Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ethics and best practices have been long debated within the search engine marketing community. Many discussions take place daily as to what constitutes a good SEO technique versus a bad SEO technique, and quite frankly I'm getting pretty sick and tired of reading about it.

People need to understand that SEO ethics and best practices ARE very similar to that of politics and religion: There are more than two sides, all sides are strongly opinionated, and seldom do people choose the same path to arrive at the same end. Ethics and best practices will in fact differ from search marketer to search marketer, and the terms "Good" and "Bad" can only be determined in the eye of the beholder.

We all have different opinions on what works, what doesn't work, what's search engine friendly, what's not search engine friendly, and what's plain and blatant spam... and these opinions will never be shared by all. We'll never have an industry set of standards, and Search Engine Marketing techniques and strategies will never be uniform.

I'm ok with that... are you?

So, you may be asking yourself, what's Karl's opinion of "Good" and "Bad" SEM techniques? Well, I'll tell you, but just understand that I'm not expecting you to agree with me. In my opinion, any technique used to trick, confuse, or side-step a search engine into ranking your website at the top of its results is considered bad and in most cases spam-like. I believe that using such techniques are dangerous to one's overall search marketing campaign, and may result in getting their website banned.

Now before everyone jumps down my throat... I am a very, well-diverse person. I can acknowledge that there is no one way to market a website, and those strategies that work best for one website may not be all that beneficial to another. Like most people in this industry, I understand that a foul is not a foul until the referee blows his or her whistle. However, at the same time, I also understand that the more times you foul, the more you increase your chances that the ref will notice, blow their whistle, and penalize you. Well in this case, Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask are your referees, and its best that you play by their rules (guidelines) when you're playing on their court. Simply put... if you don't foul, you can't be penalized.

That's my 2 pennies worth anyway... any comments?