Mon_Feb_11_04:00:09_PST_2019

42 using overtly deceptive techniques. In any business such as SEO, there will be different risk levels. Search engines try hard not to flag false positives (label good sites as spam), so there is usually a bunch of slack to play with, but many people also make common mistakes, like incorrectly using a 302 redirect, or not using specific page titles on their pages, or allowing spiders to index multiple URLs with the same content. If you are ever in doubt if you are making technical errors, feel free to search a few SEO forums or ask me. The search engines aim to emulate users. If you design good content for users and build a smart linking campaign, eventually it will pay off. New aggressive techniques pop up all the time. As long as they are available, people will exploit them. People will force the issue until search engines close the loophole, and then people will find a new one. The competitive nature of web marketing forces search engines to continuously improve their algorithms and filters. In my opinion, the ongoing effort of keeping up with the latest SEO tricks is usually not worth it for most webmasters. Some relational database programmers and people with creative or analytical minds may always be one step ahead, but the average business owner probably does not have the time to dedicate to keeping up with the latest tricks. Tying ethics to SEO techniques is a marketing scam. Either a technique is effective, or it is not. There is nothing unethical about being aggressive. You probably do not want to take big risks with domains you cannot afford to have blacklisted, but there is nothing wrong with owning a few test sites. Following Google's Guidance Some sites that are not aggressively promoted still fall out of favor on occasion. As a webmaster following Google's guidelines, you still can not expect Google to owe you free traffic. You have to earn it by making others cite your website. SEO Feedback Loop The effects of SEO do take time to kick in. At any given time, considering how dynamically the web changes, there will be some holes in search algorithms that make certain SEO techniques exceptionally effective. I have spoken with current search engine engineers working at major search engines in regards to this e-book. I also have spoken with database programmers who later became some of the world's most technically advanced SEOs. Some of these programmers have told me what some would consider tricks that work really well, but they only work really well because few people know about them.