SEO: Company Ethics
There are plenty of ways to optimise an e-business and one is 'stealth' optimisation, more commonly known as 'spam'. Techniques include spam-dexing (multiple submission of the same site the search engines) and cloaking (sending one page to the search engine and another to the user). Definitions of spam vary and the argument about what is and isn't spam can go on forever, but in essence, any technique that tries to deceive a search engine into giving a site a higher listing than it would otherwise merit is spam. Some proponents argue that spam is a necessary evil created by the search engines' inability to index certain kinds of sites (Flash-based ones, for instance) and that by 'helping' the search engine to spider a site, they are actually helping to improve the quality of the index and ultimately, of the search experience for users.
While we would certainly agree that there is more the search engines can be doing to improve their spiders' capabilities and that some spam can actually enhance, rather than detract from the user experience, our definition of spam is quite simple. If the search engines say they don't like a particular technique, we don't use it. In other words, it's not for us to say what's spam or not, it's the search engines' decision and we have to work with it, not against it.
Despite the people out there trying to convince you that their technique isn't spam and that the chances of being caught are minimal, spam is a high risk strategy that no reputable business should try. Most search engines have publicly stated their commitment to stamping it out in order to protect the integrity of their indexes. Yet, with so much money to be made it's not surprising that many sites will take the chance. While banned or blacklisted pages can be fatal to a major corporation with valuable brand assets (like the leading travel company recently banned by Google), it's no problem to those who will simply buy new (or old) domains to replace them and can reinvent themselves in moments. That's assuming they're caught, of course and plenty of sites can afford a full time team of programmers to keep them one step ahead of the search engine police.
While the argument of what and isn't spam is a circular one, the only way to optimise sites for the search engines is to do things their way: to design, format, structure, register, submit and host each site according to each search engine's individual, ever-changing (and often idiosyncratic) criteria, standards and processes. There are no short cuts. No web business should trust an optimisation company that promises incredible results, or claims exclusive arrangements with the search engines, to buy a particularly desirable keyword, for example. There are no guarantees in this business and if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
