Similar to nuclear weapons, the only argument to keep it up is the assumption that everybody else is probably doing it as well. The same vicious circle applies to SEO. If we left it up to the search engines to just do their job, their efforts to improve the relevance of their search results would converge much faster, as they would not have to do all the battles against SERP manipulation.

One needs to be able to change the perspective to a bird’s eye view of things to be able to see that this IS harm, not against individuals, but against the system as a whole (where individuals are indirectly but not less certainly affected).

and thanks for your truly refreshing view.

Ethics is difficult to judge about in a broader context. Can you say it is wrong to try to make a living by helping a paying client achieve better search engine ranking? Is the SEO expert responsible for his client’s content and goals? Where to put the limits of where righteous business ends a shades of scam begin to emerge?

Effectively, every market, once “discovered” by the broader mass, tends to morph into its own perversion. Perhaps what gave rise to SEO was to help good people with something real to say the chance to be heard (well, read) despite all the big names on the Internet. But once benefits and techniques start to become more widely known, they inevitably attract morons who just see the fast money without anything real to say. Without any circumstantial changes, this process would inevitably degrade the market to a point where it is of no use for anyone, and finally abandoned. It’s like a plague of locusts who descend on a new fertile field and irreversible destroy it.

However, since Google and Co. are constantly refining and changing the rules, it’s hard for the locusts to keep up, and Google’s latest trend, personalized search, is definitely going to be a hard a nut to crack for them.

One way to oppose the locusts is definitely to increase people’s awareness and educate/evolve their habits and thinking patterns. My idealism wholeheartedly embraces this way, but my realism has doubts about the human ability to make such change.

And it is exactly because of this why the world needs MORE impulses in this direction. Hence, I can only encourage you to write that book. I hope you’ll reach many many readers with it.

Good luck!

your last paragraph is intriguing. I used to think little of SEO because i thought Brin and Page will probably laugh at these “SEO Gurus” effort which seem to imply they know more about Google than them.

But SEO awareness is picking up and giving these gurus good businesses. Do u think this is ethical?

I am toying with the idea of writing an SEO book with an accompanying website to reveal all tactics and techniques with 2 dominant theme:

1. Don’t Be Evil: To prevent further exploitation of unwary website owners to think that SEO is the ultimate WMD they need to outrank others.

2.Universally Accessible And Useful Knowledge: Using the very same SEO techniques to create awareness among technically-challenged people that they don’t need to give up an arm or a leg for SEO.

any thoughts on this?

thanks!

Also, Google announced a Change in their algorithm-they “mention” that a big factor of the ranking is calculated due to the users, which mean the more access you have the higher you get,But then again, how can i fight financed portals?

SEO is ruining real content-rich websites that don’t optimize their page title or header tags.

One of my pet peeves is delving through search results that just duplicate their keywords for the page title and page description.

It doesn’t tell me what I want to know.

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And also I hate going through websites that have keyword-stuffed anchor text on every sentence or in every menu navigational link!

One thing you can always expect from our species is the ability to exploit an idea when the the original intention was for the good. eg. invention of nuclear power gave rise to nuclear weapons, etc.