The subject of our next “what would _____ do if they were an SEO or a search marketer?” post is Al Capone.  Since we are a Chicago SEO company, Chicago’s most notorious son was a natural choice.  Obviously, Al Capone would be a black hat SEO, as he was no stranger to shady and underhanded tactics (to say the least - after all, at least the people and companies who tangle with rogue SEOs are still alive at the end, and you can’t say the same for Al’s enemies).

Of course, he would have justified his use of these techniques in much the same way as Machiavelli would have; in his own words “all I do is supply a demand“.  Black hat SEO, bootleg liquor - it’s all the same if you’re Al Capone and an SEO.  He’d probably also argue that the search engines penalizing or banning websites outright was a pointless attempt to stem the flow of spam, much like the Prohibition was a pointless attempt to keep Americans from drinking alcohol, or “Prohibition has made nothing but trouble“.

Similarly, Al Capone would be the first one to call out big names or trusted sites that occasionally employed sneaky SEO techniques, as he famously said “when I sell liquor, they call it bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive, it’s called hospitality“.  He’d also be the first person to submit his own content and vote for his own posts on the social media sites, after all, he believed that one should “vote early and vote often“.

Last but not least, Al (we’re from Chicago, we can call him by his first name) would be a big proponent of the little guys - the small businesses - using search engine optimization and search engine marketing to get to the top of the SERPs.  And we quote: “This American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you will, gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it“.  So why not follow Al’s advice and make the most of your website?  You can even get started right away with our free SEO tool.