There are many types of unethical SEO / SEM practices to be found and organizations engage in this process at their own brands setbacks through loss of brand loyalty and damage to their reputation that can forever affect their bottom line.

“Black hat” tactics as it is known within the marketing market are tactics meant to manipulate change or alter information to trick search engines to promote themselves and some of the techniques used are: keyword stuffing, buying backlinks, cloaking, or hidden text.

After research there were a few known problematic cases, especially noted was the JCPenney SEO scandal of 2011:

Problem – Used link scam to boost their Google ranking by creating other websites to backlink to their product pages using generic keywords. This gave an appearance of increased authoritative prejudice and increased their Google ranking to the top. This is against Google webmaster guidelines and handled by Google within their terms of service or TOS. (When Unethical SEO Backfires: The Lessons from J.C. Penney’s Google Scandal – Nenad’s Marketing Blog, 2026).

Result – When this scheme was exposed by The New York Times, the company was penalized by Google by quickly and drastically lowering their rankings, and their organic traffic took a giant hit, along with their sales and reputation. The firm that JCPenney hired was fired. This SEO unethical blunder is known as one of the most famous examples in history (Fox, 2012). This is another example of SEO black hat practice

Another well known scandal was committed by North Face:

Problem – Was caught and reported by Wikipedia users of manipulating pictures on Wikipedia by updating them with alternate pictures that show pictures of people putting on North Face products in them from popular traveling destinations to show a correlation. This against Wikipedia’s terms of service as it was exploiting their authority and thus enhance North Face’s search rankings on popular search platforms (Graham, 2024). This allowed their gear to reach top billing on Google search results due to their algorithms processing of Wikipedia as an authority, costing North Face nothing for SEM. Per (Yi, 2019) “The agency then created a video ad in which The North Face touted how it achieved top search results on Google without paying anything as part of its “Top of Images” campaign.

Result – Originally North Face stated it collaborated with Wikipedia for the campaign, but quickly was responded to by Wikipedia as a false claim. This was considered false claims and North Face offered an apology (Kan, 2019) and the pictures placed were altered by Wikipedia and the North Face product edited out. This violated Wikipedia’s terms of service. North Face faced a boycott for its part in this black hat scandal.

A very clear distinction between ethical and unethical practices are that unethical practices violate guidelines and can carry penalties and even damage a website or brand’s reputation, whereas ethical is committed to integrity and user-centric practices such as quality content.

Ethical SEO primarily focuses on creating high-quality content with optimized page speed, using natural link building and effective keyword research , so as to build value to users and search engine results. Ethical SEO builds long-term brand loyalty and trust as an authoritive voice that enhances visibility with quality researched content that is well linked and is engaging and relevant to users and search engines.

Unethical SEO prioritizes manipulating tactics that factor that attempt to deceive users and search engines, through use of tactics such as cloaking (presenting different content to users and search engines), buying links (purchasing backlinks to manipulate search engine rankings), or keyword stuffing (deliberate and overuse of keywords on a page to manipulate search engine algorithms) (SEO, 2024).

Benefits of being ethical

There are exceedingly more benefits to bein ethical when promoting SEO strategies vs unethical.

1. Foremost is long-term bran reputation and trust
2. Long-term higher search engine rankings with regularly optimizing website
3. Consumer trust that improve search engine rankings because of enhanced user experience with intuitive navigation, fast response times to both website and mobile experiences, user friendly website
4. Transparent reporting to ensure and build trust among all stakeholders to ensure growth through sustainable accountability (SEO, 2024)

References

Fox, V. (2012, May 22). New York Times Exposes J.C. Penney Link Scheme That Causes Plummeting Rankings in Google – Search Engine Land. Search Engine Land. https://searchengineland.com/new-york-times-exposes-j-c-penney-link-scheme-that-causes-plummeting-rankings-in-google-64529

Graham, S. (2024, April 6). Unethical SEO/SEM Tactics: A Lesson from The North Face. Search with Sam. https://samanthagrahamnet.wordpress.com/2024/04/06/unethical-seo-sem-tactics-a-lesson-from-the-north-face/

Kan, M. (2019, May 30). The North Face is Sorry for Hacking Wikipedia Photos to Promote Brand. PCMAG; PCMag. https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-north-face-is-sorry-for-hacking-wikipedia-photos-to-promote-brand

SEO. (2024, October 24). MediaOne. https://mediaonemarketing.com.sg/ethical-seo-vs-unethical-seo-practices/

When Unethical SEO Backfires: The Lessons from J.C. Penney’s Google Scandal – Nenad’s marketing blog. (2026, April 4). Nn-Designs.com. https://www.nn-designs.com/seo-vs-sem/seo-and-sem-ethical-and-legal-considerations/

Yi, P. (2019). The North Face’s Wikipedia Stunt Goes South. Manatt.com. https://www.manatt.com/insights/newsletters/advertising-law/the-north-faces-wikipedia-stunt-goes-south