SEO Dirty Tricks vs Unconventional Website Marketing

If you are trying to get your website to the top of the of search engines, you can of course always rely on the traditional methods, but you might want to consider more unconventional methods to actually achieving greater customer numbers. There are experts out there that specialize in what some might loosely term as ‘dirty tricks’, and they could get incredible results for your website in a very short timeframe - but at perhaps a price a little too steep, and we are not talking monetarily here, after all you would not want your website to be delisted from the search engines would you!

SEO dirty tricks fall into a number of different categories, everything from spamming message board postings with certain keywords and links, to keyword cloaking and lots in between. I am certainly not advocating the use of any dirty trick, or ‘black hat’ (look up the term in Google to get a greater understanding of this rather clichéd phrase) method.

What I am recommending is that sometimes you look just beyond the fold, at perhaps some slight unconventional methods like, for example, contacting your nearest competitor and suggesting you both do a bit of a link swap, hey, some people will like your site, some will like their site – you could benefit from each other and drive traffic both ways, who knows what might be next – shared cost advertising, taking both families to Bermuda on vacation (who knows what the future holds for us).

The search engine companies themselves have become much cleverer with their ranking methods, and dirty tricks in the SEO of a website are more than often picked up upon. If you use obvious techniques to raise your site ranking, aka ‘white hat’ methods, you will certainly get to where you want to go – but do not forget that most other sites are doing exactly the same thing, so look at what else you can do outside of SEO to build up some much needed customers.

Think ‘out of the box’ (I hate that phrase but what else to use!) and when we say ‘out of the box’ what we mean is this; what car do you drive? Have you thought about spending a couple of hundred bucks to get it re-sprayed, advertising your website? Not just adding your website name to the car itself because that would just be boring, plus who actually is interested in going to a website address just because they saw the name of it, no, what we are talking about here is a full blown advertisement for your site on your car, your mates car, your dads car – who wants it, who drives the furthest, etc etc.

Think ‘out of the box’ and certainly undertake ‘white hat’ SEO but also add unconventional methods to your promotional campaigns.

Going back the dirty tricks side of things, never ever forget that Google and other search providers can see right through them. It’s all about coming at it from a different angle and finding a more unconventional way to improve your sites popularity.

One of these dirty tricks, and probably the best known is SEO cloaking; which is almost like a deceptive shifting of words or slight of hand. An ‘SEO‘ consultant can be so good in the usage of cloaking and deceptive practices that an article a consumer thinks will be about the rock and roll hall of fame ends up being about their rock and geode collection. These deceptive cloaking practices could actually make sure the website is actually about the geode Hall of Fame. You can end up thinking you are about to read new information on Bob Dylan and end up getting new information good old Britney (A Ha) Spears, thanks to SEO cloaking and its deceptive ways!

To re-cap on all of this, avoid ‘black hat’ techniques, but do not avoid ‘unconventional marketing;’ He who dares, wins!

Suzzi Law is an SEO PR writer for www.Servicewrap.net, full service submission and website promotion service provider since 2002.