What is ethical?

There are people who are of the opinion that the use of unethical SEO or Black Hat tactics can be legitimate in promoting a website, and should not be cast with one dye as wrong or unethical. There are several different arguments in this debate. The first argument is often; who defines what is ethical or not?

What gives one company the right to define what another company does as ethical? The fact is that there are no laws that are being broken; in fact the Internet is a very hard sphere to place normal codes of conduct on, or implement laws on, let alone on Search Engine Optimization methods.

Another argument is that if the Black Hat tactics are used to get the user to visit a specific site and the site is in fact helpful, informative and provides the users with what they require, then was using “unethical” methods to get them there, really that unethical? Unethical methods of attracting users vary, but the main objective is to get a site ranked high in searches to get users to the site.

Unethical does the job?

The last argument seems quite legitimate. If the “tool” used is justified by the end result of a satisfied user, then surely it should not be frowned upon? If that were the case then surely there is not a legitimate counter argument. However this is not usually the case.

Ranking high on a search can be done by having a site that is useful in content and links and is easy to navigate and is designed with the user in mind. Other methods that are in some spheres considered “Unethical” are designed with search engines in mind. These websites are often too busy, filled with random links, hard to navigate and whose content is often filled with keywords and in the end isn’t informative or useful to users.

The fact is that the use of Black hat tactics and unethical SEO’s most often effects usability of the site. Many of these tactics make the website busy and full of useless links and content, which annoys and frustrates the user, making the site useless for a user to navigate and gain the required information. This will in turn result in a negative visit, which is often short and very unlikely to be converted into a sale or a revisit of any kind.

Is it possible?

So the unethical arguments may be sound, if the likelihood of that occurring were possible, but the fact is that sites that get ranked highly, and remain there for extended periods of time are sites that use great content, that are easy to navigate, and are well linked to applicable resources.

Sites that use Unethical methods may see short term elevated rankings, but with the extensive algorithms, and smarter users these results are often empty and short term at best.

So, Like in any business decision, are you working towards a long term productive asset, or short term, possibly negative flash in the pan?

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