Anyone connected to the digital marketing world is aware of the fact that SEO though a marketing strategy is very different from other online marketing strategies. SEO has the same objectives as marketing but the path followed by genuine SEOs to start reaping the benefits of SEO for a client is very creative, different and also involves the ethics.
Paid presence and visibility on the web lasts till the dollars are being rolled out whereas the presence and visibility attained as a result of good SEO lasts for a long time and also adds a brand value and a recall value if you rank for many important keywords related to your industry. As in order to rank high for niche keywords the SEO has to work on the Off-Page optimization factors which in the process helps in creating a web identity for the concerned company and website of the company.
While creating quality footprints on the web which will influence the SEO campaign of the website SEOs have to work on the quality aspects of the website, whether it is on-page or off-page.
Aspects Of The Website Which Help The Web Eco System And The Website:
1) Content: If the web administrator keeps on removing unwanted and outdated content from the site and from the index of the search engines it surely will help in reducing the content clutter on the search engine servers and thus help the search engines indirectly to maintain the quality of search results.
2) Error Free HTML Code: We are all aware of the W3C compliance but many times don’t pay much heed to it as the search engines have not made it as a compulsory ranking factor. But if the HTML is worked upon keeping in mind the W3C compliance and the HTML is error free though it may not have any direct benefit on the website but will surely help the web have error free HTML on the web servers which in the long run can help the search engines in many ways.
3) Setting Proper 301 Redirects And Cannonical Tags : By using the 301s and canonical tags efficiently helps the SEO of the site but also again helps in reducing the duplication of indexing by the search engines thereby again contributing to the quality of the search results and also reduces content clutter on the web servers.
4) Follow Search Engine Guidelines: Search engines always offer webmaster guidelines and tools so that they can guide the webmasters and these guidelines if followed also helps the search engines with their algorithms as it helps them to index and rank websites better.
5) Guest Blog If You find it difficult to Maintain Your Own Blog: Many people start a blog but cannot keep up to the regular updation of the blog and after sometime it becomes a web entity which is just existing for the sake of it without having any value again adding to the unwanted web material on the WWW. Always delete such blogs created out of curiosity and with no intention of being used in future. Just because you get it for free does not mean you do not bother about it. If you do not have the time for regular updation you can derive the benefits of blogging by writing guest post for blogs which are regularly updated and well maintained and have good readership as this way you can share your knowledge with the readers and also get SEO benefit.
6)Educate The Client About What Is SEO: Many times the SEO company works hard and gets the high quality rankings, visibility and web presence for the client but at times due to some differences the client may discontinue with a certain SEO company and appoint another one and thereby the previous work done may get affected adversely but the client may not be aware of this at all as he has no clue about what genuine SEO is all about. Hence, it is necessary to have discussions with the client time and again to inform him about the SEO changes made and also about how SEO is making his digital asset (The website in this case) more valuable day by day.
I think this is a part of SEO ethics because the client spends a lot of amount to get the rankings and the benefit derived thus should be nurtured and taken care of for which he needs to understand the purpose behind all the SEO changes made from the brand building and maketing perspective. He may not be interested in the technicalities which can be strictly kept out of discussions.
The search and web ecosystem revolves around the people who publish content, people who index content and people who search for content. We all who use the internet fall in atleast one of the categories and we can in our own little way help the web by focusing on what way we can contribute to the web rather than only putting the blame on the search engines for not giving us quality search results.
As the internet is a network of networks, we need to harness all the viral and linkable content efficiently, according to me mentions, links, email accounts on your own domain, etc. present anywhere in the cosmos of the web world and search engines will surely pass on the necessary link juice if the content is readable by the spiders and can be indexed when the internet servers are being crawled.
I have just mentioned a few SEO practices above but if you check on every ranking factor you use for SEO it will have a larger and broader purpose for the web ecosystem rather than just giving you the rankings if implemented. The algorithms built are not built in a vacuum or as a result of somebody’s imagination but by working on what would be the best practices based on past experience , research and detailed study of human behavior and indexing bottle necks so that quality results can be churned out for the searchers.
We keep on using the SEO practices for content , now we need to understand the intent behind every thing implemented on the site and make a valuable contribution to the web cosmos as an SEO. Every action if backed by the right intention does surely gives you the deserved returns.
