One black hat seo tactic that flourished in the mid 1990′s was the practice of keyword stuffing.  Here’s the scenario: You are trying feverishly to rank on one particular search term, but there is always this idiot ahead of you in the SERPS (search engine results page). You visit the site and can’t even begin to find the keyword in question in his metas, copy, alt tags, etc. UNTIL…..

Scroll down on that web page to the bottom, past the footer and keep going: Here’s where you will find those keywords: STUFFED into the site for only search engine robot / spider consumption.

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I spoke with a prospect last week who informed me that he had paid a writer to compose several testimonials to give authenticity to his online company: he got the point that a web site needs to scream reliable, honest, solid and trustworthy, but obviously he had missed the true ethics of the situation.  Paying someone to compose bogus testimonials?  Unreal.  Needless to say, that prospect won’t be becoming a customer at On Target Web Solutions.

Your web site needs to be real, needs to be authentic and needs to instill confidence and trust in each one of your web site visitors.  An unsolicited testimonial is indeed a powerful tool.  People love to read about other people and their experiences both online and offline.  The true pure form of Internet marketing in my humble opinion is by being real.  With so much competition online, people (prospects) dig through hundreds of sites to find the one that captivates them, one that they learn from and one that they trust before they will be making a purchase or returning to your site.  People look for real people: give them the courtesy of authenticity when they visit your web site.