Ineffective and Unethical Web Site Promotion Methods

In this article I discuss some ineffective and/or unethical website promotion tactics. I talk about them here so that you won't waste your time and resources pursuing them.

Spamming

If you're like me, you're sick and tired of receiving hundreds of spam messages in your mailbox every morning, and you would not consider buying anything they had to offer, even if it's something you really wanted.

Needless to say, spammers are not the most decent people in the world, and it comes as no surprise that many of them are also scam artists posing as eBay or PayPal to steal your credit card information. Everday inexperienced and unsuspecting internet users continue to fall prey to unscrupulous characters from the dark corners of cyberspace.

While spamming is not a completely ineffective promotion tactic, I don't recommend it as a way to promote your site at all. Not only is spamming highly intrusive and unethical, but it could also get you into a lot of trouble. Just imagine how many people you'd have to anger to make a sale or to get a visitor to your site. The search engines will ban your site when they find out that you have been spamming. Various laws are now being made to prosecute spammers.

Pop-up/Pop-under Traffic Schemes

Have you seen ads offering "1,000 visitors for $9.95"?

Consider this: many companies are willing to pay up to $10 or more for every visitor Google or Overture sends to their site. Why wouldn't they spend their $10 to get 1,000 visitors from pop-up ad brokers, instead?

Perhaps they're smart enough to realize that the 1,000 "visitors" they would get from having their sites displayed in pop-up and pop-under windows on other sites are worth less than the one legitimate visitor Google or Overture sends them.

While not necessarily unethical, pop-up advertising is no longer as effective as it used to be. Most web surfers find pop-ups annoying and intrusive, and many now use pop-up blockers to avoid them. Even those who don't have blockers installed on their browsers have grown accustomed to instinctively close pop-ups and pop-unders without taking a glance at them.

A pop-up exchange is a program that allows members to show pop-up windows linking to one another's site. As a member of the exchange, your site would display a pop-up linking to another member's site every time someone visits your site. There is usually an exchange ratio involved. A 2:1 exchange ratio means that for every two pop-ups you show on your site, your pop-up would be displayed once on someone else's site.

Pop-up exchanges aren't especially effective for the reasons mentioned above. Furthermore, they are vulnerable to cheaters who use automated means to fraudulently inflate their credits.

Surfing Exchanges

Surfing exchanges are programs where you surf other people's web sites to get others to surf yours.

In start-page exchanges you to set your home page to a special URL on which another member's site will be displayed every time you start your browser. Alternatively, you may simply bookmark the URL and receive credit every time you visit it.

Click exchanges allow you to earn credits by clicking on other people's links. There is usually a 20- or 30-second timer that counts down the required amount of time you must spend on the site. In return your link will be exposed to other members to click on.

Like pop-up exchanges, these schemes will get you traffic just for the sake of getting traffic-- little of it be of any use. Most people who join these programs are more interested in accumulating credits rather than looking through your site. Many run several traffic exchange programs simultaneously (in different windows) to gain credits on multiple programs rather than exploring a site that they're supposed to explore.

Link Farming

A link farm is a website that has little or no original content and is created for the sole purpose of exchanging links with other websites. Like free-for-all (FFA) pages, link farms have nothing but links to other websites. Link farming has flourished in response to the growing emphasis on link popularity for search placement by many search engines.

Never exchange links with a link farm. Many search engines will penalize or even ban your site for linking to link farms. Obviously, you have no control over who links to you, so you cannot be penalized when link farms link to you. But linking back to them is another story.

Free-for-all (FFA) sites allow anyone to post links on their pages. FFA's generally don't require you to link back to them, so listing your site on FFAs will not hurt your rankings. However, link popularity is not so much as about the sheer number of links to your site as it is about the number of quality links to your site. Search engines are smart enough to tell which links are relevant and which aren't. Securing a handful of inbound links from qualified sites will do you more good than having your site listed on a thousand FFAs.

Article by Oudam Em. Oudam is the webmaster of Web Launch, a free resource for web site promotion, search engine optimization (SEO), and affiliate programs. Please visit his site for more free tips and tutorials on optimizing and promoting your site.

---

Effective Affordable Website Promotion Can Be Achieved

Seeking effective affordable website promotion should begin with listing your... Read More

4 Steps to a Robot?s Tea Party

Creating a new website is only the first stage in... Read More

Drive People to Your Site to Buy Your Products

Bring those visitors back for more, applauding you and saying... Read More

How are Directories Different from Search Engines?

Directories are important to your ranking and success with Search... Read More

Why You Need Submit Articles To E-zines

Ezine publishes have large amount of loyal subscribers. If you... Read More

Do Not Post To FFAs (Free For All Sites) & Link Farms

With learning about online promotion, there is so much information... Read More

Online Advertising: Three Smart Online Advertising Secrets To Promote Your Online Business

The shortcut to succeed in business is to do what... Read More

10 Website Blunders Guaranteed to Send Your Visitors Elsewhere

When you build your website you need to have a... Read More

How to Write Effective Web Copy

Writing effective web copy begins with an understanding of what... Read More

Internet Directory Submission, Sure Way To Link Popularity

Most website owners fail to differentiate between a directory and... Read More

Time to Tell A Friend

The internet has the capacity, sometimes, to divorce not just... Read More

SEO 101 ? The Basics of How to Get to the Top of the Search Engines

Depending on your site's subject... Read More

How Can You Promote Your Online Business Offline?

Many people miss out on some very valuable promotion opportunities... Read More

How to Get Hundreds of Links to Your Site

If you are website owner and you have begun exchanging... Read More

Sales Marketing: 10 Proven Secrets To Market Your Website Offline

Some Internet marketing experts have claimed that the best way... Read More

The Definitive Link Building Strategy

If you've gone through all the hard work of a... Read More

How To Acquire One Way Inbound Links

How can one get a good ranking in the major... Read More

Is Your Website Content Worth Reading or Obvious Search Engine Bait?

Webmasters are always looking for ways to increase their traffic... Read More

Web Site Promotion: 42 Deadly Ad Copy Sins To Avoid, To Ensure Rapid Success

Most people who are not doing well on the internet... Read More

Improve Your Website In 3 Simple Ways

You may already have thought about the following 3 ways... Read More

10 Magic Ways To Multiply Your Orders

1. Use reward programs to keep people revisiting your web... Read More

How to Get More Links to Your Websites and Improve Traffic

I feel the most effective way to get people to... Read More

Selling To Everyone Means You Sell to No One

1. Selling To Everyone Means You Sell to No OneIf... Read More

Donuts Anyone?

When we ran the contest back in 1998 we had... Read More

Streamline Your Training Costs with Streaming Media

Streaming Media?now a well accepted Internet technology. Yet streaming is... Read More

Ideal Software Archive Website

How to build the ideal website for software archives. View... Read More

Tips to Maintain your Website to Keep Visitors Coming Back

When you design a website you should create it so... Read More

Promoting Your Business Website - Where to Begin?

Website promotion is certainly a main focus of all business... Read More

Promote Your Web Store

After spending substantial time and efforts the big day came... Read More

Online Advertising: 10 Smart Ways To Increase The Perceived Value Of Your Product

If you have a website promoting any product or service,... Read More

Promotion Techniques Dont Have To Be A Hassle

Are you tired of writing countless eMails to other webmasters... Read More

Online Website Promotion: Five Fantastic Breakthrough Marketing Ideas To Enrich You

Good Ideas.They are the stuff that form the foundation of... Read More

Joint Venture 101 - The Quickest Way To Build Your eBusiness (PART 1)

This article reveal the same techniques that many Internet marketing... Read More