Many people who have websites are not totally up to date with
what is considered to be search engine spamming. Having worked
on search engine optimisation for a few clients, I have come
across websites that are using spam techniques to help elevate
search engine rankings. When I confronted clients about this,
they honestly did not know they were using a form of spam nor
did they realise the consequences if detected by the search
engines.
So what is search engine spamming? A simple definition would be;
deliberately designing website pages that offer poor and
irrelevant content, and are used to trick search engines into
ranking the content highly for inappropriate search results.
People tend to use spam as a way of attracting as many visitors
to their website. When caught by the search engines, this will
result in a major setback to business. Websites will be
blacklisted from the search engines and chances are they will
not appear in the index for a very long time.
Not sure if you are spamming? Below are a few common forms of
spam techniques that you should avoid.
Doorway Pages - Optimising a single webpage to perform
exceptionally well in search engine ranks for a group of keyword
phrases (keyword stuffing on the webpage). Once a user clicks on
the link, they will be automatically redirected to a completely
different website.
Invisible Text - Using text that is not visible to the human eye
(having the same colour text as the background colour). The
invisible text will usually contain a large number of keywords
(keyword stuffing).
Link Farms - Joining community websites that provide large
volumes of irrelevant links to your website.
Along with other forms of spam, these techniques should be
avoided at all costs. If you are not sure whether your site uses
some form of spam, then it would be best to contact a search
engine optimisation specialist before it could result in your
website being blacklisted.
Past clients who were using some form of spam and were not aware
of it, had taken a big loss by having their website blacklisted
in some search engines. The road to recovery can take very long
and it is one that no one would like to follow. Be cautious!
About the author:
David Touri is a search engine optimisation specialist working
for
SEO
Sydney. He offers
ethical search engine optimisation
services to companies in Australia. For further information,
please visit
http://www.seosydney.com.au
