Breaking News! SEO Is Not Spam!

In case you have not heard, mighty Google has proclaimed that SEO is not, in fact, spam. Yes, that’s right; you can take off your black hat and exchange it with a big, shiny white one with a big sigh of relief. While the statement that Google does not consider SEO to be spam seems painfully obvious to those within the SEO industry, it is helpful in shedding the perception as shady, subversive, and unethical.

Head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts, has released a short video in which he states, “We don’t consider SEO to be spam.” It is “a valid way to help people find what they’re looking for via search engines”, says Cutts. Again, while this is hardly news to SEO professionals and the websites they’ve helped gain visibility, it is welcome in that Cutts instructs the general public about what SEO is, and as important, what it is not.

It is, according to Cutts, an ideal way to organize, index, highlight, and retrieve content. White hat SEO is an ideal way for websites to increase their online profile. It values elements like high quality content, relevant information, and a seamless user experience. SEO is not typified by keyword stuffing, blackhat attacks, or malicious code, any more than the medical profession is typified by quackery. Black hat SEO happens; poor quality SEO happens; but these are exceptions in an incredibly flexible and adaptable industry.

“There’s plenty, an enormous amount, of white hat, great quality stuff that you can do as a search engine optimizer”, says Cutts. It all begins with great quality content. This is something that every SEO can agree on – and it helps when the world’s biggest search engine does as well.