How to Avoid SEO Malpractice – Part 2
Yesterday, we started talking a little about SEO Malpractice and the use of “Black Hat” techniques. So today we’re going to begin getting into what some of the most common techniques are. If you’re just tuning in, please note that these techniques are bad. I’m not condoning them. I’m simply hoping to educate you so that you know them when you see them and you can steer clear of any company that’s offering them to you.
So first off, let me give you a quick background. It’s important that you understand why Google has had to clamp down and de-list sites for cheating their way into the rankings. Google’s mission, as stated on their site, is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” That includes providing relevant results when you search for something. I remember when Google first came onto the scene, you’d be searching for recipes for dinner and you may wind up with the first 5 listings containing porn. It was very disturbing for those of us who are trying to keep our nose clean.
The porn sites hoped that the temptation would be so great that you’d click on the links when they were presented to you, despite the fact that you were looking for recipes. They were right. Sex is a very powerful thing and the porn industry grew faster than ever. However, Google and their users eventually became upset because the porn was quite distracting. After all, how could people get anything done, not to mention that it was a horrible thing for children.
Google had to figure out why the porn sites were coming up in the search results when people searched for just about anything and how to stop it. You see, the porn industry webmasters had figured out that all you had to do was make a page that talked about recipes and then put porn it. But that looked a little funny to have porn next to a recipe for fried chicken so they discovered that you could hide the stuff that you didn’t want the viewer to see. That way Google would see it, and be tricked into thinking that it was a page about fried chicken.
The most commonly used technique, early on, was to hide text. Just put white text on a white background and it was invisible to the reader. Google didn’t know that the text was unreadable because their computers were just reading the code and were not physically looking at the site. Google caught on to that one and began comparing the text color to the background color to make sure that there was sufficient contrast. That stopped the porn industry for about 5 minutes until they figured out the next sneaky trick to cheat their way into the listings.
Eventually, Google was forced to strip the power from the webmaster almost completely and give the power to the public to determine which sites were listed at the top. Linking became the primary means for ranking sites and still is the most important criteria.
It’s basically like a popularity contest. The site that has the most, or best sites linking to them wins. I like to think of it like a high school party. Which would be considered a better party, the one where the cheer leaders and the football team showed up, or the one where the math club and the debate team showed up? You could have a party with 30 of the most popular people show up and it would be talked about all year, and the math club party with 50 people wouldn’t go down in history as one of the greatest parties ever. The same is true with the linking game. You have to get people to link to your site who also have popular sites. Getting 50 links from unpopular sites won’t do much for your site’s status. You’re actually better off getting fewer links from better sites than you are getting links from lots of unpopular, no-name sites.
But back to how to avoid SEO Malpractice…
I know that seemed like a long divergence from the topic, but here’s my point, Google is now looking at the sites that you’re link with and determining if they are worthy sites and letting that control your position in their ranking. If you trade links with sites that have a bad reputation then your site is likely to be penalized. It’s called linking to bad neighborhoods. Stay clear of anything that appears to be malicious, dangerous, obscene or otherwise bad. You can’t help it if they choose to link to you, but NEVER EVER link to them. That can get your site banned too.
Tomorrow, we’ll talk a little more about linking and then about something that can be perceived as completely harmless, but can hurt your rankings seriously.
Until then…
