Staying Ethical When Link Building

Search engine optimisation (SEO) has an undeserved reputation for being an unethical industry. This perception is a classic case of many being tarred with the same brush as the few – some disreputable businesses, for example those selling pharmaceuticals and peddling porn, engage in deeply unethical and often prolific SEO and this association has proved difficult for ethical link building companies to break.

However, many SEO companies take a moral approach to their business practices. The best SEO companies treat link building as a means of establishing an online community, rather than a shortcut to rapid ranking gains.

Staying ethical when link building is not as difficult as it might seem. First and foremost, businesses that want to maintain a positive reputation and act as ambassadors for the industry should steer clear of any practices with the ‘black hat’ label – cloaking, JavaScript redirects and hacking are unequivocally unethical. These and other black hat techniques are the types of practice that have earned SEO its unsavoury reputation.

Another thing the conscientious digital agency can do to ensure it doesn’t become part of the problem is adopt an approach that prioritises inbound link quality over sheer volume. In other words, instead of spamming blog and forum comments in a bid to up the numbers quickly, an ethical SEO company should focus on earning links from high-quality sources on the topic at hand. For example, if a business client wants to gain rankings in the tourism industry, a professional SEO company should look to the authoritative publications and domains within tourism and enter into a dialogue with the relevant webmasters and writers, with a middle- to long-term goal of writing quality guest posts for those publications in exchange for valuable backlinks. this SEO company will deliver results that continue to benefit its clients for years to come.

If more SEO companies take this attitude in the future, rewards for both business and industry will be great – such companies can take pride in their work and rest assured that their clients’ rankings will not suddenly nosedive after the next Google update, while the industry will enjoy a better reputation, alleviating prospect worries and bringing more businesses into the fold.