/car-insurance-quotes.phtml 

http://www.talktalk.co.uk/talktalk/servlet/gben-server-PageServer?ARTICLE=SEARCH.SO.CHEAPBUSCALL

This seems to fail Ashley's test since the pages have clearly been created for SEO reasons and most site visitors wouldn't view these pages. It could be argued that they match what users are looking for which makes them ethical. 

As a marketer, this seems to be good practice to me - anticipating different customer behaviours.

2. On-page optimisation
In the guide we go into the details of how to optimise page content using the standard approaches of creating keyphrase rich content and meta data. This is specifically undertaken to improve rankings in the natural listings.  Most would consider this ethical, but I'm not sure it passes the Friedlein Ethical SEO test.

3. Link-building
Pro-active link-building campaigns, buying links and link exchanges are often done more for the benefit of increasing position in the search results than generating direct visits from the other sites. If as a digital marketing company you buy a static link / text ad on E-consultancy or NetImperative or other directory is this unethical. I don't think so.

What do you think - particularly about 1.? 

Perhaps we need a more rigorous test, but I did like the simple one.

Dave Chaffey
============
Internet Marketing trainer, consultant and author
eResources and Books: www.marketing-online.co.uk
Blog: www.davechaffey.com