Effective Advertising in a Virtual World
With a traditional business, the storefront of your location draws the attention of potential customers passing by on the street. For respectable businesses, the decor conveys professionalism and the sincerity of the business. The business logo, name, and the store’s overall appearance all provide clues to its purpose and target audience. A website is the online business equivalent to a storefront, and the same advertising principals apply.
Where’s Paris Hilton and My Coffee?
Employing misleading advertising tactics may pay off initially, but the end-effect is damaging to your business integrity. If the sign in a store window reads, ” Paris Hilton buys her coffee here,” customer traffic is sure to increase. If a customer comes inside, however, and finds neither signs of Paris nor a drop of java in the building, the customer won’t make a purchase and probably won’t recommend your business to their friends.
Misleading advertising is used by some search engine optimizing (SEO) companies to increase website traffic by automatically redirecting surfers to another site that may or may not be related to the topic requested by the consumer. An individual clicks on a link that purportedly should bring him or her to a certain website, but the person ends up elsewhere. For example, the individual who came to see Paris and drink coffee ends up in a store that sells cell phones.
The Search for Ms. Hilton
Using shadow domains and doorway pages are tactics termed “black hat” SEO because of the unethical attempts to deceive the consumer. Other black hat tactics include cloaking keyword text into the colored background of web pages and overloading content with keywords, otherwise known as stuffing.
Keywords are terms that an Internet surfer enters into the search engines search box. When you sit down at your computer, pull up Google, and enter “Paris Hilton’s Coffee,” those three words are considered keywords. Search engines find the website content with the most relevant match, and will provide you with a list of choices to view. These choices are called SERPS, or search engine results pages.
Certain individuals use black hat strategies while ignoring quality content. This practice is frowned upon and should be avoided by all honest business owners. A keyword density under 3% is generally acceptable by search engines, as long as the contextual content is presented in a first-rate manner. This should be combined with interesting, relevant, easy-to read content to provide value for the website and the reader.
Black Hats Clash with Business Suits
Some upstanding businesses can be unknowingly sucked into the game of getting increased visitor traffic when seeking to optimize their website. When business owners use black hat tactics that are deceptive, the results can be devastating for a business. Black hat tactics can cause a search engine to block a website from their database- permanently. Honest SEO tactics are available that will help your business rise to the top of the SERPS. It is far better to let you business shine for its uniqueness and quality than for its statistics and deception.
