How Ethics Affect Your SEO Strategy
When you think of digital marketing, and search engine optimization in particular, ethics is probably a topic pretty far from your mind—after all, what does it have to do with SEO? Well, it’s actually an important part of a strong SEO strategy, and an ethical approach can make a big difference in your level of success.
So what do I mean by ethics? Of course, it’s a whole field of study of its own, but in regards to digital marketing, I simply mean doing the right thing. Making the right choices and building your strategy around ethical decisions that prioritize what’s best for your audience, and for the greater good, will generally steer you in the right direction. It will result in good SEO practices, a more sustainable approach, and better content that provides value to your audience.
What does that look like in practice? These five steps will give you a strong ethical base for your SEO strategy.
Know White Hat from Black Hat SEO
The first thing you need to understand about SEO ethics is the difference between what the industry calls “white hat” and “black hat” SEO strategies.
“White hat” techniques are those that play by the rules, sticking to Google’s guidelines and following traditional SEO practices. Everything I recommend is a white hat strategy. While it takes time to build momentum through white hat practices, they build a strong foundation of value and credibility that grows exponentially over time and are the best way to gain success in the long run.
On the other hand, “black hat” strategies are techniques that try to sneak around Google’s guidelines and trick the algorithm into boosting your pages in the search results. Some of these strategies are explicitly against the rules and others simply exploit loopholes or weak areas that have yet to be shored up. While these methods can quickly boost your SEO, they’re always a bad idea because they often result in penalization from Google, which is why they’re sometimes called “negative SEO.” In fact, your site may never show up in search results again if your offense is egregious enough.
Protect Yourself From Negative SEO
Sometimes, it’s not enough simply to avoid black hat strategies. Certain black hat techniques can actually be used against you by competitors and bad actors who want to sabotage your site. They might create spammy backlinks to your site or remove some of your strong backlinks, clone your website so your content registers as duplicated, or even hack into your site and begin changing things. These are just a few of the negative SEO strategies that can be used against you, so it’s a good idea to run checks regularly to identify issues like this in order to solve them before they result in penalties.
Prioritize Sustainability
SEO takes time. It’s a process that builds on itself, and the more consistent work you put in, the faster and more reliably it will grow. Black hat strategies are ultimately unsustainable, chasing quick results without putting in the necessary work to build a highly reputable website full of valuable content.
Keep sustainability in mind as you develop your SEO strategy. Ask yourself, “Will this technique contribute to the website’s long-term success?”
Build a Trustworthy Reputation
Google prefers websites it views as trustworthy, sites it knows are not likely to expose its users to viruses, scams, or harmful misinformation. One area where this is easy to see is in healthcare topics. Have you ever noticed that if you search your symptoms, there are a few sites that reliably show up at the top? That’s because Google doesn’t want to send you to someone’s blog to get medical advice! So it prioritizes sites with a strong trustworthy reputation.
The best way to appear trustworthy to Google is to be trustworthy by following best SEO practices and creating trustworthy content.
Besides Google’s algorithm, you also want to come across as trustworthy to your audience. There are a lot of ways to do this, but one that’s especially important is your content. Do the right thing for your audience by providing good information. Avoid spreading misinformation or false data, cite your sources when needed, be transparent about advertisements, and promote a more honest online environment.
Focus on Value
Ultimately, doing what’s best for the end user will get you the furthest in SEO. The more value you provide in your content, the more Google will promote you. If you focus on providing your audience with the most value you possibly can, you’re not only doing the right thing for them, but you’re also creating a valuable resource that will encourage organic backlinks as people share it. Valuable content is ultimately more sustainable, because while Google’s algorithm may change, the value of your content does not, and you can update old pages as needed.
Focusing on ethical SEO and providing what’s best for your audience is the most sustainable digital marketing strategy. If you follow Google’s guidelines and use ethics as a compass in your strategy, you’ll satisfy your user’s intent and be best positioned to leverage the exponential SEO growth that occurs over time.
