|
-
Plagiarism:
As a direct result of the readily available information on the Internet, there has been a rise in the level of plagiarism at both schools and businesses. The following story illustrates this issue rather dramatically. One of our clients who has a very successful website accidentally stumbled on a website that had copied text from his website, word for word for a complete section of their website. You can of course imagine that this was a very upsetting experience as a lot of time and thought had gone into crafting those specific messages. When he spoke with the principal of the offending practice he quickly learned that they knew nothing about the plagiarism. They were very apologetic and in fact made a commitment to take the website down immediately, a promise which they indeed followed through on. It seems that their website designer took a few shortcuts in building their website and until they received this complaint no one was the wiser. On that day however, they were quite exposed as a professional practice, an experience I am certain they would not care to repeat.
-
Black hat methodology:
‘Black hat’ is a term used to describe unethical techniques employed by website designers to optimize a website for search engines. These techniques were successful a number of years ago. Search engines have since accounted for the techniques black hats use in their algorithms and they now respond to these strategies by permanently de-listing the offending website, quite a severe penalty at that. The following are examples of black hat methodology:
Spamming –submission of a website to a search engine multiple times
Cloaking - sending search engine spiders to pages or text not visible to readers
Keyword stuffing – inappropriate repetition of keywords in an effort to improve the keyword density of a website page
-
Copyright infringements:
Similarly to plagiarism, copyright infringements have peaked since the inception of the Internet. Website designers that conduct themselves in an unethical manner use copyright images to build website content without having first received permission or purchased the rights to do so. As with the plagiarism case discussed above, their clients could potentially be unaware of these circumstances surrounding the images on their website until such time that the owner’s, or other rightful users, of those images would come across them thus potentially exposing themselves professionally.
-
The mysterious nature of Search Engine Optimization strategies
(SEO):
The success of the newly developed field of search engine optimization is largely based on what works rather than what is empirically linked to search engine algorithms. The reason being that this information is necessarily top secret if there is to be a viable future for search engines. Since there continues to be such a shroud of mystery around the subject, website designers can potentially claim that they have delivered search engine optimization services when in fact they have not. Now although a website designer cannot be asked to provide guaranteed results for their search engine optimization efforts, they can certainly be held accountable for the specific actions that they have implemented in this effort.
Armed with this knowledge about these possible pitfalls involved in hiring a website designer you should be in a better position to select one that is trustworthy and as a result protect your professional practice against unpleasant and unnecessary legal, financial, professional and search engine ramifications.
What can a marketing consulting firm contribute to the
development of an effective
website for your Greater Toronto practice?
At Bekhor Management
Toronto, we will enable you to achieve your goals for your website by addressing how to:
-
Develop a brand and communication strategy that
effectively influences your prospective client or patient
-
Implement a Search Engine Optimization strategy
(SEO) that enables your website to be found
-
Leverage your website
to deliver marketing and operational cost savings initiatives
Contact
us by email
or by telephone at (416) 969-9600 for an initial consultation without fee or obligation, if you are
professional in Toronto or the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and are interested in building a better practice. |
