Billboard Insider’s out of home Website ranking methodology gives a point for putting an email address on your website.  Gilbert Nichols, VP for Business Development at M2 Digital Media Group tells Insider this is a bad idea:

Don’t put you email address on your website.  Putting an email address on your website actually takes away the security aspect Google considers when searching your website. Trolls, people who visit websites using search bots, look for exposed email addresses they can “harvest” in order to send spam, or worse, steal identities. Your contact page invites the prospect to give their email address, giving you more control in choosing to send, or not send, emails.

Insider’s take:  Don’t put your personal email on the web.  But the benefits of having an email address on your website outweigh the risks.  Yes you’ll get some spam but you’ll also get emails from prospects wanting to put ads on your signs.  Put a generic email on your website: info@yourcompany.com or sales@yourcompany.com.  Insider’s Circle City Outdoor email is circlecitybillboards@gmail.com.  It’s not a personal email but gets all business requests to Insider.

Another piece of advice for avoiding spam.   Always choose private registration when you buy a website domain name so that your actual info is screened.  Spammers and trolls routinely harvest names from the Icann registry.   Private registration is the norm is you buy a domain name using Google.  GoDaddy makes you pay extra.  If you don’t register your domain privately, your name, address, phone and email are available in the public domain for anyone to see.  Here’s what the billboard insider private domain registration looks like in the Icann.org. database.  If Insider did not choose private registration his name, phone, address and email would be available for all the spammers.

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