As an SEO, I can see things from the other side of the table.  You see, despite trying hard to make it clear I'm a good, ethical, results-oriented, smarter marketing, white-hat SEO, I have gotten no end of inquiries from bad prospective SEO clients.  Sure, no one who gets cheated is ever entirely to blame, and some cheated businesses are entirely blameless.  But the bad SEOs would have too small a market to stay in business if it weren't for almost-as-bad clients.

Shades of Bad SEO Clients

Bad SEOs are bad because they either do unethical things to get e-marketing results, or because they consistently fail to deliver results.  A good SEO delivers results and does it without trampling over other people’s rights (like submitting automated comments to their websites or trying to get good sites de-indexed).

A bad SEO client, in turn, is someone who will only be satisfied (albeit temporarily) with a bad SEO.  Because they refuse to consider ethical web consultants or smarter marketing strategies, they are creating markets for the e-marketing charlatans and black-hats.   There are two basic types of bad SEO clients: crooks and fool–oops, I mean, ethically challenged and judgmentally-challenged.

Ethically-Challenged SEO Clients

I haven't gotten so many inquiries asking for out-and-out unethical services.  Still, I've been asked about blog-sp@mming software and other shady internet marketing tactics a couple times. A colleague shared this gem with me: Have you thought about just scanning a book from the library and using it for web content? Or is that too high-risk?? (Seriously, someone asked him this.)

Of course, judging from the amount of comment sp@m and SEO-motivated hacking on the web,  there is plenty of demand for this stuff.

The author works on website promotion and affordable web hosting.