Search engine users search to find relevant content. And search engines try to deliver
links to relevant content. Unethical SEO, referred to in the industry as spam, attempts
to boost page rank by abusing the idea of relevant content—that is, improving page
rank by doing something other than delivering quality, relevant pages. So, for example,
getting a page about Viagra to come up in a search for sports results would be considered
search engine spam.
If you are an established brand or company, your image is everything and you will do
everything to protect that image. If you are struggling to get to the top of the SERPs,
you might be tempted to use artificial, or black hat, SEO. Artificial SEO strives for
immediate benefits—usually to make a quick profit. Its sole focus is in tricking search
engines by finding loopholes in the search engine algorithms. It is this “tricking” component
that makes it unethical SEO. Nevertheless, black hat SEO practitioners are
always looking for ways to manipulate search engine results.
What exactly are such SEO practitioners trying to do? Simply put, they are trying to
use search engines to get much more traffic. The goal is as simple as the law of large
numbers. Suppose a site gets 50 search engine referrals per day. On average, it takes
about 200 referrals to make a sale. This means it takes four days to make only one sale.
Some people need better sales results than that, and they are easily tempted by unethical
techniques to attain the results they desire.
links to relevant content. Unethical SEO, referred to in the industry as spam, attempts
to boost page rank by abusing the idea of relevant content—that is, improving page
rank by doing something other than delivering quality, relevant pages. So, for example,
getting a page about Viagra to come up in a search for sports results would be considered
search engine spam.
If you are an established brand or company, your image is everything and you will do
everything to protect that image. If you are struggling to get to the top of the SERPs,
you might be tempted to use artificial, or black hat, SEO. Artificial SEO strives for
immediate benefits—usually to make a quick profit. Its sole focus is in tricking search
engines by finding loopholes in the search engine algorithms. It is this “tricking” component
that makes it unethical SEO. Nevertheless, black hat SEO practitioners are
always looking for ways to manipulate search engine results.
What exactly are such SEO practitioners trying to do? Simply put, they are trying to
use search engines to get much more traffic. The goal is as simple as the law of large
numbers. Suppose a site gets 50 search engine referrals per day. On average, it takes
about 200 referrals to make a sale. This means it takes four days to make only one sale.
Some people need better sales results than that, and they are easily tempted by unethical
techniques to attain the results they desire.
