SEO 'thought to be inbound link trickery'

The majority of people consider search engine optimisation (SEO) to be a "dark art" which involves tricking the portals into ranking a website highly, an expert has noted.

Patrick Altoft, professional blogger and the managing director of Branded3 Search, made his comments in an article for E-consultancy, noting that this is an increasingly inaccurate belief.

He suggested that many people believe SEO firms own a network of websites and use these to generate scores of inbound links for their clients but warned that this is an increasingly risky tactic for a marketing agency to employ.

"The problem with getting links from a network is that unless the network is full of high quality real websites it's pretty unlikely that Google is going to want them influencing the search results," Mr Altoft explained.

Earlier this year, Paul Rudman, the director and head of optimisation at SEO agency CommerceTuned, remarked that using a network of low-quality websites to supply inbound links is a dangerous tactic for any firm to allow.

He suggested that relying to such a degree on one optimisation strategy alone meant that in the long term firms are likely to be penalised or even banned from the search results.