SEO Spam: The inside story of abused Arts

Kung-fu-Panda

SEO Spam: The Abused Arts

In addition to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices, Websites bring undeniable benefits on their own. Still, there's also an analogy to SEO, and it is ‘SEO Spam’. This is what every good website author try to avoid, since search engines punish such practices (often severely). So, what are the parameters for SEO spamming and what can be expected from using it?

Many definitions on this issue are out there that deal with increasing of site positions through artificial means. With this statement I cannot fully identify, because in that case it would itself be unfair SEO techniques a lot in common. I'm offering you another idea:  SEO can help a good site, rewarding content, quality product. In a nutshell, what is beneficial for users is not so for a site that meets these characteristics. Unethical techniques intended to get websites in search results upwards, we call SEO spam.

The basic yardstick by which search engines rank pages is on-page and off-page factors. Objective site analysis identifies the page text, reliability calculated by the number of inbound links and their importance. It is, simply put, their main weapons. It is clear that it must be against those who are trying to blunt the defense.

Death penalty
In fact, SEO is just a type of spamming and only for what it is labeled by a search engine. If the site gets the unpleasant label, it's like life imprisonment and even death as punishment. Your site will be penalized, the results will fall hundreds of points down, at worst, completely disappear without a trace. And trust me, unless your site in search engines, if not even exist. It's like a company's reputation damaged, damaged reputation is like a criminal record and a blot that will get rid of it with difficulty. It will cost a lot of money, time and effort, and nowhere is it written that you will ever succeed. It is possible that the only solution will be completely a new domain. Is it worth it?

Unfair Practices

As I said, what spam is and what is not, that is always determined in different parameters by different search engines themselves. Therefore, a question to the list of prohibited practices is best to contact the right Guidelines and Best Practices which search engines recommends not to use:

• Hidden text and links
• Cloaking
• ineffective and too often repeated words
• Doorway pages
• Secret redirections
• Link farms
• duplicate content
• commentary spam
• Automated programs registering sites to search engines and directories.

A platitude says that the aim of search engines is to offer the best possible results. It follows directly that search engines do not like irrelevant results, namely:

• sites consisting primarily for search engines
• sites with high quantity and low quality content
• Automatically generated pages. 

Hidden text and links

The same background color and text, tiny unreadable text and links Unsalted from the surrounding text is the most common ways to fool the search engines. The revelation of this strategy is sufficient to open the source code and the problem is worldwide. In few cases of SEO practices, it is not spam to hide text by CSS, which is used for navigation (skip navigation, jump to the content, etc.); of course, if the CSS is intentionally used for hiding text to fool the search engines, this technique is also punishable. Search engines try to track this tactic, while not automatically detect, but its art of making a discovery is really primitive. See your competitors with open eye and keep quiet as the grave.

Cloaking

The Czech term 'cloaking' can be loosely translated as camouflage and concealment. Cloaking is a kind of SEO spamming by any other site and other real visitors (mostly to use server side scripting). This page is intended to artificially design for search engine robots. Despite the quality of the text, the changes in content do not make sense for humans. Over-use of the keywords in various forms and various connections a visitor usually looks for. After clicking on such a result, visitors usually get something completely different from what they originally expected.

It should be noted that this method is also relatively easy to detect. On a bag of coarse rough patch, experts say that the search engines check websites in such a way that does not identify the robot as a robot, but as a user. Then just two versions to compare and index labels; SEO spam is already rid. Do not risk permanent exclusion.

Irrelevant and too often repeated words

The selected keywords are added to content in various shapes and in conjunction with a variety of phrases to increase the keyword density and improve your position in search results. Such passages are completely meaningless to real visitors, so they are often treated as with hiding text..

Doorway pages

Doorway page (or gateway) is a site whose sole purpose is to secure high placement on search engines with a few key words and phrases that are repeated in various forms in abundance on a website. These landing pages usually have a link or the visitor is automatically redirected to the target site. Search Engines waged with this type of SEO spam futile struggle. Of course, these kinds of pages exclude indexing, but since they are usually located on another domain, it will not solve anything and mills grind on.

Secret redirections
The user, after arriving at the "friendly" pages using Javascript redirected to other sites, which the robot does not recognize itself as Javascipt indexing. This tactic is mostly used by sites with illegal content - pornography, online casino, etc. Redirecting generally should be used only if you have transferred the contents to another domain or address. In this case it is best to use server-side solution 301 Moved Permanently, if possible, a meta refresh tag. In this case, set the time to divert at least 10 seconds. If you set too short time, the page will present content that search engines can index; your site may be considered as a doorway and the penalty is likely in place.

Link farms

Link Farm (reference farm) is a special Web site with a large number of pages (in thousands, but feel free to millions) which play reciprocally. That site is then due to the large number of inbound links ranks high and appears high in search results. Typically used for several purposes:

• Farm refers to a different site, which has increased the number of inbound links and thus page-rank.
• With secret redirects the visitor is moved to another site and it increases the number of visitors.
• The farm is involved in many other sites that refer to each other and increase your page-rank.
• Links from these farms are sold.

The problem is that such a link farm may not be obvious at first sight and connected pages are badly punished. Firstly, search engines did not penalize my site for that leads me to a link from another site (it could be easily abused), and secondly, they should not penalize my site for the link leads me to another site, which is such involved in link farms. This refutes the idea of ​​the nature of hyper-text, a typical user can refer to an web-page without having a clue to what the pages are involved. Website link farms can be presented as a cautionary tale or a link to his site to add anyone else (in comments and forums). The problem is that search engines take each link as a positive reference for the link and cannot tell where the plus point gets wrong. Anyway, the case of exclusion of all sites that is involved in link farms is recorded and I recommend anything that smacks of something illegal.

Duplicate Content

Duplication of content is not like spamming classical technique. The author may be rather stupid in this case. You should be aware of the URLs that did not present the same content somehow. Remember that the search engines take following types of addresses as four different sites and you should consistently use only one method chosen:

http://www.example.com/
http://example.com/
http://www.example.com/index.htm
http://example.com/index.htm

The error is often caused by the presence of 'session id' in the URL or inadequate treatment of cases of duplicate pages in dynamic pages. A typical example is the pagination of various lists, which is identical to the home page; the first link points to both types, resulting in the unnecessary loss of some links.

http://www.example.com/list.php
http://www.example.com/list.php?pa-ge=1

Search engines do not penalize duplicate content directly, but indirectly warns you. The search results included only one page with the highest number of inbound links and links leading to unnecessary duplication and missing.

The comment spam

I'm sure you know. In various forums and discussions, comments are added with links for a single purpose - to increase the number of inbound links. With this problem, search engines can fight hard, does not recognize the connection link to the topic. All the popular search engines as a defense, against this problem, introduce support for rel ="nofollow" about its usefulness, however, lead the discussion. Fighting windmills remains on the shoulders of the authors of damaged sites.

Automatic programs registering sites to search engines and catalogs

A similar problem is spam commentary. While search engines make this technique unfair, they can fight hard to find a link to your site because it may include anyone anywhere. Although generally it is not recommended to use automated programs to register sites in various catalogs, you can search hard on the other hand, you've just added a link to you.

How can be a penalty?

Hardly, while working with search engines you have to learn one more important rule. Be patient. Do not get panic with the first decrease or loss of hard-won position. Reasons why your site is not in the search results can be plenty.

• Pages are too young and did not make the search engine still included to be indexed. The pages do not have outbound links, or very few links.
• Pages do not meet basic requirements for optimizing (frames, flash, javascript, closed to the menu).
• The search is ongoing dance, exchange of databases, updating of backlinks, sites are located in a sandbox - more or less short-term issue, just wait.
• Another types of penalties.

It's good to watch your site more full-text. Losing the original position in one search engine may indicate only local variations. If your site has disappeared from multiple search engines, the probability of error on your side is greater. Anyway, it cannot be generalized. I try only to suggest that each search engine has its own database and penalties does not automatically mean to the other, although it is likely that this will soon happen. Cheating is not just the president as they say, truth always wins!

   Search engines may penalize only one aspect of the index or exclude your entire domain or a Web site "only" to knock down the results. Penalties may be for a limited time and for a lifetime as well. The penalty policy of search engines cannot be seen, but most often the case when we meet with the penalty that is excluded from the database of the entire domain for a long time.

Do Search Engines pay attention to SEO spam?

Some search engines are trying to minimize and detection of fraudulent techniques of SEO spamming using special robots. This automated method is often not completely free of errors and some things it can escape. Therefore, almost every search engine has its own internal teams of people who have the task to find SEO Spam and punish. Of course, they cannot check every single page. So if you find a site that tries to improve its position by illegal techniques and without fear, report it, especially if you think your site have lost position due to the one that reached with the unfair conduct. Report at:

• Search Report,
• Yahoo Report,
• AltaVista Report,
• Report List,

... and more Search Engines.

Final wisdom

Even if it's already very old-fashioned and boring, it is still necessary to remind and repeat: Design site with regard to humans, search engines will understand and adapt to it. In the first place must be content, add a pinch of pure SEO practices, success will come to you.         
Just DON’T SPAM, please.