The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

In every area of marketing on the web there are questions surrounding morality and fairness. These debates generally stem from questionable practices, and more specifically from uncovering those that are involved in such “foul play” pertaining to their area of so-called expertise. With Search Engine Optimization, there have been numerous malpractices, known as black hat SEO, from link farms to cloaking, which achieve numerous links by deceiving search engines and misrepresenting actual content on site. Luckily, for those of us that wish for search engines to return relevant results and not those which contain massive metatags or get the majority of their rank from sites riddled with unrelated links, search engines are smarter now.

But the debate still remains, whether or not certain practices are ethical. Competitive Intelligence is one of these areas with a significant grey area between what is considered right and that which is not.

Consider sites that store information about other sites. Whois.net, for example, is a domain-based research service, which will return numerous facts about any domain name, including registrant, server, date registered, and more. Many other sites like Whois.net will disclose similar information. Additionally, searching on Yahoo, appending “link:” to a domain name will show all incoming links to that domain, and it’s various pages.

As you can imagine, there are a significant number of ways to retrieve information about a competitor through publicly accessible sites and databases, so as one may wonder, where is the line drawn?

• First and foremost, anything that is illegal applies online as well. This may be a no-brainer for most of us, but there are still those that think being behind a screen protects them from certain laws, like plagiary. This is most certainly not the case.
• Public databases, searches, and information are available for everyone; what they choose to do with what they find is their decision, and the choice to use that information in an ethical manner is theirs, as well as any consequences which may result.
• Analyzing data is a large part of Competitive Intelligence. Obtaining such data through illegal practices, such as bribery, bugging, or theft, is of course considered to be extremely unethical.

The best way to protect yourself against such practices is to ask a lot of questions of your Internet Marketing Firm. As part of a firm that insists on ethical practices, we are happy to answer any questions or concerns you may have about the services we offer.

Internet marketing takes years of experience to master and is constantly changing, therefore requiring dedication to continually grasp in full. However, there are a few basics that anyone interested in internet marketing should know. When it comes to understanding the fundamentals, it’s all in the terms. ROI, SEO, SMO, RM, CI, PPC, etc. These acronyms may mean nothing to most people but to us as an internet marketing firm they are our bread and butter.

Here is a basic rundown of our services and how they can help our clients:

• ROI (Return on Investment) - the key to any campaign in a simple question: is it worth it? The ROI is the net of what is spent on a campaign verses the increase of leads, sales, customers, etc. Depending on your niche, certain marketing campaigns may not be best suited for you.
• PPC (Pay Per Click) - refers to the use of AdWords campaigns on Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc. A PPC AdWords Campaign is the sum of keywords relevant to the client’s website, which are used to target potential customers through bidding for sponsored ads, reaching them on searches, as well as high-ranking sites relevant to the site.
• SEM (Search Engine Marketing) - encompasses nearly every end of internet marketing, more specifically as pertaining to a campaign utilizing search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN to reach a targeted audience.
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - process of optimizing on-site and off-site specifics in order to increase the relevance of the website to specific keywords and search terms, therefore increasing page rank and ultimately increasing online visibility in searches, essentially, making your site more popular.
• SMO (Social Media Optimization) - targeting non-search groups on social networking sites, such as Technorati, Digg, Squidoo and various blog sites. SMO targets those that may not necessarily search for your keywords because they already belong to an online community which shares information on those search terms.
• RM (Reputation Management) - various augmented forms of SEO and SMO which populate remaining ranking positions on searches for a site’s keyword set. While SEO and SMO may independently secure a top-ranking position, RM will help to populate the remaining positions in order to protect the site itself from high-ranking blogs or review sites slandering your good name.
• CI (Competitive Intelligence) - utilizing various resources and databases in order to compare your site to your competition. By pitting your site against other sites, we get a better idea of which branches of a given campaign are excelling and which need a boost.

These are just the basics. For more information about these services and others, please visit ReciprocalConsulting.com.