'Ethical' SEO? - alt.internet.search-engines

Message from discussion 'Ethical' SEO?

SEO Dave

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More options 5 Nov 2004, 16:22

Newsgroups: alt.internet.search-engines

From: SEO Dave <seo-dav...@AMsearch-engine-optimization-services.co.uk>

Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 16:22:30 GMT

Local: Fri 5 Nov 2004 16:22

Subject: Re: 'Ethical' SEO?

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On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 23:54:20 GMT, from_...@nomail.com (C.W.) wrote:
>On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 23:04:48 GMT, SEO Dave
><seo-dav...@AMsearch-engine-optimization-services.co.uk> wrote:

>>On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 18:27:27 +0000 (UTC), <spam...@postmaster.co.uk>
>>wrote:

>>>BMM put links into themselves on every page they build. On their smaller
>>>pages, this is a visible "Search Engine Optimisation by Big Mouth Media"
>>>tag, with a clickable link. They also list themselves, with a URL in the
>>>pages META DATA. This is free advertising for bigmouth, and greatly improves
>>>their ranking for "Search Engine Optimisation" it appears to do nothing for
>>>the client at all.

>>I think any SEO who does the above cares more about their own sites
>>than their clients.

>How is someone, doing work on a site and placing a link to themselves
>in the footer, any less ethical [SEO wise] than someone buying links
>that will appear on multiple pages/site-wide within someone else's
>site?

Hi,

I'm not thinking ethics here, I'm thinking in terms of what is best
for the SEO's client site. If you want to bring ethics into this, it
would be more suited to business ethics, is it ethical to do something
you know will hurt a clients site.

If an SEO firm is hired to do the best they can for a clients site
adding a link on every page to the SEO companies site is not in the
clients best interest. It takes PR from the clients site and adds
words to a page that will dilute any benefit to their SERPs.

Basically they will not perform as well as they should, the SEO
company site though will benefit considerably.

This IMO is an unethical way to run a business.

>>Also recently Google appears to be penalising sites for site wide
>>links, not all sites, just some. So far it seems only the site
>>receiving the site wide links gets a penalty (more precisely no boost
>>from the links).

>Different angle: Many site designers putting links at the bottom of
>pages they designed or work on get no perk if what you shared is above
>it true.

It seems to be hitting new sites/links much harder than old. Not
completely sure of this though. Has anyone with a site with most links
from client sites seen a drop in SERPs recently?

>Ok, but what if that generally isn't the reason the links are
>there anyway? So they don't get a boost, SE wise, they may still get
>some click-thrus and that is also what they wanted.

If you mean say a web site designer who puts this site designed by X
with link to their site. The reason for doing this in most cases is
for referrals, not SEO (though it should help with SEO). The site
designers job is to design a functional site and if the client is
happy for them to have an advert on every page that's up to them. It's
unlikely either party know how the link will affect SEO.

SEO's know (or should know) adding a link to their site from their
clients site is going to hurt their clients site and so shouldn't do
it. It's unethical to knowingly do something that will hurt a clients
site.

>[snip]
> Considering how
>>negative Google is regarding SEO you really don't want to tell Google
>>you have had your site optimised!

>Google is only negative, in my opinion, about people abusing SEO
>thoughts - which opens the cans of worms about what is deemed ethical
>and what is not. :)

I try to steer clear of ethical SEO debates. Some things I do will be
considered fine by some and unethical by others, some consider SEO in
itself as unethical!

>Carol

David
--
http://www.search-engine-optimization-services.co.uk/

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