Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 

Search Engine Otimization (SEO) is a very powerful tool used to market websites so that they it can be viewed by as many potential customers as possible.  But inherent in the power of SEO is the fact that businesses can market their SEO capaabilities in an unfair manner.  Unknowing clients of SEO companies can be easily mislead to think that the SEO companies' strategies are working, yet behind the scenes the SEO's may be using deceptive practices.  Google has defined very clearly what it takes to use SEO techniques to increase traffic to websites.  But unscrupulous vendors can easily make promises that their SEO system is "better", only to find out that they give the illusion that they are driving traffic to your website.  Examples of unsrupulous behavior include unsolicited emails, guaranteed rankings, SEO companies simply being unclear about their strategies, blurring the line between actual search results and advertising sections, owning shadow domains, operating with multiple aliases, and getting traffic from fake search engines or spyware.  The bottom line is that the consumer needs to be really careful when hiring an SEO company to make sure that they are not using deceptive SEO practices.

Resources:  http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291