Good and Bad SEO

One of the things my customers worry about is "search engine optimisation" (SEO), especially as there are companies out there who specialise in this sort of thing. I tell them not to worry, if they're sensible and do the right things then so will search engines.

To take an example type "The Hug" into Google thus. Currently the first four hits are:

Similarly the-hug.org/paul is the first hit for "Paul Oldham".

Now I must admit we are doing particularly well at the moment on both, but we're seldom off the first page¹.

So how does this happen? Well mainly by getting on with creating content and making sure it's well linked, both in and out, so other people link to us and we link to them. But we don't force those links, they just happen because they're useful.

For customers I encourage them to get their partners to link to them, and vice versa and we of course link to them from www.the-hug.co.uk all of which makes Google happy.

But that's it, it's really that simple.

Now where it gets a bit murky is when SEO companies start trying to force things along. I've had this today where a Wiki which we manage was modified to include a link to a company's web site which wasn't at all appropriate for the Wiki's content. It didn't take long to check back and find that the person doing this had an email address at a company that specialises in search engine optimisation. So what they were doing was adding a link which would be picked up by search engines which were indexing the Wiki and that would then enhance the placing of their customer's web site.

I think it's unethical myself but there is, as they say, a lot of it about. As the owner of a Wiki, and indeed any site with user generated content, all you can do is keep it in check. For example this addition was reversed out within seventeen minutes of being added, and the user's account is now blocked, as is their IP address. But it's not the first time and it won't be the last. All you can do is be forever vigilant.

1. We're also currently every hit on the first page at msn.com! But only if you put quotes around "The Hug".