When a company undertakes a search engine optimization program, whether it's performed in-house or outsourced to an SEO service, all of the attention (and rightly so) is centered on the business website. This is actually the one aspect where there's an atmosphere of control--once a web site is released in to the wild, the business must observe how its site fares against all of those other websites out there, whether another sites are utilizing ethical SEO tactics or not.
Aside from changes built to the business website, the assumption is often that the business and, when it is using one, its SEO service, has zero control over what appears searching engine results. However, this is not usually the case. Often, you or your SEO service may have a direct impact on search engine results by monitoring your competitors and reporting them to the major search engines once the SEO techniques used on their site fall outside what is popularly called ethical SEO. (Please note that while I genuinely believe that the term "ethical" is tossed around too often, "ethical SEO" is among the most standard phrase to describe white hat techniques, and so it is the phrase I personally use through the entire article.)
Primary Competitors
To begin with, let's define competitors. Almost every company has at the least a number of other programs so it considers to be primary competitors--the ones that sell exactly the same products and services, which are of similar size, and so on. It is essential that the SEO efforts (or lack thereof) of those competitors, whether they're using ethical SEO techniques or not, be monitored on a routine basis. If they have not hired an SEO service of their own, or if they have not started doing SEO in-house at all, you could have satisfaction understanding that the usage of this channel, for the minute, is yours. If your competitors begin an SEO campaign, with or lacking any outside SEO service, you are able to learn much about their sales and marketing tactics by evaluating the keyphrases they target. And you can also investigate whether they're using ethical SEO practices within their campaign.
Your Online Competitors
It's important to keep in mind that it's unlikely that searchers are going to decide only between you and the principal competitors you've listed. They are going to consider any business that matches their unique needs and that shows up because of their search term. This is why your criteria for a competitor online should broaden to encompass any business that gives products or services like yours that outranks you for any of your targeted keyphrases. If your in-house staff or your SEO service not only continually monitors your search engine positions but in addition analyzes the companies that appear above you searching results, you are able to often identify forward-looking competitors of which you had been previously unaware--your primary competitors of tomorrow.
Violations
This brings us to the key dilemma of ethical SEO. Se optimization continues to be a very new concept to most companies. Even the absolute most respected companies can make mistakes in this arena, either by choosing the wrong SEO service, or by trying to avoid hiring an SEO service altogether by bringing it in house with well-intentioned but unqualified people. Like, BMW's German site was recently removed temporarily from the Google index for using doorway pages--something that's not considered a moral SEO practice. It stands to reason that the competitors will also be not immune to violations.
Bad Firms
There are very notable examples of otherwise smart and established companies hiring an SEO service that put them in a worse situation than before they pursued SEO--by getting their site taken off major search engines for violating the engine's terms of service, for example. Not long ago, there is a well-publicized example where all of the clients of a Las Vegas SEO service were penalized. The vast majority of the clients claimed that they were not informed that the firm was not practicing ethical SEO and that they were therefore at risk.
SEO firms are SEO Services usually split into two camps--those called "White Hats" (those that use ethical SEO practices and won't knowingly violate a search engine's terms of service) and those called "Black Hats" (those that do not use ethical SEO practices and which will try to unravel the newest algorithms and exploit any loopholes to accomplish rankings at any cost). Neither approach is invalid--it is not against what the law states to violate the terms of service of a search engine. Moreover, black hat techniques can be very effective. However, the tactics are risky, and anyone hiring an SEO service that wears a black hat and doesn't use ethical SEO practices should definitely be apprised of this risk up front.
Internal Resources
Firms are often tempted to avoid hiring an SEO service by performing SEO in-house, and the project almost always falls onto an already overburdened IT department. The situation with approaching SEO from the strictly technical mindset is that the strategies employed, such as the keyphrases targeted, won't necessarily be in line with the goals of the marketing and sales departments. Furthermore, an IT resource will usually approach SEO from a purely technical standpoint, without having to be alert to ethical SEO practices, and this could cause trouble. Penalization is just a very real possibility, and it is hard to get back onto an index once your internet site has been removed.
Monitoring
A comprehensive SEO service will monitor not only the number of competitors that you deem crucial but in addition the sites that appear higher than you for any of your chosen search phrases. This may be somewhat controversial, especially to any SEO service or webmaster that uses tactics forbidden by the search engines' terms of service. However, many white hat SEO service firms consider it an obligation to their clients to routinely monitor the sites of any competitor located on the engines to make sure it is using ethical SEO techniques.
There's reasons that every major search engine has a form to report sites who do not use ethical SEO tactics and who violate the terms of service so that these sites can be subsequently penalized or removed. Spam filters cannot catch all violations without also removing a sizable number of good sites. Search engines rely on the users to simply help them to keep their indexes clean and free of sites not using ethical SEO tactics. There are many techniques to spam an engine--far too many to list. However, a good SEO service not only knows what all of these techniques are but knows how to identify them when it sees them for them to be reported to the engine accurately.
The End Result
Business is business, and your interests often run directly counter compared to that of your competitors. Once you report a web site that's not using ethical SEO, it is most likely so it will undoubtedly be removed. This implies there's one less company that you need to be worried about in the online arena, at the least for enough time being. If your website involved outranked yours, you also obtain the added advantage of seeing your rankings improve whilst the violating pages are removed--provided, of course, that you're using ethical SEO techniques and steering clear of violations yourself, or perhaps you are reported by a competitor of yours or its SEO service!
The engine also advantages of users reporting violations. Engines do in contrast to people trying to trick their indexes, since there might then be pages showing up for particular search terms which are not actually highly relevant to those terms. Clearly, search engines understand why benefit--if the engines thought they may weed out all the spam themselves, they would not supply a reporting system. Supporting this type of system, in the end, is not free. Real people employed by the engine have to see the offending pages to ensure that they are not using ethical SEO tactics.
In the notable example cited earlier of the firm that got most of its clients penalized, who owns the SEO service involved was quoted as saying, "Google can kiss my ass. This is actually the Wild Wild West." He may be right--maybe it is the Wild Wild West. But there are tons of of new sheriffs in town--and they're wearing white hats.
