Hello everyone I really enjoyed this thread; this is important stuff and certainly worthy of discussion and consideration. In the political world, I'm well known (for example I work mostly with senatorial and congressional campaigns), for doing "wet work" reputation and disruptive SEO for national political campaigns (I also do very aggressive SEO and reputation mgmt. for contributions and "spin"). The stuff that happens behind the scenes can be pretty ugly and my approach for the last 15 years has been to brand myself as a "hired gun". This has worked out financially and has earned me some get out of jail free cards and powerful allies along the way. It's a very exclusive world that keeps to itself and I was fortunate enough to have a good friend who was a major tech contractor for the Navy; that's how I got my in. These campaigns are very unique, to say the least: lifetime gag orders/NDA's, FBI polygraph auditing, the complete inability to discuss my work with my family or anyone and an accumulation of knowledge that I wish I didn't have. Allot of emotional baggage comes along with this work and an important part of keeping my sanity and my self-respect has been utilizing my skillset, unique SEO technologies and connections to do some good in the world.
My current project (which is probably my favorite ever) is that I am building a volunteer fire department from scratch for a very vulnerable but beautiful town in Latin-America. This town was selected as it's where my in-laws have built their retirement home. I was prompted to build this campaign when a resident of this town died in a house fire because there is literally no fire rescue less than an hour away. My father-in-law is a retired fire captain and so we are working together closely on this. We have been able to fund everything through donations of money and equipment (we were just given a beautiful fire engine). We have been able to facilitate expert training and lead some pretty cool recruitment efforts. I built all of the infrastructure, websites, social and whatnot. I am executing simultaneous marketing campaigns: SEO, Social, E-Mail, WOMM, etc. We have seen excellent traction and we are getting close to the finish line.
I just wanted to share, thank you. There is so much ugly out there; it's really cool to see the web marketing world discuss the good they are doing. Thanks guys. Cheers and Best Wishes from Heartless Bastard SEO