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Interesting post over at SEOMOZ this week discussing the latest law to hit European SEOs.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/new-uk-law-criminalizes-stealth-marketing-techniques
There’s been much debate in the SEO world, of course as many SEO firms pay for articles and links to look as though they are natural.
The UK inevitably will be the one EU country to enforce the law, so UK SEO operatives need to proceed with caution.
For a white hat SEO firm this will not be much of a problem. Underhanded techniques are not necessary to attain good search ranking…but make no mistake – they do help.
It will be very difficult to prove that any of the techniques mentioned in the above article are being used, but no doubt there will be some who fall foul of the law.
A number of very large companies have used supposedly third party websites to promote their goods, whilst secretly owning the sites all along. Some are quickly scrubbing these out of existence, but I’m quite sure a large amount will remain. What’s a £5000 fine to a multi-national?
UK SEO companies will do well to be careful that some of their legitimate promotional processes are not misinterpreted as deception covered by this new bill which came into force at the end of May.
