There are a multitude of ways that businesses can use SEO/SEM to their advantage in unethical ways. One way is to use paid links, which is when a business pays another site to write an article about their product or link to their page to get high rankings. Another is to use invisible text, which directs people to the business site based on keywords that are hidden in white text somewhere on the page. Business can also use fake comments to add their links onto other sites without context. Additionally, businesses will copy and paste duplicate content. And the last way that businesses will use SEO and SEM to push traffic to their sites is cloaking. This technique shows the Google Bot one thing and a completely different thing when an actual user visits the website. All of these actions are used by businesses to increase their traffic and their ranking for SEO, but in the long run, it is better to use ethical practices to grow your online presence.
If a business uses ethical ways to increase their SEO and SEM, their traffic will improve and increase over time. It is a longer process, but in the end, it will benefit the business. This is because if a business is caught by Google using unethical practices, they will have a significant drop in ranking and be listed as an unreliable site by Google. That causes their SEO to drop dramatically and it is hard to regain that reputation. Ethical SEO/SEM practices include paying for SEM to put your site at the top of the search page and promoting your product through other sites in a way that is sustainable and honest.
Businesses benefit from using ethical SEO/SEM practices because their businesses will experience sustained growth. Expensive, unethical practices may bring quick traffic to a business site, but in the long run it is better to use ethical techniques to grow your businesses online portfolio. Practiced SEO growth can be time consuming, but it’s better for your business in the long run because the growth will continue. Additionally, using ethical ways to grow your SEO/SEM will prevent your site from being ‘black listed’ by Google as an unreputable site. Using an ethical approach to SEO/SEM is a longer approach to growing a business, but it will benefit the business in the end.
Ethical vs. Unethical SEO/SEM. (2018, December 5). Retrieved from https://harrisonwaller.org/2018/12/05/ethical-vs-unethical-seo-sem/.
Gupta, S. (2016, March 15). Benefits of Ethical SEO or Digital Marketing – SEO Tips, Guidelines. Retrieved from https://www.seotechexperts.com/blogs/benefits-of-ethical-seo-or-digital-marketing.html.
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