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by kabwj 2565 days ago
Nothing about SEO is ethical. It’s about appearing on google when you wouldn’t under natural circumstances.
3 comments
Cthulhu_ 2565 days ago
What Google has done over the years is thwart some of the scummy SEO practices by penalizing websites that do it; a big part of current-day SEO practices are to make your website conform to web and content standards. Basically, turn it into a decent site.

There's still the black market SEO where people hire spambots to send links, but that's been thwarted / voided by just adding a nofollow to links in user generated content like comments.

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mcnesium 2565 days ago
but then you wouldn't do "search engine optimization", but rather proper web engineering.
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Jorsiem 2565 days ago
SEO has become an ambigous, all encompassing term. "Proper web engineer" is now a subcategory of SEO.

Also "proper web engineering" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

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dredmorbius 2565 days ago
PWE -- peewee.
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bduerst 2565 days ago
The point is there's a Venn diagram where these two standards overlap.
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gbear605 2565 days ago
It depends on the type of SEO. SEO includes, for instance, making sure that your page loads quickly when otherwise you wouldn’t have prioritized that. A lot of it is unethical though.
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moonbug 2565 days ago
What, precisely, is "natural" about Google?
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JohnJamesRambo 2565 days ago
The progression towards evil as it became more of a monopoly.
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