There are literally tons of ways to promote a website or sell a product online.  Some are more successful than others and some are more legit than others.  Techniques that are generally approved of that follow established norms and guidelines are called "white hat" techniques.  These are the techniques I generally like to cover here.  But, not surprisingly, some people engage in deceptive, unapproved techniques that violate established norms and guidelines.  These types of tactics are called "black hat" techniques and, because of their nature, are generally discouraged.  In fact, a lot of search engines will penalize websites that get caught engaging in black hat techniques.

ClickZ has an interesting post dealing with a black hat technique that's been growing in popularity over time:  Craigslist "spamming".

I call it spam because posts of the nature discussed in the article clearly violate the terms of use Craigslist operates under.  The technique involves posting classified ads on Craigslist that point to commercial sites, commercial products, affiliate sites, or other online services in any category other than the ones specified for that purpose.

Let's say, for example, that I ran a company that cleaned upholstery.  I could go into the furniture section of Craigslist and post an ad with a headline that read "This got all the coffee out of my sofa".  People, when clicking on the ad, would probably think another individual person was selling something that had taken coffee out of the sofa.  Instead, they're presented with some marketing copy and link to my company's website.

That's not what the furniture section of Craigslist is for.  Ads in that part of the list should be from individuals selling old furniture or something along those lines.  They should not be from companies trying to sell a product or service.  Craiglist has built-in tools that allow members of the community to flag posts that violate the stated terms of the site.  But the use of Craigslist for commercial advertising is growing, not declining.  As more and more companies and websites begin employing this deceptive tactic, the Craigslist user community will slowly become overrun… and will eventually give up.

According to the ClickZ article, a syndicated news article detailing how to exploit Craigslist has been circulating around business websites lately.  Why is that bad?  For one, the thing that makes Craigslist so popular is its current set-up.  No one wants to wade through 500 marketing messages just to see 10 legitimate ads.  But it also looks bad on the entire marketing community and online advertising in general.  Black hat techniques don't just disparage the companies, websites, and individuals who employ them.  They cast a shadow over all our efforts, be they legit or not.

The problem is, a lot of black hat techniques are quite successful.  I'm sure the people posting commercial ads on Craigslist get a ton of traffic from the ad… before it gets deleted.  The folks who try to manipulate search engine crawlers probable get a lot of traffic from their efforts and a higher rank in the search results.  So it's hard to discourage people from using deceptive practices.  It's built in to the nature of some individuals to do whatever they have to do to make a buck or two… regardless of the consequences for the rest of us.

Remember what I said last week:  Craigslist is where you sell the stuff that didn't go during the last garage sale.  It is not a marketing site.