I remember back in 2001 when I was getting my break into this industry working for a pretty unscrupulous software company, I remember watching the CEO and the CTO kick me off of my workstation so they could try and turn it into a spam zombie machine for the weekend. Millions upon millions of emails blasted out of my little ol’ workstation over the weekend, promoting our inferior software product. I came in on Monday to find that we had no internet, and every single one of our voicemail inboxes were overflowing with love from all over the US. Ah… good times.
Believe it or not, I think we have come a long way with combating spam in general, be it Askimet for comment spam, search algos for SERP spam, or free filters for mail applications. Nine times out of 10, all spam attacks want you to visit some site for some bogus reason or another. So to me, the best way for each of us to fight spam is on the client level first, essentially preventing the intentional and unintentional spam campaigns from ever going live.
Old Habits Die Hard
Nothing gives me the heebie-jeebies more than hearing an existing client of mine tell me that maybe we should just build up a network of dummy sites with somewhat useful content across multiple IP’s and link back to their flagship site. This tells me that they’re trying to think of a quick way to get link equity, but also it tells me that I have not been a good teacher for what’s ethical and worthwhile.
Can’t really blame them on that one though. This is what the average user remembers from when they first started really getting into the internet back in the day. SPAM! Keyword stuffed invisible text, stuffed urls, stuffed alt tags, shitty redirect pages, misleading SERPs. It’s been our job to fix this for the most part, along with the SE’s picking up the slack with better algo’s and some user democracy to flag the garbage. But we’re still not there yet.
Another Hat For Us To Wear
Web developers and marketers are the dictators of what kind of web will be available to the public. We should follow web standards to create usable sites backed up with consideration for disabled and elderly visitors. We’re responsible for cutting to the chase when it comes for the call-to-action items on a site so we don’t waste visitors time with non-sense. In essence, we are responsible for shaping the internet into something usable and profitable for our clients while being as ethical as possible.
We are also responsible on how we guide our clients to make the best decisions possible when it comes to branding them online. We have to wade through the whole array of typical comments like “well my competitor is doing this, so I want to do that too” or “I want my site to look and function just like this competitor”. The list goes on and on. And we have to be there to take them out of that box and help them realize that this is not about following the leader. It’s about becoming a leader.
But most importantly, we have to teach them about how they’re marketing efforts as a whole need to be focused on gaining trust from new visitors as well as retaining customers through common sense practices. What worked back in the day for steering traffic to a new site is not the best approach now and it’s going to keep changing over time. As long as they trust you to keep them abreast of these changes and how to stay out of trouble, it’s a win-win for all.
Red Flags For Developers & Marketers
This morning I was checking the local Craigslist and saw this help wanted ad:
“I need someone that can build down and dirty content up to very deep researched content for very targeted sites. If you have a quick system and have the ability to build sites for a very small costs please email me. Up to 200 domains. $10 - $50 per site”
Yup, spam. How do I know? Why would you need all that for just one company? 200 domains? Seriously!? If it takes 200 domains for your company to rank and make you money, then you got some serious issues. But what I really suspect is that this person is still stuck in the old days of building up a network of sites geared towards one main site. So I publicly responded:
“Spam much? You’re building 200 domains with “down and dirty” content building. Why? If this isn’t spam, or some whacked out link building scheme, I would like to suggest that you look into just one flagship site and then have a dedicated internet marketing professional take the wheel from there as far as nailing out your branding and identity. You’ll be surprised how quick the search engines are banning junk sites now.”
That was 5 hours ago I posted that. No response back.. not really expecting one. I’m not trying to pick a fight, actually, I’m wearing my hat and putting out relevant information for anyone who sees their ad and then my follow up. Education is our responsibility.. even in arenas like Craigslist or other public hubs. Get the word out and keep on it.
Conclusion
This wasn’t the post I wanted to start the New Year off with, but it has become a personal goal for 2008. I want this to be my year that I really push even harder on web standards and ethical marketing to be the defacto approach to shaping our online world. The internet is not a toilet, so let’s flush the spam and misinformation every chance we get.
