There’s a lot of stuff posted on search engine forums and newsletters around the world about how companies who spam the search engines are unethical, and that it’s important to hire only “ethical SEO consultants” or “ethical search engine marketers.”
But, if you think about it, ethics is not something that’s quantifiable. What makes any given SEO technique ethical or unethical? Isn’t ethics more of a way of life than a method for doing something? Is trying to trick the search engines really unethical? Sure, it’s stupid, in my opinion, but is it really unethical? I don’t believe that those who practice what I sometimes refer to as “shady SEO techniques” can necessarily be classified as unethical. Just as everyone who follows every search engine rule can’t automatically be assumed to be ethical.
What we should instead be discussing is which companies are SEO professionals and which are just out for a buck. This is true in every industry, not just SEO. If the people in our industry can remember this when trying to create a professional SEO organization (and there are many factions trying to do this), it will go a lot smoother. It’s really quite simple. My friend Alan Perkins, who is a champion of “professional SEO,” pointed out a definition of professional to me recently. It says in part: