As we believe that such Codes should be unified across the Web, we have chosen to use those supported by many industry experts.

"Whereas all parties are working towards presenting relevant and high quality information in an easy to use format to information seekers and, whereas SEO - SEM Professionals are being contracted to assist clients in obtaining higher rankings for the clients website and web pages, we are voluntarily adhering to the below SEO Code of Ethics:

SEO - SEM Professionals will not intentionally do harm to a client. This involves the continued use of any technology or procedure (without appropriate care) that is known to result in having the client site removed from search engine indexes or directories or rendered inoperative. Questionable adherence to standards must be addressed via the Robots Exclusion Standard.

SEO - SEM Professionals will not intentionally violate any specifically published and enforced rules of search engines or directories. Should rules and guidelines change (as they often do), SEO - SEM Professionals will promptly take action to comply with the changes as they apply to all clients. Where rules and guidelines are unclear, SEO - SEM Professionals will seek clarification and await approval from the appropriate search engine before continuing to utilize potentially harmful technology or procedures.

SEO - SEM Professionals will not intentionally mislead, harm or offend a consumer. All individuals utilizing a search engine to visit a site will not be misled by the information presented to or by the search engine or harmed or offended upon arrival at the client site. This includes techniques like "bait and switch" where the client page does not substantially contain and is not clearly associated with the optimized phrase or may be reasonably offensive to targeted visitors.

SEO - SEM Professionals will not intentionally violate any laws. This involves the deliberate and continued violation of copyright, trademark, servicemark or laws related to spamming as they may exist at the state, federal or international level.

SEO - SEM Professionals will not falsely represent the content of the client site. This includes the practice of presenting different versions of Web pages to different users except where that information is altered solely to meet browser specifications and needs, sensitivity to regional factors such as language or product specific needs. In general, ALL requests for a specific URL should be served identical HTML by the Web server.

SEO - SEM Professionals will not falsely represent others work as their own. This includes the taking of work from others in whole or in part and representing this work as their own. SEO - SEM Professionals may not make verbatim copies of the work of others (instead of authoring original work) without the prior consent of the other party.

SEO - SEM Professionals will not misrepresent their own abilities, education, training, standards of performance, certifications, trade group affiliations, technical inventory or experiences to others. This includes quantifiable statements related to project timetables, performance history, company resources (staff, equipment and proprietary products) and client lists. Guarantees will be restricted to items over which SEO - SEM Professionals has significant and reasonable control.

SEO - SEM Professionals will not participate in a conflict of interest without prior notice to all parties involved. This includes the practice of choosing to emphasize one client over another in competing keywords because there is more personal gain for the practitioner. All clients are treated equally and all will receive equal best effort in their Search Engine Optimization.

SEO - SEM Professionals will not set unreasonable client expectations. This includes the practice of accepting more than a reasonable number of clients competing for the same keywords and implying that all will be in the top positions in the search engines. This also includes the implication that results can be obtained in an unreasonable amount of time given the known condition of the search engines, client site and competition.

SEO - SEM Professionals will offer their clients both internal and external dispute resolution procedures. This includes the publishing of address and phone numbers on primary Web pages, the inclusion of third-party dispute resolution links prominently placed within the practitioner’s website and contracts that include sections discussing dispute resolution.

SEO - SEM Professionals will protect the confidentiality and anonymity of their clients with regards to privileged information and items implying testimonial support for SEO - SEM Professionals All staff of SEO - SEM Professionals shall be bound to protect information that is not generally known as it may harm the client. SEO - SEM Professionals will not include the publishing of testimonials and proprietary logos of client lists, press releases and other collateral discussing the client without explicit approvals.

This Code of Ethics was originally written by industry expert Bruce Clay and we have adopted this Code Of Ethics for SEO - SEM Professionals.