Should SEO Just Be a Part of Good Web Design?

Are SEO services unethical? Many people think so.

There are a lot of Anti-SEOs out there who love to write about what a scam SEO is, and how the service is evil and should be abolished. One of their key points is: SEO is cheating. They say by manipulating rankings, you're being dishonest and beating out the competition by cheating.

This is an interesting dilemma, as they make a good point. I say that as an SEO myself. Sometimes really bad websites who have no business being in the top ten,often are. The reason is not because their site is so great, or because so many people go there, but because they had a great SEO. Often times, the more you pay, the better you get, and some people are willing to throw a lot of money at someone to get them the top rankings.

The argument is, from a competition standpoint, results rely on who has the best SEO. So if a bunch of poor quality sites manage to get the right SEO to help them, they will start burying the good sites that people actually want to go to. This seems unethical and unfair. This is the primary reason google and other large search engines put anti-seo measures in place, because it reflects poorly on the search engine when these useless sites are near the top.

The counter argument is simply a matter of who you hire. An ethical SEO will never tell you to "cheat" because they know that their site may be penalized if the search engines figure it out. Also a good SEO will encourage the webmaster to put up great content, and make the site great. Thats the method used by the more ethical and professional SEOs. They encourage you to build a website people actually want to link to.

Because people are often business owners or webmasters, and not marketing experts, the advice given by a good SEO can be worth every penny, as they specialize in marketing websites, and have a good amount of knowledge to bring the customer. So thats the service they are truly providing, rather than promising high rankings.

In the end it all comes down to ethics. A good SEO is no more than a marketing expert paid to optimize your site to get maximum exposure to search engines and give you guidance in creating a great website. An unethical SEO will "cheat" the system and create the scenarios explained above. These are the people the "anti-SEO" types are talking about.

Jeremy Morgan is a Portland SEO and internet marketer. You can read his SEO blog which is updated daily with tips, tricks and tools.