I was doing some research into local SEO services when I ran across a discussion on ethical SEO. Given that all the people involved in the discussion were industry professionals, I was fascinated by many of the points raised. My curiosity led me to research ethical SEO services, what they are, and why they matter.
A General Definition
SEO services refer to that collection of strategies, practices, and tools leveraged on behalf of a client to optimize search engine performance for a given website. In simple English, a company offering SEO services is tasked with helping the customer insure that its website and individual pages perform well in organic searches on sites like Google and Bing.
Ethical SEO encapsulates all the same services in a way that adheres to search engine guidelines while simultaneously offering genuine value to the customer. It is the second part the SEO agencies often fail at. They chase metrics instead of guaranteeing genuine value.
Key Aspects of Ethical SEO
By now you might be wondering what ethical SEO services actually look like. Well, let us get into it. We start with the principle of utilizing only white hat practices.
White hat SEO practices, or techniques if you will, are those based on existing rules. Who sets the rules? Google and its competitors. That means Google for the most part, as other search engines tend to mimic what Google does.
A white hat practice involving keywords is to use them in a way that is natural and relevant. On the other hand, the black hat counterpart is keyword stuffing. Google and its competitors punish keyword stuffing; they reward natural and relevant keyword usage.
Here are some other key aspects of ethical SEO services, as explained by my friends at Salt Lake City’s Webtek Digital Marketing:
- User Focus – Ethical SEO is focused on actual users rather than search engines. Those who practice it are well aware that search engines want SEO professionals to focus on their audience. Otherwise, the search engines cannot serve up the best possible content.
- Quality – SEO professionals can produce junk designed only to manipulate search engines. On the other hand, they can also produce quality content. Ethical SEO is geared toward quality.
- Link Building – Link building in an ethical environment is rooted in earning legitimate backlinks through valuable content. Ethical SEO providers look down on purchasing links from low quality link exchanges.
- Long Term Results – Ethical SEO takes a long-term approach to results. Creators are not obsessed with quick, short-term bursts of traffic that quickly fade away. They prefer consistency and strong performance monk-after-month, near-after-year.
Above all, ethical SEO doesn’t seek to game the system. Its focus is on doing things the right way from start to finish. As for why it matters, the answer is as easy as looking at the customers who pay for SEO services.
It Is More of an Investment
There is a tendency to look at SEO services as being temporary in nature. But when you are a customer in it for the long haul, SEO becomes a business investment. It is something that’s constantly being addressed. Yet an SEO provider cannot do it justice if that agency and its employees are not committed to ethical practices.
Anybody can write content stuffed with keywords. Anyone who knows his way around Google can leverage SEO to manipulate algorithms. But if you want the long-term benefits that an investment in SEO services should produce, you need to insist on ethical SEO. Doing things the right way is the only way to guarantee long term success.
