Home
>
Web Site Promotion
>
Ineffective and Unethical Web Site Promotion Methods

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.

cleaning help near Glencoe ...

In The News:

Lyft rolled out safety upgrades with a new Safety Hub, driver blocking capability and a favorite driver option to give riders more control over their experience.

New research shows Americans increasingly trust AI for wellness guidance over social media, with 63% finding artificial intelligence reliable for health.

Luxury fashion brand Dior experienced a January 2025 data breach affecting customer personal information, and notifications were sent months after the discovery.

The commercial Unitree H1 humanoid robot weighs 104 pounds with 365 pound-feet torque per joint and demonstrates dangerous potential when software glitches occur.

Americans average 10-plus hours online daily, according to recent survey, splitting time between streaming shows on TV and browsing websites on multiple devices.

Boost your smartphone privacy instantly with these security tweaks for iPhone and Android that limit ad tracking, hide notifications and prevent unauthorized access.

Platforms like Hoax Tech and JS Click Cloaker help cybercriminals bypass detection systems using machine learning to selectively display scam content to victims.

A new battery recycling technique transforms old lithium-ion batteries into high-performance components that retain 88% capacity after 500 cycles with minimal waste.

Google's Android operating system can warn users about earthquakes before the shaking even begins – and there are ways to do it on your iPhone, too.

Meta's new gesture control wristband might just be the most seamless way to control a computer yet. And no, it doesn't require surgery, a camera, or even a touchscreen. All it needs is your wrist.

Long-haul trucks are now being upgraded with a surprising twist, thanks to California-based startup Revoy. Their electric boost doesn't replace diesel but works alongside it to cut emissions and fuel costs without major disruption.

PayPal and Venmo just rolled out something big: AI-powered scam alerts for Friends and Family payments.

As data centers multiply across the United States, energy demand is increasing at a rapid pace. This has not escaped the notice of large investment firms from Wall Street.

The Unicode Consortium, the nonprofit organization that maintains the Unicode Standard to ensure emojis work across devices, has announced Unicode 17.0, which includes nine new emojis slated for release this fall, in September 2025.

OpenAI is one of the world's leading AI research labs. Founded in 2015, it's behind some of today's most talked-about tools, including GPT, DALL·E, and ChatGPT.

Ever catch your dog staring at the screen during movie night and wonder if they're actually watching? Turns out, they might be. A new scientific study from Auburn University found that many dogs really do engage with television, and not all pups react the same way.

Stop the scammers from making contact in the first place. They're getting your parents' contact information and much more personal data besides, from somewhere.

The Walker S2 robot from UBTech autonomously exchanges its batteries in just three minutes, allowing continuous operation in car factories operated by BYD, Nio and Zeekr.

The FX Super One electric MPV from Faraday Future offers flexible seating, zero-gravity recliners and an AI system that creates a personal connection between driver and vehicle.

Practical solutions for reducing unwanted charity mail, political texts and email spam by opting out of shared lists, replying "STOP" and using data removal services.

Delta's new AI pricing system eliminates static airfares for personalized rates based on individual data, raising questions about fairness while promising optimized revenue.

AI data centers are straining the power grid across 13 states, contributing to a $9 billion increase in electricity costs, and PJM customers face monthly bill increases of $25 or more.

Artificial intelligence is transforming the music industry as AI-generated bands like The Velvet Sundown earn substantial streaming revenue, prompting lawsuits from major record labels.

Microsoft phishing scams use fake security alerts and links that redirect to credential-stealing pages with warning signs, including urgent language and unusual senders.

Stay up to date on the latest AI technology advancements and learn about the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.