Posted by BlueSEO on January 29th, 2010

When people first start trying to find ways of effective search engine optimization they often are looking at getting the job done without worrying about the ethics. This is a huge and possibly costly error. Good SEO will also be ethical SEO, which means creating real content instead of just playing with words to trick the search engine bots.

Here are some basic tips on ethical search engine optimization.

1) Create your own content. Sure, it’s easier to simply cut and paste random articles from other web sites instead of creating your own content; it is also a copyright violation and can cause your site to be removed for terms of service violations. More importantly, it may end up backfiring in the end. Many search engines base page rank on the originality of the content. If your content is in dozens of other places on the net your rank will suffer. Not to mention the bad karma you’re getting from stealing someone else’s work.

2) Content needs to be helpful. In the early days of SEO people would just stuff meta tags or place keywords over and over again on a page to increase rank. Keyword stuffing is like reading the cliff notes version of a book. You might be able to bluff your way through a dinner party, but you won’t pass the real test. Most search engine algorithms now deduct page rank if they suspect you of keyword stuffing. And as the algorithms become more advance they will be able to detect more examples of this. It’s better to create real keyword rich content now than simply keyword stuff and get knocked down later on.

3) SEO needs to be natural. Some companies still are using tricks like link swapping to try and inflate a page rank by tricking the bots into thinking it is more popular than it really is. The biggest problem with these attempts to game the system is that the system is in constant flux. When a search engine changes their technique the natural SEO pages will increase in rank while these other pages will fall.

In the end these tips on ethical search engine optimization are really tips for effective search engine optimization. Really good SEO will work no matter how the search engine switches their ranking system.