10 sneaky marketing tactics you need to avoid

Jonathan, thanks for the article. I'm new to digital marketing so tips and tricks are very handy.

I've to admit I'm guilty of #2 - my arm was twisted, I swear. But the superiors felt that since the information was public (don't ask how), it was perfectly acceptable. I know it's deceptive but how about e-mail address acquisition through database marketing companies? Are they all unethical then - do I just avoid them like the plague?

Great article. I'm glad you called out Adobe's force-feeding of McAfee; it's really beneath them (well, apparently it's not beneath them!) and I shake my head when I see such prominent organizations engaging in this. I think Adobe has some great products but they have created a lot of ill will with this technique.

@Toby I don't have my email address on my public sites, but people do know the company I work for, so they just start guessing at the email configuration. first inital [dot] middle initial [dot] last name...no...first name [dot] last name. There's a finite number of options, so it's not hard to figure out.

Jonathan, love the Report Spam button, we use it in Google Apps.

But one question: why don't you have a 'temporary email on your public sites. Then when too many morons and pond scum (can't swear here, love to say what I really think, involves blunt knives, castration or breast removal), we turn the address off.

But it does raise a question about a great community way to hit back at the scum: If millions of us on GMail (or similar 'live reporting' spam filters) encouraged spam to be sent to us by posting our addresses online, they would be turned off quickly. Hopefully the older fashioned spam filter companies would get to hear about or share the feeds of the 'live' filtering companies

So the spammers are turned off fast, so make less money, and that's all they care about. So the problem goes away.

Is that all it takes to rid us of this global scurge?

My own ongoing campaign is NEVER to buy anything from an unsolicited email. Doesn't have quite the same impact. What do you think?

@Paul - there is no difference between the keyword stuffing described and other "tricks" to get ranked - they're all unethical, disallowed by the SEs, and lead to a poor user experience. True Search Engine Optimization is based (in part) on ensuring that your content and inbound links are relevant, keyword rich, and focus on what your site or product is truly about. Using "tricks" will frequently get you penalized in the SEs in addition to providing a poor user experience.
So in short, any of the "tricks" that would detract from the user experience will also be likely to negatively impact your organic rankings across SEs. XP and SEO are tightly woven and should work together.

Good piece! Speaking for the devil, I like the way iMedia breaks its articles across pages - by chunking the content that way, I'll wager readers have better retention of the pieces. People seriously lose attention on big, long single screens of text.

Just out of interest, what's the difference (philosophically) between keyword stuffing and any other SEO trick?

As far as I can tell, the "optimisation" is only for the seller, not the search engine user. I might be imagining things, but it seems to be getting harder and harder to these days to distinguish information sites (which I need) from sites which are pretending to be what I need, but are actually just selling stuff.

That was a fantastic list. I found every single one of those 10 to be helpful. I am new to bloggin. I have just bought my own domain, so this sort of help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Brian

Great article! Had to laugh at the stupidity of these "marketers." When you have to reduce yourself to such schemes, it's because you really don't want to do your job.

@Kate Apparently more than what we think, but Google only seems to think about 260 people globally per month. I'm guessing that when you're selling immortality, you have to focus on the "long tail."

"alien cemetery"? Is that really something that people search for regularly?!? I'm laughing. Great article Jonathan.

@Kip That hurts. That hurts. There could have been a worse ending.

Hey, Butch got all the way to the end! The result? iMedia lets Jonathan submit another article. ; ) I kid, I kid....

Google Guys say it best, "Don't Be Evil." Sage advice that everyone should follow.

@Butch. Yep...that's probably in the top 20. You probably got iMedia's attention at least. (PS: I just do the writing, not the layout)

So how do you rank the "Next Page" trick? Generator of page views for you and the reward is tiny bits of content?