Do they?… and more importantly should they.

I just had a client who asked me to add key words (ideally hidden) in their home page to perhaps get the page to appear higher on Google results for the keywords.

I refused to use hidden keywords but I offered to do add keywords which were shown. Either way, I don’t believe that this is the way to do business on the web or in the real world.

The client gets enough visits every day to make a sale or get credit for themselves. However and instead of making the most of these “real” visitors and making an impression with them (sorry for the pun), even if they don’t make a purchase wouldn’t it be better to give them your best advice and details about what you can and cannot do so perhaps they respect you and mention you as an honest business? I believe that this would be better than bringing people to your business who are actually looking for something particular and then serving them with something inappropriate, false or dragging them on.