Ethical SEO should be a technique that:

1. Does more good than harm.
2. Remembers the dignity and rights of everyone who is involved.
3. Treats everyone who is involved fairly.
4. Looks out for the overall benefit of everyone who is involved.
5. Enhances the participant’s experience.

With this in mind, it is also important to clearly understand what is expected of both the Search Engines, the users and both the web page and its owner alike.

Some of the things that are expected of Search Engines include:

1. Return the most relevant resources based upon the keywords that are entered by the user.
2. Index and maintain an index of all of the different web pages that are online today.
3. Be honest about the links that they sponsor on their search results pages.

Some of the things that are expected of web pages and site owners include:

1. Provide relevant content for the user’s search.
2. Remain honest whenever changing the content or keywords.
3. Adhere to the Terms and Conditions that various Search Engines have laid out.

Some of the things that are expected of the users include:

1. They should only use those search engines that return relevant results on their results pages to do their web searching.
2. They should be at least somewhat aware of what is taking place on the Internet.
3. They should be fair whenever a case of minor mismatches in search results takes place. This should always be their attitude unless these mismatches appear to be done with malicious intent.