There are several companies nowadays who ask for ethical search engine optimization. So what exactly does this mean? Are there "unethical seo's" too? How do you differentiate between them?

There are many self-proclaimed SEOs out there and it is difficult selecting someone suited to your business needs. Apart from hiring someone who knows some technical aspects of the business, an SEO must also be intuitive. Understanding the business makes an SEO more successful than someone who deals with their clients with a "one size fits all" attitude.

There are several ways to get ranked higher and quicker. There are fast ways of doing it, where you fall down faster too or you can do it the right way with long lasting lasting results.

Here are some tips:

1. Build Good incoming links to your site: The links to your site should have the keyword you have optimized your page for. Additionally ensure that the places where you have incoming links are of decent quality

• are non spam type and preferably have some PR  (You can check page ranks here)
• do not have over a hundred outgoing links (Check the number of links if you suspect it is over a hundred)

Beware of link farming and linking too fast. The idea of link farming is to have reciprocal linking with other sites mainly directories that add little value. The quality of these sites is important. If the link quality is not good, Google can label you as a 'bad neighborhood' which means that Google has determined that you are swapping links in order to manipulate page rank. Adding links that your visitors can use is a good way to avoid this tag.

For example, if you are selling clothes, it does not make any sense to link to a website selling cameras, would it? Moreover, one way linking is better than a reciprocal link with a directory. After all the directory exist to direct its customers. Of course, linking to a complementary site is good, if it drives some traffic your way. A partnership is better than linking to just anyone. If you can find sites which offer products or services which compliment yours and you can help each other out and you are proud to be associated with them and claim so on your website. If you are trying to just build links and are trying to hide the links in another page which is hidden, then that is a big no no.

2. Good page optimization: Before building links, it is important to optimize your website for certain keywords. Remember, one keyword or two related keywords per webpage. This is not to say that you cannot rank for ten keywords for your web page if all the content exist on one page and you have little competition. Over time competition is likely to enter and the web site that has optimized thier page for that content along with good incoming link strategy will outperform you. 

It is not always nice to find out that you ranked high in the search engine for words like "free" or "welcome to our site". This will prove very costly especially if you are doing pay per click advertising as it means that anyone typing the word "free" in the search engine can expect to have your site among the search results. Each time someone clicks on the advertisement to come to your site, you not only lose money, but you will not be converting anyone. Reason being that, it is not your potential customer. 

You can learn about good on page optimization strategies here:

• 7 Rules for Landing Page Optimization by Jonathan Mendez
• Website Optimization (SEO) Advice Circa 1999 by Search Marketing Gurus Authors
• Hitting the Landing Page Optimization Wall by Holly Buchanan
• Landing Pages - The Consumer Just Won't Behave by Matthew Roche

3. Know what is working and what isn't: It is useful to have tracking installed on your website to see how many visitors have come, where they have come from and which page they spent the maximum time. Google Analytics provides a wide range of information and can be viewed in the form of graphs, charts and figures. Using this information, you can study your customers and enhance your website to generate more traffic. Ensure that your consultant can install the codes in the relevant pages and analyze them. Search engine optimization is not a "install and go" method. It requires thought, knowledge of the market, various online marketing methods and continuous fine tuning to achieve your business goals. Understanding the business is the first step towards attaining the business goals. The goals could be as varied as getting more leads, constant traffic, conversion of leads, selling more products online or just simply a place where you can share knowledge with like-minded people.

Search engine optimization is still a growing field and as long as Google, Yahoo and MSN is used to search for websites on the web and people have to pay for internet advertising, there will be shortcuts that people would be searching for. 

Here is an excellent article on seo ethics and practices by Wayne Hurlbert.

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