Digital Marketing Ethics and Practice

Challenges of Digital Marketing 
Digital marketing has turned out to be an all comers industry where professionals and amateurs compete for relevance, and this has created many challenges, salient among which are, unethical practices of different forms such as black-hat SEO, fake news, hashtag slotting, aggressive marketing and bait advertising; others are content spinning, keyword stuffing, fake review, email spamming and click vending.

The saturation of the Internet with all sorts of contents published by digital marketers, content curators, web masters and social media managers have made it increasing difficult for web uses to filter these information and separate those that really important. Likewise, content providers are equally finding it even more difficult to attract traffic, and in an attempt to reach out to as much of these audience as possible, they constantly push the ethical boundaries guiding digital marketing beyond acceptable limits by using unethical methods.

Sadly, activities of these desperate content providers have led to a substantial increase in the noise on the Internet, especially on social media. There is so much information out there on the Internet, which is published daily by loggers, influencers, social media managers and other digital marketers. Whereas Search Engines are helping to filter much of these information using cookies and crawler indexing to help users find search results that have already been rated according to their popularity, some digital marketers continue to use every trick imaginable to try and make their brands visible on Google listing.

Some users find it extremely difficult to shift all the information they find on the Internet to eliminate the noise and some desperate digital marketers take advantage of their weakness using various methods such as fake news, black-hat-SEO, hashtag slotting, aggressive marketing, bait advertising, content spinning, keyword stuffing and fake review, email spamming and click vending. 

Black-hat Search Engine Optimization 
Black-hat SEO is the act of manipulating Search Engine index with the intent to increase the ranking of a website or page in violation of Google’s terms and conditions. Black-hat is a form of web spam, also known as spamdexing. 

Click Vending 
Click vending is a practice whereby a content provider pays to attract more clicks to a website with the intention of increasing the number of views and engagement to enable it gain visibility on search engine listing. In some instances, content providers offer gift items as bait, a practice also known as black-hat SEO, which violates Google’s Search Engine Optimization guidelines.

Fake News 
Fake news is when content providers indulge in lead generation methods that are unethical to lure unsuspecting victims with false news items, often as breaking news headlines, attracting victims who then click on these links, believing the news is authentic, only to be redirected to a totally difference content that has no relevance with the news material.

Hashtag Slotting 
Hashtag slotting is when too many hashtags are on a post with the intent to manipulate Google Search Engine, so that the crawler easily finds such a content. Some desperate social media content providers use these unethically methods to increase the visibility of such a post.

Aggressive Marketing 
Aggressive marketing is the excessive use of any of the digital marketing methods to promote or advertise a product or service, often with a negative intention to run down a competitor and win over their customers. This form of unethical marketing practice is also used to dissuade certain customers to stop them from patronizing their brand.

Bait Advertising 
Bait advertising is an effective method of marketing whereby advertisers offer a gift or coupon to help increase email subscription. However, this becomes unethical when used by digital marketers to collect users’ emails for the purposes of sending them spam messages.

Content Spinning 
Content spinning is a practice whereby a web master or content provider repeats an article on several pages with the intent of boosting visibility and increasing search ranking. It is a practice whereby an article is re-posted with minor edits to make it appear different, in other for Google crawler to index it as a new content. Engaging in such an act violates Google Search Engine Optimization terms and conditions.

Keyword Stuffing 
Keyword stuffing is an unethical practice whereby the Meta Tag section of a website has an unusual number of keywords to help improve the site visibility on search engine listing. This is a desperate measure often employed by some web content providers to enable Google web crawler find such a page. Keyword stuffing is a spam, and commonly known as spamdexing.

Fake Reviews 
Fake review is a form of hate speech targeted at a website or competitor. This is an aggressive marketing practice, whereby perpetuators write a negative review on a site to discredit it and dissuade potential customers. These reviews could be a comment on the targeted website or posted on a review site. Such a practice is against the ethics of digital marketing and Google equally frowns at it. 

Email Spamming 
Email spamming is a practice whereby email marketers send unsolicited email to a target audience. Such emails are spams and violates the privacy of the recipient. Distributing emails to companies and individuals without approval is against the ethics of email marketing, but some digital marketers blatantly violates the right to privacy of these individual out of desperation to increase engagement and conversion.

Conclusion 
Google Search Engine Starter guide contains the best practices and stipulating as well, the things to avoid doing. Many social media managers and content curators indulging in black-hat SEO regardless it is a violation of the ethics of digital marketing, Google Search Engine guidelines and other relevant regulatory authorities code of conduct. It is also in violation of the  Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) regulations, the body responsible for controlling and regulating the use of the Internet and mobile network providers.