It’s SEO Ethical? Wel…. good question my little Grasshopper

It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on

Sun Tzu’s the Art of War.

So you work for a company… and you want to be the CEO one day. Why? Because being the CEO is coool and you want to be a coool guy.

Well.. I bet you know (deep inside) that to achieve the CEO position you need to play your cards in a smart way, and I don’t need in a “nice way”.
Because to achieve the CEO job… you just don’t play nice, instead you play hard.  Isn’t that right?

Or what about Politics… do you become Prime Minister, or president… just by being kind, gentle and good to people?

Or what about the Pope… or a Rock Start or a General in a powerful army?

Well…. like in real life, SEO works in the same way.

Life is not fair… and SEO trust me , it’s not fair at all.

… and like in life not always the good boys win… and many times people bend rules to achieve their objectives.

OH MY GOD GABRIEL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT BLACK HAT SEO?

No… I’m talking about REAL life SEO. I’m talking about the basic principle that SEO is not meant to exist.

Regardless what Mr Google webmaster Blog tells you… SEO is about : link build towards outranking your competitors.

That’s it. End of the discussion.

SEO is not about “relevant content” or “providing the best quality information to your readers” it is about OUTRANKING your COMPETITORS.

So to help you understand this… let me refer to one of my favorite passions…. FOOTBALL

in 1986, the FIFA world cup was in Mexico… and Argentina was playing against England. In the Argentinian team there was a little guy called Diego Armando Maradona. Maradona… Maradona took this team to win the World Cup vs West Germany that year… and he became a Legend. Simply the greatest player to ever played futbol (After Pele from Brazil).

But if you are a REAL futbol fan… you may remember that

Maradona captained the Argentine national team to victory in the 1986 FIFA World Cup, winning the final in Mexico against West Germany. Throughout the 1986 World Cup Maradona asserted his dominance and was the most dynamic player of the tournament. He played every minute of every Argentina game, scored 5 goals and made 5 assists. After scoring two goals in the 2–1 quarter-final win against England his legend was cemented.

But the legend was created when the replays showed that the first goal was scored by striking the ball with his hand. Maradona was coyly evasive, describing it as “a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God.” It became known as the “Hand of God”.

So SEO is like Life… and even better SEO is like Soccer… sometimes where are “hand of God” and you need to make a clear decision if you do it or not.

(And nooooo I’m not talking about Blackhat… I’m talking about mmm grey hat, blue hat, yellow hat or smart white hat techniques)

So to understand this we need to acknowledge what Google want’s from us… and how Google really works.

Google… the big mighty Google it’s a company, not a charity and they make their money thanks to Advertisement.

SEO companies and SEO professionals are not the “most favorite” industry in the eyes of Google.

Why? Well… let’s think :

If I can rank your site 1st in Google for your targeted keyword.. then… you don’t need to pay for Adwords. Isn’t that right?

SEO replaces the need for adwords, and off course, that’s not good for Google shareholders.

Therefor… Google really want’s to make the whole idea of SEO like a big enigma .. and in fact many “SEO experts” in Australia or in the USA, will define that it takes YEARS to really understand the “secrets of SEO”.

Mmmm yep… just like nuclear science… it takes years and years to understand how to rank a site. (lol… keep thinking that).

So what Google really expect us to do?

Well, mainly to believe that QUALITY is everything… that GREAT CONTENT will bring us “natural” links and a flow of visitors….
that content is King and that you shoudn’t really worry so much about “their algorithm” .

But the reality is a bit different, because in the same way Coca Cola refused to tell you that drinking Coca Cola is not good for you, any Search Engine like Google, Bing or the tiny-Yahoo, will never announce that their algorithm has flows.

Google will never launch a press release confessing that they can’t really identify what “quality” is in content, without following the links pointing to THAT content, and therefor anyone with enough money can point high Pagerank links to X page and increase it’s “authority” and “popularity” in the eyes of Google.

… mmm …

But clearly we don’t read that in the Google Webmaster blog… or we don’t read that in the first chapter of SEO for dummies, because in that places we all want to believe that Google is build for “peace” and that “only the good guys” really rank… but once again, the real world… it’s a bit darker, different and  less romantic.

Obviously the main problem is how to be competitive and still be ethical, by tring to follow the rules.

Well, it is not easy, specially when everyone seem to cut corners and when the rules each month seem different.

Because don’t forget this is the Search Engine World… and whatever was valid yesterday, today is ancient history.

So where do you stand?

Are you willing to score a Goal with your Hands just to win a Match?

Difficult question, specially because in SEO… many times, nobody is really watching and you don’t know if what you do, it’s ethical or not…

I mean… let’s look at this:

It’s buying Links Ethical? May be not…

So then, why do you pay for a link in Yahoo Directory?

At the eyes of Google a link in Yahoo Directory is not a paid link… but for any SEO guy we well know we just add a site in Yahoo Directory just for the dofollow link.

So same same but Different yes?

Or what about pre-owned domain names… good PR domain names sell for thousand of dollars in the second hand market…. the reason? Pure SEO benefit.

Fair with your competition? No… but that’s life… that’s SEO… we do that we have to do to get that links, to get that Google Juice.

So I guess next time we think that the SEO world is full of Sharks… we need to remember that sometimes the Sharks are the only ones that survive…(unless you are Nemo or Flipper)

At the end of the day it’s your option, it’s your future, it’s your website, your traffic and your income… regardless what you do, assume that this is a fast moving game and more times than others if you are doing SEO , you will or just offended someone… you just outranked somoene… you just attacked someone… you just competed against someone or you just  broke an ethical or stupid rule that someone , somewhere just wrote about what Google expects from you.

Most Commented Posts

• February 21, 2012 -- My SEO romance with an Indian Spammer
• September 21, 2011 -- Behind Some Lovely SEO Company Emails
• May 16, 2010 -- Interview with an SEO company
• March 25, 2012 -- SEO for kids 2012 – A fantastic Success
• August 11, 2010 -- Using Hubpages, Squidoo and Wordpress.com to create backlinks to your site
• September 10, 2011 -- Why Buying Links is like Chocolate Cookies
• February 21, 2012 -- From BROKE Scuba Diving Instructor to Freaking Happy Entrepreneur ?