When Is It OK to Fake Your Way Through SEO?

Author: Henry Adaso
Internet Copywriter

The 11th grader who received a 2-hour detention for using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. The 13-year old boy in Texas (it had to be in Texas) who solicited prostitutes with his dad’s credit card and challenged them to a game of a Halo. We’ve heard it all. These are just a few examples of stories that were fabricated in order to inflate traffic.

But is it ever OK to fabricate a story for SEO purposes?

Here’s the straightforward answer: Yes…but only if your name is Miley Cyrus and your customer base of teenyboppers is willing to forgive you for using body doubles and lip-syncing on stage.

The long-winded answer? It depends on what your goal as an Internet marketer truly is. If you’re in it for the long haul, I recommend that you avoid deceptive practices by all means. But if your sole goal as a marketer is temporary success, then hoaxing your audience may achieve just that — temporary success. It’s definitely acceptable to use a phony story if you traffic in parodies. Lyndon Antcliff’s story about the 13-year old Texan and the prostitutes is now being promoted as a parody, even though the original article was created to dupe news sites into linking back to the source. Keep in mind that it would be necessary to tag on a disclosure to your parody.

On the other hand, if you’re looking to brand your image as a leader in your field, then steer clear of the Lyndon Antcliff approach. Between the gazillions of search engine ranking tips and search engine resources out there, you have a bottomless pool of SEO tools to draw from. Doing SEO the “right” way may not necessarily yield results immediately, but as the saying goes, “Build it and they’ll come.” Besides, fabrication is one of the best known brand killers. Why risk your reputation?