Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Code of Conduct

Remember a time when SEO was little more than optimising your Meta tags and including keywords in your content? Back then online marketing was not very competitive and there where very few SEO companies. But now much of the industry is cutthroat and just about everyone with a website is a Search Engine Optimiser. Unfortunately, due to the now highly competitive nature of online marketing, many SEO companies, individual Search Engine Optimisers or website owners are turning to unethical tactics to get ahead of the game. It is the Search Engine Optimisers duty to represent a client honestly and reliably in any SEO campaign. Unethical SEO methods may bring in short term results but ultimately it will harm a website’s rankings, possibly leading to a removal of a website from a search engine’s index. Anyone with a website is strongly advised to read Google’s Advice for Webmasters before employing an SEO company who claim to use ethical practices. These guidelines, however, don’t form the basis of an SEO code of conduct so we’ve written our own:

• Using cloaking tactics are a sure way to get your site penalised by search engines. Cloaking is basically implementing methods to show search engines a different version of a page than that shown to your visitors. Search engines can now easily detect cloaking so it wouldn’t be worth it.
• Dubious redirects aren’t liked by both search engines and directories alike. This will most likely cause your website directory listings to be deleted.
• Don’t create “doorway” pages just for fooling search engines. This is also seen a cloaking and search engines will detect this and penalise your website.
• Creating multiple domains, subdomains or pages with duplicate content will almost definitely result in a duplication penalty for your website in Google. When you have a duplicate content penalty, Google will de-index your website’s pages. However, having the same content on www.example.com and www.example.co.za and other top level domains shouldn’t be a problem according to Google’s Matt Cutts.
• Do provide unique and quality content through out your website. There are too many “junk sites” (such as affiliate programs) websites out there with no original content. So if you are part of an affiliate program, then give your visitors a reason to come back, give them quality content.
• Don’t add pages to a website that contain spyware.

SEO is not only just about your clients’ websites but also about the clients themselves. Here is our code of conduct regarding clients:

• Don’t take on competing clients. This can lead to a potential conflict of interest for you. Competing clients are likely targeting the same keywords, and an ethical SEO would not put one client’s interest over the others for any reason.
• Do put your client’s interest above your own. Don’t sneak your or other client’s links into a client’s website.
• Don’t take risks with a client’s website. Don’t use unethical (refer to list above) tactics to give a client short term gains, as the website will be penalised by search engines.
• Do be considerate and cooperate with a client even after they no longer use your services e.g. had over passwords and other information pertaining to their website.
• Don't use any easy options to get backlinks for your client. Never use automated software to spam blogs, forums, and guestbooks. This will cause distress to people who are potential customers of your client and damage their reputation. Instead take a few minutes to contribute and you’ll likely get a better, quality backlink for your client.