No Place Left to Turn for Black Hat SEO Tactics

Ever since just after February, every voice in the SEO community has been shouting out the same message loud and clear: If you're not doing online marketing legitimately, then you're in for a rude awakening. After the Google Penguin algorithm dealt a significant blow to the SERP standing of many sites the web over, most online marketing agencies that were using spam and black hat SEO tactics began turning to more ethical methods for their clients' campaigns. Those that still remained content to buy links, stuff keywords, and do all other manner of questionable content creation ended up falling by the wayside.

So it seemed that many agencies began heading down a bright new path for their SEO campaigns, but what of the work done for their social media clients? Sure, sketchy activity on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ is far more limited by the constraints of those platforms than the web at large, but there are still plenty of disingenuous techniques being employed through them. Chief among these, of course, is the use of fake accounts to "like" or follow one's client pages to drum up artificial support. This sort of activity runs rampant on every open access social media network, but it's been Facebook where the majority of this has been taking place. That is until now.

A New Era of Un-Like

Over the course of the last week, Facebook has begun systematically removing likes from Page profiles made by stagnant, inactive, and altogether obviously fake accounts. Although Facebook has warned its Page users that they should see drops as low as a single percentage of their full follower base, the number of accounts removed thus far has been staggeringly high. The examples mentioned in the Huffington Post's story mention such big names as Rihanna seeing a drop of over 28,000 fans and the official page for popular Facebook game Farmville dropping by over 41,000 likes.

The simple fact that it's these very real and recognizable accounts that are getting hit first (and potentially hardest) is enough to make any unscrupulous social media company blanch. As anyone in marketing will tell you, the quick and easy path to success is often the one that can result in the most backlash. If you've been using false accounts to raise your clients' profile on Facebook you can expect to be hearing complaints about a followership drop quite soon.

Staying the Course with Ethical Practices

It doesn't take a genius to figure out what all this means. Legitimate marketing techniques that get real results are now becoming every bit as essential on social media as it is on search engines. From fast-growing social media companies to start-up SEO agencies, this realization is something that we all have to adhere to. If you've been cutting corners and taking the easy way out, it's time to shape up or ship out. It's just that simple.