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articles

Just Say No to SEO Spam

By Theresa Wilkinson, with permission of STC Intercom magazine, W-edge design

December 2004 Volume 51, Issue 10.

I found an advertisement for search engine optimization (SEO) services on Google that promised “100% Guaranteed Top 10.” I have also seen a lot of ads for services that promise to rank your site to number one within a week or a month. My first reaction to these ads is skepticism. What search engines can guarantee to rank my site in the first five positions within a week? Is it a search engine that anyone uses? I wonder about these claims because, if the search engine is not one of the big boys, why bother? And how can any service guarantee to rank my site in one week, two weeks, or one month? Perhaps one of the obscure search engines could promise that, but not Google or Yahoo. And finally, to achieve such high rankings so quickly, all these search engines are using SEO spam. If you decide to use one of these questionable companies, be careful, because you and your site will pay the price for their blatant disregard of the rules.

I redesigned a site for a tile distributor in October 2003. (My hobby is making things with ceramic tile, and I was looking for a distributor of leaf-patterned tile.) I found this business via Google, but it was buried on page 10. So I contacted the business owner and offered to redesign her site and get her a higher ranking in the search engines. When the new site was launched, it ranked on the fourth page in Google within a week, then slowly climbed up. By February 2004, the site is number one on Google for all the client's major keywords, and I tweaked some pages to get it higher on other search engines. The moral of this story: You don't need to stoop to SEO spam to get good rankings. If you do SEO the right way the first time, it doesn’t take long for your site to start grabbing the top positions--in my experience, it’s often only a matter of weeks.

What Is SEO Spam?

SEO spam (also called spamdexing) is anything that constitutes unethical practice within SEO, including manipulating spiders and redirecting users to inappropriate content. Google, one of the top search engines, considers the following practices to be SEO spam:

• Hiding text or links on a page to attract spiders
• Using "cloaks" to underhandedly redirect users
• Sending automated queries (via Web Position Gold) to Google
• Cramming pages with unnecessary text
• Creating near-duplicate pages, subdomains, or domains
• Creating too many "doorway" pages, or using similar strategies, just to attract search engines

SEO Practices to Avoid

Google offers guidelines and specific recommendations for SEO at www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html. I also consulted the following books for SEO do’s and don’ts: Search Engine Positioning by Fredrick Marckini and Maximize Web Site Traffic by Robin Nobles and Susan O’Neil.
HTML Code Don'ts

Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing is repeating a keyword many times in your keyword meta tag. As a general rule, it is best not to use a word in this area more than three times. This recommendation can also apply to your keyword text. Better to lose a little in your ranking than to get penalized. (Maximize Web Site Traffic)

Meta refresh tag
A meta refresh tag is a tag that immediately takes the user to another Web page. Though this device can be used for legitimate reasons, it has been used so much by spammers that it is now often penalized. If you are going to use this tag, make sure it is set to delay at least thirty seconds or more before redirecting. (Maximize Web Site Traffic)

Repetitive title
Creating a repetitive title like “Web design, Web design, Web design" is another form of spam. It is also visually unappealing. Very few people will click on a link with a repetitive title. (Maximize Web Site Traffic)

Multiple title tags
This practice involves repeating your title tag two, three--or fifty--times. Some engines may allow you to use two title tags, but it is advisable to check their guidelines to be sure. (Maximize Web Site Traffic)

Hidden form tags
Some dishonest search engines put keywords in hidden form tags on your page. For example: <INPUT TYPE="HIDDEN" NAME="HIDDEN" VALUE="Placing-keywords-here-is-seo-spam">. Use your form tags as they were intended or you could be penalized. (Maximize Web Site Traffic)

Dynamic pages
If you decide to use dynamic pages (the URL contains a '?' character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and their numbers small. (Google)

Design Don'ts

Page swapping
Page swapping is building a dummy Web page to rank high, then, once it's indexed, uploading the “real” page to your server. This practice is usually done by unethical webmasters who copy (yes, that means steal) a high-ranking page from a high-ranking site; once the copy hits the top spot in the rankings, they upload their page in its place. This practice is also known as "page-jacking." (Search Engine Positioning)

Back button
In this procedure, the designer creates a page that prohibits the user from using the browser's back button to return to the search engine results. This is a favorite tactic of the adult entertainment industry.

Transparent .gifs
Related to keyword stuffing (described below), this technique uses numerous 1x1 transparent .gifs on your page, then adds keywords to your ALT tag. This practice is easy to detect in the HTML code.

Content Don'ts

Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing is repeating a keyword many times in hidden content areas of a Web site. Keyword stuffing may help your keyword relevancy to attain a higher rank, but it is better to lose a little in your ranking than to be penalized. Keyword stuffing also refers to loading a page with keyword content that extends so far down the page that it is unlikely anyone will continue to scroll down. This technique has been abused by people who rely on splash pages for their index pages. However, the technique is easy to spot, and it is clearly spam. (Search Engine Positioning)

Tiny text
This practice involves repeating your keywords over and over in a very small font, usually at the bottom of a page. (Search Engine Positioning)

Invisible text
This process involves stuffing keywords in a font color that is the same or nearly identical to that of the page background. I was actually asked to do this by a former boss; of course, I refused. Another dishonest technique uses a cascading style sheet to set the text size of a particular tag to 0 percent, then filling your page with "invisible" text. (Maximize Web Site Traffic)

Promoting keywords not related to your site
Placing trademarked or misleading words on your page to attract visitors looking for another topic (for example, “Coca-Cola,” “Playboy,” "Britney Spears" or “Pamela Anderson”) is probably not an appropriate practice for a Web site about ceramic tiles. These kinds of words can are often found in the keyword meta tag or hidden somewhere on the Web page. (Search Engine Positioning)

Including little or no unique site content
Remember, unique site content is not simply a description of your products or services. Unique site content will add value for your users and set your site apart from your competition. It also optimizes your page for search engines--the right way, of course.

Submission Don'ts

Submitting to the search engines a page that, once loaded, automatically redirects to a page with different content.

This practice was widely abused by the pornography industry, using the refresh meta tag. As a result, some engines now refuse to list any page that contains a meta refresh. If you are using redirection for a legitimate purpose -- such as browser or resolution detection -- use JavaScript, and delay the redirect as long as possible. (Search Engine Positioning)

Submitting multiple versions of the same page to the search engines
Check with each engine to see how many pages you are allowed to submit per day. (Search Engine Positioning)

Purchasing multiple domains and then putting duplicate copies of your Web site on each domain.
Many engines can detect duplicates; when they do, they may penalize the entire domain. (Google)

Other Recommendations

Link Popularity Programs or Farms are designed to "trick" a search engine into thinking your Web site is more important than it actually is. Avoid these—there are many SEO forums where you can find actual sites with which to trades links. (Google)

Don't try to chase the search engine algorithms -- it's a losing battle. All sites move up and down in the rankings, which is normal. You will always rank higher on some keywords than on others. Go for long-term rankings, not the quick fix.

Consequences of Spam

Search engine spiders are getting smarter all the time. Did you know that some spiders can detect grammar and spelling mistakes on your site pages? And don’t forget that a lot of search engines have human editors who can go through your code.

If you’re caught doing anything questionable, your site will be penalized in some fashion, usually by lower rankings. And if you go too far, your domain will be banned from that search engine. Being banned from one of the popular search engines is not a good thing. If you know you're doing something that borders on spam, change these practices immediately and resubmit your site.

For your long-term SEO strategy, do these basic things for every page on your site:

• Have a good, descriptive HTML title tag that reflects the two or three key search phrases for which you want your page to be found.
• Have good, descriptive body copy that makes use in an appropriate manner of the phrases for which you want to be found.
• Seek links from other Web sites that are appropriate to your site's content.
• Use a reasonable approach. For example, an 8-page site with 150 doorway pages would obviously be spam. When you’re deciding how many doorway pages to use, employ common sense.

I’ve done SEO work -- without using any questionable practices -- on sites that have ranked number one on Google within three weeks of launching. So it’s definitely possible to get good rankings on the major search engines using ethical SEO practices. On the other hand, questionable practices can get you sued or get your site banned. Strive for long-term SEO results and you’ll rank high for the long term.

Theresa Wilkinson of W-edge design has been working in web design since 1995 and search engine optimization since 1997 with amazing results. A professional SEO expert, she is also a published author with a web column in the STC Intercom magazine, called the ABCs of Web Design. She regularly write articles on various SEO topics. She is also an active speaker on SEO and web site conversion topics for DigtalEve Columbus, Cleveland and Columbus STC chapters, and Franklin University in Columbus, Ohio.