subject: Difficulty Of Maintaining High Ethical Standards In Online Marketing [print this page] Honesty is perhaps the hardest virtue to follow when it comes to online marketing or any marketing strategy for that matter. Some level of exaggeration, understatement and misleading is almost always involved. The so-called snake oil strategy, for instance, is very common in medical-related products and alternative healing claims that are being promoted online.
Although only a few unscrupulous charlatans and con artists are practicing immoral and illegal marketing campaigns online, many supposedly legal businesses unwittingly or purposely pushing the boundaries of marketing ethics. The loose regulations and the transnational nature of web-based businesses make them hard to police. The sheer number of existing commercial websites is simply overwhelming. Creating websites is very affordable and easy to do. This can be made possible with a few hundreds of dollars for annual webhosting subscription and a plethora of professional-looking WordPress templates.
The demography of those who can start and afford creating professional-looking websites is large. These websites can be maintained and operated from virtually anywhere that has internet and computer facilities. Applying ethical standards in online businesses is a very tricky proposition even for those who do not have criminal intent. Many opportunities online are simply too seductive for anyone to be completely honest.
On the other hand, the current setup of the world-wide web really forces even the legitimate businesses to incorporate white lies in their campaign strategies. For example, the simple use of aliases or pseudo identities is technically dishonest but it is well-accepted practice in online campaigns. From blog commenting to creating social networking accounts, using fake identities is very common. This is necessary for privacy and simplicity purposes. It is also important to prevent marketing comments from being automatically tagged as spams. Some SEO experts also use IP address redirecting and cloaking software for this purpose.
Using aliases or fake identities might be considered bordering unethical practice but they are well-accepted and even considered as part of the routine marketing campaigns. However, some technical aspects of SEO are considered as black hat tactics. These tactics are generally considered as unethical because they are intended to trick search engines in ranking websites. Some of the tactics include keyword stuffing, deceptive content, spamming, and link farming. These tactics may provide immediate and significant boosts to the websites being promoted but the advantage is only short-lived. The algorithms of many search engines are now capable of detecting and penalizing websites that utilize black hat tactics.
