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Comment by Kiro | Hacker News Reader

If you're doing SEO at all you should be punished imo. Let Google do its job without interfering and trying to manipulate please. And no, I don't believe there is such a thing as "whitehat SEO". Whitehat SEO is just common sense (write good content and don't screw up your markup).

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You're assuming that the SEO being performed is to manipulate or 'trick' users and while this does happen its not always the case.Search spiders are far from perfect in recognizing the relevance of webpages, seo helps them understand what a page is all about.

Also, not everyone understands what good content is, or how to properly markup their websites.

The field of SEO is quickly (or slowly depending on who you ask) being transformed into a much more holistic discipline where content creation, usability, conversion optimization, pr and marketing are falling into SEO's job duties. It's much more than page markup and links.

That's like saying trying to sell your product is a sin.

Mind telling me how a consumer web startup is supposed to get others who are interested in X to visit his site about X? This is the basis of SEO: matching searchers to pages. It doesn't happen magically just by wishful thinking, and writing good content unfortunately.

No, it's like saying trying to lure people into buying something worse instead of the better is a sin. Like the product manufacturer secretly sneaking around in stores hiding competing products and putting their own in the front.

In this world, there will always be people who will attempt to sell you a shoddy product, and snake oil salesman.

But because that's the case, and you got a quality product, you're saying to sit tight, don't get out of the building, don't try to sell... and hope people will eventually choose you?

So how exactly is a consumer startup going to get people who want to know X to visit your site about X?

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