Effective Advertising in a Virtual World

With a traditional business, the store front of your location is used to draw the attention of potential customers. The decor can convey professionalism and the sincerity of your business. The business logo, name, and the store's appearance all provide clues to its purpose and target audience. A business website is the Internet's equivalent to a storefront and the same advertising principals should 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 sign of Paris nor a drop a 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 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. 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" because of the unethical attempts to deceive the consumer. Other black hat tactics include cloaking keyword text into the colored background of web pages.

Keywords are terms most commonly entered into search engines. 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.

Some individuals use black hat strategies such as loading a website with a high density of keywords and don't care about quality content. This practice is frowned upon and should be avoided by all honest business owners. Keyword density under 3% is generally acceptable by search engines, as long as the contextual content is presented in a first-rate manner.

Black Hats Clash with Business Suits

Some upstanding businesses can be unknowingly sucked into the game of getting more hits (or people visiting their site) when seeking to optimize their website. Many business owners may use black hat tactics that are deceptive and the results can be devastating for a business. Black hat tactics can cause a search engine to block a website from their database permanently. If your business is a good one, people will visit - don't trick them into coming faster.