Spamming Search Engines and the Ultimate Cost

So, what happens if you get caught?

If you're caught spamming against a search engines your run the risk of incurring a number of penalties:

1) The web page is flagged for closer inspection for human review
2) The web page's ranking is slowly reduces.
3) The web page is dropped from the engine.
4) The entire site is banned from the engine.

What makes building web pages fun and interesting is that most of the search engines are very vague on what they consider as Spam and the rules vary for each engine. The extent and intent to which the Spam was used makes a difference as well. I've listed a number of web pages building wrongdoings or Spam's against the search engines below.

Don't Misrepresent your Site or Pages

If you optimize for keywords that have absolutely nothing to do with your site content or very little to do with it then you're asking for your misfortune. Misleading visitors into believing one thing when clicking on your keywords and finding out another when they arrive to your site is a big no-no with search engines.

Don't Duplicate/Plagiarize Pages

Search engines don't want to serve duplicate or near duplicate pages to their site visitors. Unethical webmasters will flood search engines with hundreds and even thousands of pages, just trying to corner the market on specific keywords, either related or not related to their site.

So, most of the search engines will actively look for content that are very similar and will drop those pages or domains that they find are crossing the line. These so called "dupe-checkers" will unfortunately catch people who are not even trying to create duplicate content. So, you may not intentionally be trying to Spam an engine, but a search engine spider may conclude otherwise. So, vary your content as much as possible, and if your unsure if a spider may consider your pages as duplicates then vary your page sizes, meta tags & insert blank spaces if needed.

So, if you are creating custom versions of basically the same page for each search engine, you may generate some attention from a "dupe checker." One option is to use robot.txt protocols to prevent Engine B from indexing pages intended for Engine A.

Don't Hide your Text

Some hidden text is perfectly acceptable, like Meta Tags & Alt Tags. Hiding your keywords by using the same color text as your background is definitely considered Spam. Some web masters will even vary the color just enough to avoid any detection, but you still run the risk of being caught if you use this strategy.

Don't Cloak Pages

Cloaking software will take the "don't hide" to the next level, by serving up one page to a search engine and another to the visitor. Effectively, this hides the real page being indexed by the engine. Google has also issued statements that they have improved their cloak detecting software so be aware of what your doing or getting your self into.

Don't Cram Keywords

If you cram too many keywords into your pages you run the risk of spamming and repeating the same keywords multiple times in a row is the worst offense. The overuse of keywords will cause your page to drop and the under use will cause your competitors page to rise above yours. The magic number is very sensitive and takes a lot of research to figure out. If your unsure, view other highly ranked pages and emulate their number of keywords they use with their pages.

Please see my article on Choosing The Right Key Words for more information on this subject.

Don't Heist Pages

Some companies will try to mimic other highly ranking pages to boost their rankings. This is acceptable; however don't unethically copy all the text and html from a high ranked page and onto your page. Besides, this breaks the copyright laws of most civilized countries.

Don't Redirect your Pages

Some unethical web site builders will hide the ugly content designed to optimize their pages with a search engine and redirect the surfer to another page, via a Meta refresh tag, java script and other tricks. If the engine suspects you're trying to fool the engine then your page will most likely get banned. A less strict punishment will be enforced by an engine if you set up a legitimate redirect, such as if that page has moved etc.

Don't Build Poor Doorways

Every single page an engine displays in its search results is acting as a doorway page to that site. So, obviously all the pages are not Spam. There are negative connotations to the term doorway pages with search engines. But, when it come right down too it, pages that are created with content intended for the web surfer and not specifically for a search engine promotion campaign are what search engines are looking for. So, build pages that are web visitor friendly and not focused entirely on the engine itself.

Don't fail to Cross Link Pages

Your page links that you wish to optimize should all travel from your home page and to all other pages and back. If your optimized pages only carry outbound links and nothing returning then it may appear like a one directional doorway page and run the possibility of getting penalized. Thus your page will run the risk of losing page ranking if not properly linked to your home page.

Don't Associate with Link Farms

Reciprocating quality links are very popular for increasing your websites search engine rankings. But, be careful of joining Link Farms that artificially inflate your sites link popularity. Google and other sites are black listing link farms and if your caught within a link farm community then your guilty too.

Don't Over-Submit your Pages

Submissions usually take up to 6 weeks and it won't do any good to submit your pages multiple times a day. Most search engines may not ban your site for over submitting, but they may choose to ignore all of your submissions too. So, to be safe some critics recommend submitting one page per engine per day. You decide and go from there.

Don't build Garbage Pages

Search engines will frown on pages that have little useful content and diminish a surfers experience on the web. Web builders and Marketers sometimes forget about aesthetics on the web and focus entirely on promotion. So, what good is it to have a visitor reach your page, but to click away in disgust. Search engines just want to see useful, non-misleading and web surfer friendly pages. Build your site for the surfer and not the engine and half your battle will be won!