The North Face is a popular brand name in the apparel business. I bet you can’t go a week without seeing the brand on someone’s sweatshirt. Why, then, would they commit such an ill-advised and unethical act only to promote their site to the top of Google’s search engine? Let’s first take a look at the act they committed.
In 2016, The North Face took a step in the wrong and unethical direction when they “…updated images on Wikipedia pages for popular travel destinations. The efforts were part of a campaign to get The North Face branding at the top of Google image search results when anyone searched for the corresponding travel locations.” (Gesenhus 2019). The North Face replaced Wikimedia images with their own by manipulating the editing the site’s images and replacing them with images showing people enjoying outdoor scenery. Wikimedia later announced that they had had no collaboration with The North Face when doing this. This marketing stunt they pulled is known as a “black hat” tactic used by a company to simply get their name to the top of the list (Balanco, 2022). There are so many more ways to ethically do this, or those that wear the “white hats”.
There are much better ways to get one’s site higher in the google results. Some marketers may choose to engage with customers by answering Quora questions that are related to their brand, for example (Gesenhues, 2019). One can also work to collaborate with other, legitimate partnerships they’ve created with other sites so that they can share links to each. Having other sites linking to yours is a surefire to increase your search results. Other ethical ways to increase your popularity are having the keywords and content be relatable and relevant on your site. Keeping keywords and / or content fresh and relevant to the type of search a customer would perform in a search engine is essential. One must always remember that SEO takes time to build if you want to build your strategy the right way. Patience is a virtue in Marketing especially.
Conversely, committing unethical marketing are quicker and easier paths to short term success, but these same acts will lower your Google ranking and lower your site’s search results. The North Face received a lot of backlash from the industry when they committed their naughty act. Many of their competition thought their tactics, although creative, were unethical and a black mark against other companies that commit legitimate acts of SEO marketing. The North Face also felt the distaste from their customers in tweets directed at the company.
Upholding integrity in Marketing is crucial. Plotting unethical acts in SEO marketing will do nothing but lower one’s score and ranking on Google. It also leaves a bad taste in the mouth’s of your customer base. However, if a company uses ethical strategies as aforementioned, their ranking on Google search engines will increase, allowing more users to access their site. Doing the right thing brings with it rewards, even in the Marketing industry.
References
Gesenhaus, Amy. 13 June 2019. The North Face booed by SEO community after manipulating Google image search results. SearchEngineLand.com Retrieved from https://searchengineland.com/the-north-face-gets-a-thumbs-down-from-seo-community-after-manipulating-google-image-search-results-317747
Balanco, Darren. 2022. Ethical SEO Vs. Unethical SEO. Optimus01.com. Retrieved from https://www.optimus01.co.za/ethical-seo-vs-unethical-seo/
