Now, I’m not saying that you will have your hand cut off, or that some big, ugly, helmeted guy with asthma will claim to be your father, but bad things can bite you in the end if you choose to cheat. Take J C Penny, for example, The New York Times article The Dirty Little Secrets of Search byDavid Segal talks about J C Penny’s unusual rise to the top of the search engines using “Black hat” optimization. Among those tactics were thousands of links by hundreds of global sites.
This is a good example of character. Occasionally, I have to lightly lecture a client on character and the value of doing things right. Some people like to reduce their taxes by the following means:
- Defer income by putting checks in their drawer for a month, or so in December.
- Run personal expenses through a business.
- Write off expenses that should clearly be capitalized, or charged to another company.
- Pay their employees “under the table.”
I am a strong advocate of counselling clients on how to save taxes. But that doesn’t mean tax fraud. Clients don’t realize that when they cheat on taxes they rob themselves of the very information that can tell them how their business is thriving or failing. A business owner cannot make that determination without the proper data. In addition, when a business owner tries to qualify for a bank loan, they may not. So, in reality, a business owner who tries to cheat his way through taxes may injure him/herself far more in other areas.
Likewise, in the J C Penny situation (regardless of their denial of any interest) of cheating on search engines, they will become branded in the internet. Many people who read that article, or this one, may skip over their site after understanding that they haven’t practice ethically.
Now, don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with “white hat” social networking consultants social bookmarking your site. This can be done by employees, consultants, fans, vendors, and family. But, when you take the social bookmarking and linking to an extreme, it destroys the purpose of what the Google algorithms were designed to do, show popularity.
The conclusion is that character counts not only in personal lives, but business lives. To violate this rule is like mixing yeast in bread. It starts off real pretty, but when left unattended, it grows ugly.