Webmaster Ethics 101

Grab a snack, this is gonna be a long one…

Hmm… where should I begin? Let me just start by saying that not everyone is cut out to be a webmaster. Some people lack the discipline, dedication, and patience required to run a “professional” website. Many wannabes try everyday, searching Google for that secret that nobody else knows about. It is as if there is some super-secret site out there that tells super-secret tricks about making your website number 1 without any hard work. I feel that this mindset is the one that leads to spammers and blackhats. It is pretty sad that there is so much spam out there… which is a direct result of people trying to take shortcuts and succeeding. Let’s face it, if spamming didn’t produce results then no one would do it. Since we are on the subject of spam…

Link Exchanges: Do it the right way!

Every day I check my email to see that someone has sent me a link exchange request, and everyday I usually delete it. Why? It’s not because I don’t want to exchange links (which I love to do). It’s because they are taking me for a fool and trying to con me. Here is an example, the names have been changed. (Notice the poor grammar and misspellings)

Dear Webmaster, (Notice how the email is written as if the guy sent it to 200 people at once. This is because he did, and I could see all of their emails at the top in the email details, and I am sure they could all see mine.)

I discovered your site the other day and loved the way it is structered. Woud you be interested in link exchange? You can link to ourgoodsite.com and we will link to you from ourbadsite.com. This way it will not be seen as a reciprocal link exchange and be of more value to the search engines. Please link to ourgoodsite.com with the following anchor text “xxxxx”

Regards,

Spammy McSpamSpam
http://some-super-spammish-site.info

I can’t stand emails like the one above. It is like someone walking up to you and saying, “Hey, you look like a sucker. Why don’t you give me something of value in return for me giving you absolutely nothing?”

If you want to spam/ask a complete stranger to exchange links, do it the honest way. Follow these quick guidelines.

• Have something good for them to link to. If your site is crap, you wont get very far.
• Make the email you send personable. Don’t attempt to send the same email to 200 webmasters all at once. Tell them something unique you noticed about their site. Show them that you are a real person who cares about quality content.
• Tell them you found their site to be a great source for your readers, and that you are going to be linking to it.
• Don’t ask for a link back.
• Ask them to have a look at your site and give their opinion on it.

It’s not rocket science. Their site kicks ass so you want a link from it. The least you can do is have a kick ass site to link to them with… which brings me to my next point.

Content Theft

Many a webmaster has been burned by duplicate content. How? Because some shmuck decided to ctrl+c someones page and then ctrl+v it to their own site. The search engines see this and it affects the sites negatively in the SERPS. This one is easy… Don’t steal content because you will get caught and you will look like an idiot. You wont get any search traffic to a copied page because it is duplicate content.

Blackhatting

Unless you are some kind of mystical wizard, you wont get anywhere in the long run using black hat techniques. But hey, be my guest. If you like building hundreds of crappy sites and then spamming one to the top of Google for a day go for it. It’s pretty sleazy and looks like more of a hassle than it is really worth. Why not just build one quality site that stays at the top of Google forever?

Ethics in General

It is really common sense. “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”. If you pay someone to write some content and they do… pay them. If someone pays you to write some content for them…write it. If you exchange links with someone, don’t take their link down randomly without notice. If you sell someone some links for x months… keep them up for x months. In short… don’t burn bridges.

“Burning a bridge” is when you piss someone off or screw them over to the point where they wont do business with you anymore… no matter what. If you plan on being in this whole internet marketing thing for the long haul, you are going to need your connections later on down the road.

For example… Let’s say you buy a website from someone, which that person had worked long and hard writing content and building links for, only to take down every single external link the site had on it as well as all of it’s content besides a few key pages. Is this not the dumbest thing a person can do for the long term? First of all why would you ever take down quality content, and secondly, what about all the webmasters that exchanged links or bought advertising with the previous owner? If they catch wind of these actions, the new owner will certainly lose all of the reciprocal links and deals they once had.

Doing something like this is an obvious attempt to make some gains in the short run, which will end up hurting you in the long run. When someone buys a website they are also buying the connections it has whether they realize it or not. Surely the current advertisers and partners want to keep doing business with the site as long as it is still the same quality site. Why sever those ties? Another thing to consider is… the site was worth buying because it had good organic traffic, unique content, and revenue from advertising/referrals. Why mess that up?

Conclusion

To sum up this post in one sentence… Use your head when running your website. Read up a little on business ethics in general and try not to make the mistakes that many other webmasters make on a daily basis. Otherwise you may end up like this guy.