Search Engine Optimization Code of Ethics

Activities ServerSideDesign promises to NOT engage in:

• Engage in any behaviors that will intentionally harm a client or a competitor.  This includes performing black-hat techniques that may get that client’s site banned from the search engines, or purposefully interfering with a competitor’s site as to try and get their site dropped from the search engine in order to get their client’s website into a better position.
  
  
• Intentionally engage in activities in direct violation of a search engine’s guidelines.  Again, these types of behaviors can impose penalties by search engines, or banning from the search engine indexes altogether.
  
  
• Purposefully engage in behavior that breaches a client’s confidentiality or privacy. 
  
  
• Deliberately violate any laws, including but not limited to trademark or copyright laws. 
  
  
• Falsely claim another’s work to be their own.
  
  
• Intentionally mislead, harm, or offend a consumer.  This includes bait and switch tactics intent on bringing traffic to the site, or making a visitor believe the site is something it is not.
  
  
• Disparage other SEO consultant, SEO companies, or former and current clients in public, even if you know they have engaged in unethical techniques, or treated the SEO badly. 
  
  
• Fail to stay current on search engine updates, changes, news, training or education. 
  
  
• Misrepresent their abilities, education, success rates, certifications, performance, or affiliations (e.g. affiliations with Search Engines). 
  
  
• Set unreasonable expectations for success, including providing iron-clad guarantees that cannot possibly be reached or maintained, timetables that cannot be met, etc.  As much as anyone would like to believe, there is no one that can guarantee you number one results in a search engine results pages. 
  
  
• Encourage a conflict of interest between two clients’ sites which pertain to the same keywords without notifying both parties of the conflict. 
  
  
• Make themselves unavailable for customer support when necessary.  An SEO should be available to their clients. 
  
  
• Treat one client better than another based on payment, work involved, or any other reason.  All clients should be regarded equally, without giving preferential treatment to one over another. 
  
  
• Intentionally provide confidential client information to the public.  A client’s confidentiality is very important, and while the SEO may have access to client passwords or logins, this is not license for them to share what they’ve learned about you.
  
  
• Employ false or misleading advertising regarding a client’s products or services for the purpose of inflating search engine ranking or traffic. 
  
  
• Intentionally keep from a client from understanding the risks involved with SEO.  SEO is not an exact science, and it is impossible to guarantee number one rankings.  There is always a risk that SEO efforts will not be as effective as a client wishes, especially in a saturated market or with very general keywords.  You should be made aware of all the risks regarding the SEO efforts implemented regarding your site.
  
  
• Fail to comply with a contract with a client, or be truthful about methodology involved. 
  
  
• Place hidden links within a client’s website to send traffic to the SEO’s own website. 
  
  
• SPAM THE SEARCH ENGINES. Resubmit a site to thousands of search engines repeatedly.  Not only is this not necessary, it is also considered spam.  It also may delay natural search engine crawling of your website
  
  
• Attempt to manipulate indexing or enhance domain saturation by employing machine generated web pages from specialized "optimization" software applications.  Optimization software, while in and of itself is not the issue, should not be used to manipulate the search engines.  This includes continually “pinging” the search engines to make them aware of your site’s web presence, automatically created doorway or AdSense pages, garbled text in a paragraph to include keywords, and programs that embed over-optimized or repetitious keyword elements, including keyword stuffing.
  
  
• Falsely represent the contents of a client’s website.  This includes presenting one set of information to a visitor, and another to a search engine.  This pertains to hidden text, CSS layers, cloaking, IP delivery techniques, redirects, and hidden scripts or links.  **This does NOT include helping sites drop session IDs from URLs and using keyword-rich URL 301 redirects or scripts in order to give true URL context. 
  
  
• Generate doorway pages with the sole purpose of propagation or interlinking content that is mirrored or duplicated from a separate domain.  The new term for doorway pages is “specialized landing pages”. 
  
  
• Make excessive use of Search engine resources.  This includes using remote services to query the search engines. 
  
  
• Use non-compliant HTML in an effort to enhance relevancy for targeted search phrases, including the use of multiple titles. 
  
  
• Participate in link farms or pages featuring user added link systems, deceitful linking strategies, or other linking schemes, which include interlinking differing client websites. 

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