Thursday, December 6, 2012

What is SEO Spam?

What Constitutes SEO Spam?

So, if SEO spam is so hard to define, how do you know whether what you’re doing is right or wrong?

Good question. And the answer is that you don’t always know, but there are some guidelines that you can follow that will help you stay out of the spam category. Basic, good web-design practices are your best defense. If you’re handling your web-site search marketing using the guidelines provided by the various search engines you’ll target, you should be in a position not to worry about being classified as a spammer.

Don’t do anything that makes you worry that you’re doing wrong.
It sounds like simple advice, but when you think about it, if you’re doing something on your web site that you have to worry is going to get you banned from a search engine, you probably shouldn’t do it. This includes strategies like using hidden text on your web pages, using doorway pages or cloaking your pages, and creating false link structures. Even if you don’t know that these strategies are banned by search engines, when you consider the sneakiness of the strategy, you’ll be able to tell that it’s not likely a strategy that you should use.

Don’t make your web site appear to be something that it’s not.
It’s easy to “put a spin” on something to make it appear more attractive than it really is. People do it all the time where products and services are concerned. But using that same strategy on your web site may get you banned. Creating false link structures is one way you might make your site appear more popular than it really is. The problem with using that strategy is that it won’t take a crawler long to figure out that all of those sites are interconnected.

Don’t trust someone who says that a certain practice is acceptable, if you even suspect that it’s not.
Some unethical SEO people will tell you that it’s okay if you use certain obvious spam techniques as long as you use them correctly. Wrong. Spam is spam. It doesn’t matter how you use it, the search crawler will still see it as spam and you’ll still pay the consequences, while the unethical SEO consultant will take the money and leave you in the crawler’s bad graces.

Source : Search Engine Optimization Bible by Wiley

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