Q. I’ve been hearing a lot of bad press about SEO recently, isn’t it just really trickery to cheat the search engines into giving us a higher rating?

A. No, recent negative press has concerned certain disreputable tactics that Netpromote has consistently campaigned against the use of since our inception. Unfortunately the use of prohibited SEO tactics has reflected very badly on our whole industry. At it’s worst, SEO can just be a process of trying to fool the search engines into granting higher listings, but there are many other valid (and frankly more effective) forms of SEO.

Effective SEO is the process of utilising publicly available guidelines to ensure your site meets the search engine’s requirements, is search engine-legible and is therefore easy to locate by carrying out a search on any major search engine. Once those basic standards have been met you can then look at raising your profile further, but any tactics used for this should fall well within the approved range.

The Google guidelines indicate the kinds of sites that Google and the other major search engines wish to see, and feel best serve their customers - the Internet user. Good SEO should help you see how you can improve your site to be the best in your field, and attain the highest listings through excellence, rather than by trickery.