The Ethical Internet Advertising Agency
By: ANDY ELIASON

An Internet advertising agency has a number of options open to them, both ethical and non-ethical, when it comes to promoting your website. As search engines continue to evolve their algorithms, marketing companies work to keep up. There are numerous "rules" an Internet advertising agency can follow to build solid, lasting rankings, or – and this is the scary part – they can use those rules to attempt to manipulate the search results.

The more in-depth one knows the "rules" the more that person will discover ways to exploit. And there's been a lot of talk lately about a newly theoretical application of unethical search engine marketing, often referred to as "negative SEO". Now these unethical Internet advertising agencies have gone past simply manipulating their way to the top and right into maliciously pulling others down.

Not only is this behavior unethical, it could be dangerous. There are legal ramifications to employing methods designed solely with the intent of damaging a competitor's website.

And yet, that doesn't seem to dissuade certain unethical Internet advertising agencies from attempting them.

Some of the practices might include: Google Bowling, spamming in your competition's name, fake copyright complaints or fake duplicate content, and even click fraud. These things are designed to hurt a website in different ways, and an ethical Internet advertising agency will never employ them. They understand that you are more likely to enjoy success when you employ ethical Internet marketing techniques and advertising best practices. The right company understands that unethical practices are likely to do more harm than good.

Google Bowling is currently the topic of discussion since it has received some mainstream press. Basically the practice involves black-hat SEO – not for your own website, but for your competitor's. As search engines evolved, they began doing more than just ignoring or devaluing certain SEO practices. They started penalizing websites for questionable behavior. So the agencies of questionable ethics reasoned that if those penalties could harm them, then they could harm their competition by doing it for them.

In this case, the practice is link spamming. If a site gets too many links too fast then Google pronounced that an unnatural growth and buries the site in the results or even outright bans them. So the theory goes: what if there's a site out there that you don't think you can beat by normal methods? Why not convince the search engines to knock them down a peg or two so you can?

It's an interesting theory, but so far it seems to be just that. A theory. Not only is it unproven, but Google flat out says that it's almost impossible for competitors to harm your ranking or have you removed from their index.

But when you think about it, it ought to work.

Luckily "ought tos" aren't going to take the unethical marketing agencies very far. Imagine dropping 500,000 links to your competitor in a weekend in hopes of framing them for link spamming (trying to Google Bowl them). In theory, anyone who gets that kind of linking in such a short period should suffer the penalty and possibly get banned. Whether they do it themselves or you do it for them, shouldn't the search engines see it as the same thing?

But what if you do it wrong? What if your work isn't noticed immediately? Then all you've done is hand your competition hundreds of thousands of links, pushing them even further out of range and more untouchable.

The ethical Internet advertising agency can help you reach the top of the search engine results and stay there. They can also help protect you from the agencies who might try using these practices against you.

Andy Eliason is a writer at Main10, an Internet Marketing and Development company. Visit their website if you'd like to find out more about what it takes to be an ethical Internet advertising agency.

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