Spamming is Not a Satisfactory SEO Strategy

Maybe very few things can explain competition as vividly as the Web. After all, how can one website compete with thousands of other websites just like it?

If the attention span of an average Internet user is as wide as a search engine’s listing, then there’s nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, though, that is not the situation. Very likely, a person performing a search on the Internet will probably just surf through the top 3 to 5 SERPs (search engine results pages) and stop there. Website that get buried in the 10th page and onwards will likely not get too much attention if particular steps are not undertaken.

Those measures are what are labelled search engine optimization (SEO). Experts in this field perform certain procedures which may be seen a “website boot camp” to get your website into top form that will compete in the top rankings of a search engine.

However, as it is with nearly everything else, some shortcuts exist that are able to swindle search engines into putting} a certain website at a high ranking, despite the fact that it provides no real information. These sets of shortcuts are labelled “spamming”.

SEO spam (or spamdexing) is a set of tactics that manipulate a website for the purpose of creating an false improvement in its rankings on SERPs. Here are just some examples of some SEO spam:

1. Cloaking

When a website presents a set of information to a search engine different from a set the user is looking at, then cloaking has been done. What usually happens is that the web page’s code is pertinant to the user’s search keywords, but when the user visits that specific web page, the user sees a document that has little or nothing to do with his search.

2. Artificially networked sites

There is really nothing wrong with creating links between one site to another so long as the links are applicable and serve to connect beneficial information.

However, spammers who perform this tactic set up several web sites and link them together even though the sites contain no useful or valuable information. The purpose for doing so is simply to create the image of a highly referenced site because of its density of links. If this is the case, then it can be considered spamming.

3. Blog and Forum Spam

Online blogs and forums are a spectacular source of information since these formats are meant to be renovated within short intervals. This, in itself, makes them a satisfactory reference for information, which is why search engines like to visit these sites and rank them well for the value of information they hold.

However, spammers have taken advantage of this by flooding blogs and fora with unrelated links to the websites they want to create artificial rankings for. Not only are they cheating the search engine company by misleading a user to irrelevant information, they also interrupt the bloggers and the forum participants, which is downright rude.

4. Hidden text.

Similar to cloaking, hidden texts are meant to make search engines think that a page is about one thing, while it is actually about another. But it fools the search engine this way: the text that the search engine is able to read is hidden by making the text font color the same as the background color. What happens is that the user is unable to read what the search engine saw, and therefore may be looking at a document that is not related to the user’s search.

Other strategies are to produce small, imperceptible links that a user can unintentionally click on, thus generating more hits for a website even if the user had no intentions of visiting that site at all.

By this time, you likely already know why spamming is done. It is a shortcut used by some dishonest website owners to make their website rank high on SERPs. Folks who pose as SEO professionals use these spamming techniques to get money for doing little to no work.

Now that you know what they are, and how they do it, here’s why you should have nothing to do with spamming and the people who support it.

The whole point of the Internet was to create a wealth of information that everyone can access and add to. The whole idea was to be able to generate a place where information can be created and shared with others so that it can cultivate understanding despite physical borders.

Other results of this information have led to the development e-commerce and online businesses, which in itself, is not necessarily a negative thing. It still donates to a community of information and sharing.

However, spamming is basically profiting at someone else’s cost. A spammer profits by utilizing other people to make his website rank higher than others without taking the necessary time and effort to make his website useful and applicable as what others have done.

It speaks weakly of website owners who see nothing but their own bottom lines in utilizing the Internet. It is simply exploiting the trust and the willingness to share, which made the Internet such a promising venue for everyone.

Finally, it disgraces righteous SEO professionals who take the time and effort to produce valuable websites and make it a point to stick to the rules. Search engine marketing is helping to equalize the playing field so it can allow businesses of any level to advertise right along side each other. And that is a creditable thing, which everyone should gladly support.

Search engines, on their part, are creating smarter technologies to detect spamming strategies in order to give users the best list of information from the Internet. Eventually, the spam strategies mentioned above may be eliminated. But it is very likely other more sophisticated ones will come up. On your part, you can report spammers to these search engines when you encounter them. The more people like you who do this, the easier it will be to catch these cheaters and make it more difficult for spammers to do their thing.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bob Schwartz, is the founder of Promotions Unlimited,an Internet legal directory (CA, TX & Las Vegas ) publisher and search engine placement technology analyst.  You can contact Bob via e-mail at  seo711@gmail.com or visit his San Diego legal directory at:  http://www.sandiegolawyerforyou.com/special.htm