Deceptive Titles: How Far Is Too Far?

I know I’m being an idiot blogger here, but I wanted to quickly jot down some random thoughts about my last post before they exit my overly-crammed little brain. In a few days I will revisit, research, and cleanup so that it’s not the trainwreck it is right now.

Some things I’m curious about and would like to get opinions on from anyone reading (and even though noone’s reading, I will still continue to write :)) are: Did the title of the previous post make you think that I knew of a “backdoor” way or had a coupon code for $1 Business.com standard directory submissions? Although the post really is about the fact that I negotiated and received a directory listing for a dollar, is it acceptable to mislead readers with an exaggerated, half-truth title if in the end it equates to more eyeballs?

Website and marketing objectives dictate the degree of deception you can get away with (deception is probably too harsh of a descriptor for what I’m referring to, but you get the point). If you’re “digging” for traffic, your title has to immediately grab attention and stand out to get noticed. I’m no social marketing expert by any means, but that’s just common sense. Visitor loyalty is almost zero, so the churn and burn approach is fine because you’re doing it for the links and immediate buzz.

However, for a business site or news source for example, keeping visitors coming back is of extreme importance. If trust is sacrificed for more visits in this scenario, it will most certainly be detrimental to the future credibility of the site in the eyes of the user.

I’m sure the see-saw of new visitor to defected visitor ratio could be optimized and managed, but what are your thoughts on the risk/reward?

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