There’s nothing wrong with optimizing sites for higher rankings in the search engines; however according to information circulating the Internet, certain companies manage to spam the search engines using unethical strategies. Conversely, there’s also a good deal of information warning people they should never hire shady or unethical professionals to help optimize their websites for search engines. Truth of the matter is that many companies specializing in search engine optimization care only about making a quick buck, sometimes at the expense of the customer’s reputation. This is true in every industry, not just SEM. If the people in our industry can remember this when trying to create a Cheshire SEO Company (and there are many factions trying to do this), it will go a lot smoother.
So, how about customers who approach you with a corrupted mindset from reading somewhere else about search engine exploitations. For example, suppose such kind of customer requests a proposal for 10 doorways pages to enhance their site’s rankings. The thing is they refuse your advices of optimizing the actual website; they just want to expand their network with fringe hollow domains.
Using this strategy, people oftentimes manage to deceive search engines by providing a sitemap of the doorway domains linking to the real homepage they’re promoting. When the user arrives at one of the doorway pages via search engines, they’re forced to click an extra time to get through to the actual website they were looking for in the first place. Should you get faced with such a customer, what would you prefer: compromising your views of proper search engine optimization, or just give the customer what he thinks is better? Once you think about it, the creation of such pages wouldn’t be regarded as dishonest. What if the actual website the customer is trying to promote actually featured tons of pages with great content? The simpler task of checking the website’s pre-existing content and optimizing keywords would be much more effective than the creation of a set of baits to lure attention into the website.
If I found myself in such a situation where the customer stubbornly refused to listen to reason, I’d have to ask him to find another consultant that won’t be opposed to assist him in a search engine goose chase. Sure, it’d be good money for an easy job, so it may sound like a bad decision for some. If you’d use special software, you could provide the buyer with his specific request, while making no effort at all...but you’d actually be giving what he’d ask for, correct? Sure, you could reason it would be okay to just take the job. But if you’re interested in being a professional SEO consultant, it’s very important doing what you know is right. If it means you don't get that particular job, then so be it.
If you keep perspective on your career, you’ll notice that losing this kind of customers is actually irrelevant. Why worry about losing a small account, when it’ll only strengthen your professional stand and help you get to the customers that really matter. It worked out for me!
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