I’ve seen type-in traffic referred to as “natural” traffic. In search engine optimization, we refer to earned search referral traffic as “organic” traffic. I suppose now all we need to do is define “artificial” traffic, and we’ll be ready for government oversight in the form of a Food and Drug Adminsitration for Internet marketing!

The food analogies go even farther. We already have “local” traffic, just as you have “buy local” initiatives in food and farming. How about GMOs? genetically modified foods…. let’s see, how about sneaky redirects?

I think click-bots can represent artificial. What about preservatives? Hmm… exit traffic might be a good choice. You can build web properties that draw traffic and maintain a constant stream of useless but long-lasting traffic from the exits. The more you know about exit traffic I think the more this analogy makes sense.

Artificial colors? Hmm. that’s harder. Of course exit traffic qualifies, as does redirected and cloaked traffic, but they all get combined when so “artificially colored“. Add in some MFA sites to match the FD&C red controversy that didn’t change anything.

What about paid traffic? I immediate thought of corruption, but that’s funnier than it is accurate. Correlates to GMO seeds, where you pay for seed to grow your crops but are contractually forbidden from harvesting next year’s seeds. Sort of the opposite of organic SEO, but kind of like leasing a plant to harvest it’s fruit. Too expensive, too many controls, too much profit for the provider. Yup.. all matches pretty well.

How about “nut-free“? I doubt that can be matched in SEO world, LOL.

Topical Tags:public relations SEO

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 19th, 2007 at 1:46 am and is filed under SEO, Competitive Webmastering, Public Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.