fantomNews™ — the ultimate know

(rt) Well, don’t expect too much tabloid revelation style stuff from Mikkel deMib Svendsen’s article “The Art of Black Hat PPC Management. Applying Black Hat SEO techniques to PPC”, just published in Mike Grehan’s e-marketing-news. It’s an excellent piece and immensely readable, but as a true pro he doesn’t give away the farm:

Now you are probably expecting me to tell you all the cool little secrets about what you should actually do to tweak the systems for your advantage. Sorry, but I will have to disappoint you. I will give you a few tips but the problem with any Black Hat technique – PPC or organic – is that once it is out in the public the effectiveness of the method usually dies out fast. Search engine editors read articles like this, too.

Still there’s quite a lot by way of revelation here: as he rightly points out, for most people it may come as an utter surprise if not a total shock that pay-per-click advertising could be prone to “Black Hat” tactics at all. But so it is – as in any industry worth dealing with, people who really set their minds to it will quickly discover the cracks and soft spots of any system, and there’s no reason to assume that PPC should pose an exception to this rule.

So what he discusses at some length, for example, is how to use the old bait-and-switch tactics on PPC engine editors when they drop by on your site to check your bids: a pretty cool approach and very easy to implement.

You’ll also learn why it’s a lot better not to opt for the PPC engines’ budget function and what sneaky tricks to use to actually achieve profit from more traffic for the same (lowered) bid.

What it all boils down to is less a question of specific techniques (which tend to come and go as basic parameters change). Instead, it’s the basic attitude that will actually determine the way the cookie crumbles:

To become a good Black Hat artist you need first of all to be curious. Very curious! Some technical skills are good to have as well. Also, an anarchist attitude might be helpful. At the very least, you need to be that kind of person that questions every single rule around you, evaluates it and decides for yourself if you think it should apply to you or not, and then does something about it! Some call us “creative” and some ”a nightmare” I just call us “go-doers” with a target in life too important for little details (such as restrictive regulations) to get in our way.

Very good and very true, Mikkel – but as you will probably be the first to acknowledge, information will out so don’t be surprised if the telltales happen to crop up all over the place after you’ve stepped over this line so admirably yourself!

What you’ve done so far is sketch out some basically “benevolent” Black Hat PPC not really hurting anyone (actually isn’t that what “White Magic” is supposed to be about?) – just you wait till the real hardcore adepts of Dirty PPC Kungfu raise their gorgon heads: here at fantomNews we’ll be only too happy to oblige this anarchic crew if it’s the last thing we do.

Needless to say that an industry basically thriving on massive click fraud without having so much as an inkling of how to combat it effectively in any meaningful sense, while staying relentlessly focused on persistently abusing its advertisers’ trust by conning them left, right and center about the non-existent security of their invested money, has deserved worse, far worse. It’s high time someone took up the challenge of proving what we have asserted for years: that PPC may actually be one of the worst ways of losing your money wholesale on the Internet ever invented.

So even if it probably wasn’t your intention to bash it that badly – thanks for executing this all-important, long overdue first step. It heralds a beheading anyone in his right mind is bound to thoroughly enjoy!

Talk about opening Pandora’s box …

Read → the full article here.

Subscribe Feed!