SEO Code Of Ethics

Upright abides by a strict code of ethics that has been set by the search engine optimization industry. We support the efforts of Bruce Clay LLC, in preparing an industry-wide SEO code of ethics. This code, a copy of which accompanies every contract, prevents us from taking any actions that might result in your web site being banned from the search engines.

Below you will find the rules by which we govern ourselves with regard to search engine optimization. Click here to download a PDF of the SEO Code Of Ethics.

Recognizing:

that search engine optimization service companies play an important role in the quality and quantity of information being submitted to the search engines
that such service companies occupy the ideal position to help educate website owners and promoters about ethical search engine promotion strategies
that such service companies occupy "gatekeeper" positions where adherence to a Code of Ethics can be enforced

Upright Communications hereby voluntarily agrees to adhere to the following Search Engine Promotion Code of Ethics:

Definitions:

"search engine optimization service" is any company offering any service or software (automated or otherwise) that submits pages to the search engines on behalf of third parties
"client" is any person, company or website owner that uses a search engine optimization service
"keywords" are keyword phrases (search terms) chosen by the client as the search terms for which they want to occupy the top search engine results
"robot page" is a page created by an automated script, program or robot utility; lacking significant content written by human beings
"domain" is any second-level-domain such as mydomain.com or mydomain.net
"search engine" is any searchable index or searchable directory containing the URLs of at least one million web pages

Provisions:

Search engine optimization service companies shall be mindful of the bandwidth and processing burdens imposed on search engines by page submission activities and shall work to minimize the search engines' page indexing burden by ensuring that pages are not frivolously and repeatedly submitted.
Search engine optimization service companies shall abide by each search engine's page submission guidelines and shall not attempt to thwart such guidelines.
No search engine optimization service company shall describe its service as submitting to more search engines than actually exist. Specifically, submits to free-for-all pages shall not be considered "search engines." Only searchable directories or indexes containing information on more than one million URLs shall be considered genuine search engines.
Relevant keywords: clients shall be restricted to the use of keywords that are clearly relevant to their content, products or services. Non-relevant keyword choice shall be disallowed.
No robots: no "robot pages" shall be submitted to any search engine.
No keyword repetition: no page submitted to the search engines shall use blatant keyword repetition. Keywords must be present as an integral part of the page content (i.e. keywords may be used in sentences, paragraphs or headings).
No invisible text: no page submitted to the search engines shall use invisible or near-invisible text in an effort to implant keywords into the HTML source code that are not visible to the reader.
The same URL shall not be submitted to any search engine more than once in 30 days.
No more than 20 unique URLs from any domain shall be submitted to any search engine within a one-year period.
Each web page submitted to the search engines must contain unique content.
No blatant domain mirroring: Each domain submitted to the search engines must contain unique content. Two exceptions: where a secondary domain is established and operated as a pre-emptive move to prevent client competitors from occupying a variation of the original domain name (such as mirroring a www.discountbicycle.com with "www.discountbicycles.com") or where a secondary domain is used to legitimately highlight a focused subset of information also available somewhere on the main site (for example, a site offering Italian foods and recipes might create a second domain focusing only on Italian recipes).
No technology shall be used in an attempt to cloak the web page source code, fool the search engines, or display content to the search engines that is different from what the public sees.
Intellectual property: no search engine service may promote or submit pages that seek to attract traffic using company names or other trademarked terms that do not belong to the client.
The use of any on-page or off-page enhancement not in violation of the other provisions of this Code of Ethics shall be allowed as long as the page content is highly relevant and not in any way misleading to Internet readers. (Example: popularity-boosting and hyperlink-tag strategies are acceptable as long as they are used to promote a content-rich, highly-relevant web page.)
This Code of Ethics imposes no limitations on the content matter submitted to search engines. "Content" is a free speech issue and outside the domain of search engine promotion techniques.
No search engine optimization service company shall knowingly promote or cooperate with any person or company that attempts to thwart these Code of Ethics provisions.
Policing of fully-automated web scripts: In order to enforce the provisions here, fully-automated submitting services or software applications shall integrate self-policing technologies that: 1) disallow the submitting of more than 20 pages from a single domain within a one-year period, 2) disallow the repeated submit of the same URL more than once every 30 days, 3) educate the end-user about the problem of search engine spamming and the importance of submitting fewer high-quality pages rather than a larger volume of low-quality pages. 4) encourage end-users to have patience and wait at least 30 days to see if their pages have been indexed before re-submitting.