Last week I attended SMX West. It was a great event, but one session in particular stood out for me: ‘Search Engine Q & A’.
Lead engineers from Google, Microsoft Live, Yahoo! and Ask all answered audience questions about search engine policies, what’s OK and what’s not, and the future of search.
One attendee asked, "Do you consider search engine optimization a good thing?"
I braced myself for an answer like, "No, we think you’re the scum of the earth".
But, first Google’s Matt Cutts, then every other engineer on stage, all answered that they considered ethical search engine optimization a good thing. No hemming and hawing, no hesitation.

Search Engines Want SEO?!

Yes. Ethical, smart search engine optimization works to:

• Create well-structured, easily-categorized web sites.
• Write great content.
• Make that content accessible to search engines.
• Make sure the search engines find the stuff.

The Market Rules

Great search engine optimization only makes the search engines better. They reciprocate by giving you a higher ranking. It’s a market of sorts, where the content creators have every incentive to deliver the best-quality information on the best-quality sites, and the search engines have every incentive to show that content.

Support the Market, and You’ll Benefit

Hire ethical, smart SEO agencies that will help you make long-term, sustainable improvements to your rankings. Don’t hire so-called miracle workers who promise fast, easy results. If it sounds to good to be true, it is.

The Pitch

Yes, it’s the Portent Interactive blog, so there’s a Portent Interactive pitch.

We’ve been practicing the kind of ‘white hat’ search engine optimization the search engines love for 10 years. You can learn more about our services by clicking any of the links below:

Search Engine Optimization Services
SEO Packages
Portent’s SEO Code of Ethics