Ok, my blog is back! I have to apologize for being so dumb that the hosting transfer took me about a week! But please bare with me: I have reasons (well, one reason to be precise) to be busy and overwhelmed and… Alright, I guess that’s enough for excuses – I just mean to say […]
Digital Marketing Ethics by Ann Smarty
Digital Marketing Ethics have always been a controversial - sometimes touchy - subject among internet marketers. Those who work on the technical side have a tendency to demonize search engine optimization thanks to scrapers and scammers using improper methods to drive traffic. This is almost always a numbers game for them, a way of generating PPC profits and upping their ranking Google to get more without any real effort.
Of course, Digital Marketing is so much more than that. A couple of bad eggs doesn’t stop the fact that proper keyword enhancement and exploitation is a normal part of optimizing a website for the very algorithm Google has put in place. No amount of changes to that algorithm lessens the impact of SEO on search results.
In a time where so many popular marketing tactics are being demonized, it isn’t easy to say where the issue of ethics stands. On one hand, you have people like Google’s Matt Cutts claiming guest posting is dead (I vehemently disagree). Nofollow is being enforced on links, reducing the opportunities for link building to an insane degree. Paid guest posting is so rare now that little websites haven’t got much of a chance of using it to build a stronger following.
What is clear is that ethics in marketing isn’t. Black and white adherence to everything Google says is a quick way to reduce your results. That doesn’t mean you should go against their policies and guidelines, just that the matter of what is “right” is more a matter of debate than it might at first seem. Is guest posting inherently bad? Obviously not. Is using a paid guest post to manipulate readers into contributing to PPC profits shady? It could be argued that yes, it is.
This is an ever changing topic, and in this section we will cover everything to do with it.
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The Ethics of Guest Posting – Am I Wrong?
Guest posting (contributing to other blogs with the link back – usually in the “About the author” section) is the great way to: build backlinks; attract audience (probably interested in neighboring niches); build relationships with other bloggers, etc I’ve been recently involved in a number of guest posts throughout different-niche blogs and was struck by […]
SEO Consultant’s Email Signature – What’s Your Tactic?
I’ve been recently thinking about optimizing my email signature. The problem is, I have too many things to include there and at the same time want to keep it simple and clean. Running a few experiments I came to important (yet evident) conclusions: email / digital signature is of great importance: it influences both the […]
Online Negative Reputation Case Studies – That’s Never Been Easier
While Tom over at SEOmoz posted a must-read piece on negative reputation, its types and ways to deal with it (like SERPs monitoring, social media monitoring, etc), I decided to add my two cents here discussing a few online services that encourage spreading negative reputation over the Internet. The websites discussed offer anyone anonymously to […]
Negative Voting – I Am Ann Smarty and I’m Thumboholic
Like I said previously, social media is not all about friends and mutual help. It might also trigger unreasoned hatred, misinterpretation and misunderstanding. Well, fellow Mozzers might have noticed my highly negative attitude towards SEOMoz thumb down system; so recent discussions over there inspired me to post my opinion on general negative voting across the […]
Blatant Content Plagiarism – Am I To Thank You?
Today I’ve been struck by the most blatant content plagiarism I have ever experienced in my life. (Please forgive my bringing this issue up almost at the Christmas Eve, but this just ripped me off!) Checking my admin area, I saw a new comment that caught my eye: Huh?! How do you like that? Yes, […]
Do You Sphinn, Digg, etc Your Own Articles?
To Sphinn or not to sphinn… That is the question. Bookmarking one’s own articles can be frowned upon being compared with mere spamming. And here is my sincere confession: I DO bookmark posts authored by me as social bookmarking is the best way to get to know your audience, to evaluate your own content and […]
