When looking into black hat digital marketing practices and how you could use them in SEO, a common theme was seen through it all: payment. This had me thinking as to is paying for a better ranking or for someone else to help your ranking actually unethical, or is this service that is readily available to all just another useful tool? Black Hat Seo is defined as the disapproved practice that help increase your rankings in search results. A common question to ask is “Am I doing this because it adds value to my website, or am I just doing this for search engine rankings?” to determine the right line to walk. Some examples of black hat digital marketing would be hidden text or links, link manipulation, and keyword stuffing. But would paying for links or any other sort of payment for SEO be included? A vast majority of people answer with a resounding yes. By paying for links, clicks, or keywords, large corporations can effectively rig the system by paying for better positioning while small companies can’t keep up. Some, however, argue that by paying, there is an obvious fair exchange: currency for clicks. While this is not a common view that is held, there are still a few strong supporters of this logic and many fight for the right to pay. Large search engines, most prominently Google, usually examines websites for these practices and include payment as a black hat practice, so as of now it seems that this payment would be unethical behavior.
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This is a great point. I have thought about this before and it has stumped me with ethical reasoning. For many, they may not believe in it but would have to use this to stay in business. I guess this answer is different for everyone but I think that sometimes we have to be sharks just to stay afloat in the end if it makes you feel like you are not being genuine then I believe they should stop these practices. It is a game of sink or swim and this is up to the person but it shouldn’t have to be.