Search Engine Optimisation FAQs
What is ethical Search Engine Optimisation?
The aim of search engine optimisation is to achieve high search engine rankings
for targeted key phrases, whereas the aim of a search engine is to provide
users with the most relevant results for a particular search term. There
is no apparent conflict between these two objectives provided that search
engine optimisation targets key phrases which are relevant to the content
of the website being optimised. It is almost universally accepted that deliberately
optimising a website for irrelevant and unrelated key phrases in order to
misdirect traffic to the site is unethical, as it undermines a search engine’s
ability to generate relevant results. It has been seen in its most extreme
form during recent ‘Google bombing’ campaigns in which third parties have
harnessed the power of link anchor text to achieve top rankings for the
terms ‘miserable failure’ and ‘liar’ for, respectively, the official websites
of George Bush and Tony Blair.
Apart from the issue of misdirecting traffic, the search engines have identified a number of search engine optimisation techniques which they consider to be unacceptable methods of artificially inflating search engine rankings. If a search engine discovers that a site is using one or more of these unacceptable techniques it may either impose a ranking penalty on the offending site or ban it entirely from its index. Techniques which may result in a ranking penalty or ban include:
- Making text unreadable either by assigning it the same colour as the page background or displaying it in a very small, e.g. 1 pixel, font size
- Hiding text by using CSS either to set its display property to ‘none’ or to position it so that it never appears within the browser window
- Keyword stuffing, which involves the contextually inappropriate repetition of keywords or key phrases on the page, whether readable, unreadable or hidden
- Presenting duplicate content, whether pages are duplicated within the same site or on mirror sites
- Stealing page content, infringing copyright or hijacking pages from other sites, whether this is done deliberately or inadvertently
- Cloaking, which involves presenting different pages to search engine spiders from those which are viewed by ordinary site visitors
- Linking into or participating in web rings, link farms or any other form of artificial link generation system
An ethical search engine optimisation company will not utilise any technique which is deemed to be unacceptable by any search engine, which severely restricts its ability to conduct effective search engine optimisation campaigns for anything but the least competitive key phrases. At the other extreme of search engine optimisation practice, a ‘black hat’ SEO will use any optimisation technique, including many more nefarious than those listed above, in order to achieve high search engine rankings. Optillion occupies the middle ground on this issue, utilising ‘unacceptable’ search engine optimisation techniques when it is necessary for a particular search engine optimisation project and provided that the technique can be implemented in a subtle and unobtrusive manner. Optillion never utilises a technique which is known to be a trigger for search engine penalties without the website owner’s explicit consent, obtained following detailed discussions as to the possible risks and benefits associated with its use.
