As the webmaster and in-house SEO for a small online business, I’ve struggled countless times with ethical dilemmas. It started practically the moment I was hired. My boss (who has since left the company for greener pastures) wanted me to add products to the website that we didn’t actually carry, and my conscience instantly rebelled. How could we claim to sell a product when it wasn’t true?

Truth has often been my downfall. With my peers, I tended to be honest to a fault and displayed an embarrassing lack of tact. My need to tell the truth manifested itself in amateur poetry, rambling diary entries and long, heartfelt letters I never sent. I finally found a constructive outlet for my honesty when I discovered print journalism. As a journalist, I could tackle the truth, pin it down and share it with the world.

These days, as a webmaster and an SEO, I battle with questions of truth and ethics every day. Is it wrong to offer a free product with the purchase of another product, and then add the cost of the “free” product to the purchased one? Is it ethical to bid on keywords for products you don’t sell, in the hopes that customers will want to buy your product instead once they see it? Is it dishonest to publish articles in your CEO’s name when he had absolutely nothing to do with writing those articles? And more importantly, are any of these practices not merely unethical but against law as well?

These are tough decisions to make. It’s even tougher when sales are in a slump and you’re pondering whether to update your resume on Monster. I won’t claim to have always made the right decision — the honest and ethical decision — but I have learned over the years that you don’t have to choose between truth and success.

When you bid on keywords that you can’t back up with products or services, all you’re going to get is a bunch of useless traffic. Try to manipulate the search engines with black hat techniques, and you’ll find yourself dropped from the SERPs. Misrepresent yourself on forums, and you will be caught and publicly humilated in front of the entire Internet community. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but eventually both your conscience and your wallet will suffer the repercussions.

In e-commerce and in search engine marketing, the old saying remains true: Honesty really is the best policy.

Further reading: Google advice on hiring an ethical SEO. Jennifer Sullivan Cassidy writes about the SEO code of conduct.

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