The 2004 "World of Search" conference at the Las Vegas Convention Center began Tuesday, November 15, with a short
welcome and conference kudos and credits from WebMasterWorld.com (WMW) head Brett Tabke. A first session, titled
"Big Site Promotion" provided a glimpse into search engine gambits employed by the SE strategists for the big boys
at Autobytel.com (Joe Morin of Boost Search Marketing), About.com (Marshall Simmonds, Primedia Search Director) and
IBM (Bill Hunt of GlobalStrategies.com).
"Big Site Promotion" turned out to be a vindication of the standard SEO rallying cry, "Content and relevancy are
King!" Both Simmonds (About.com) and Morin (Autobytel.com) told tales of basic SEO issues. Both work in a
change-resistant corporate culture where adoption is slow and "proof of concept" is often necessary before multiple
division heads will sign-off. Where multiple division heads must agree to page templates changes, even when those
changes are well recognized necessities of SEO.
Other issues pointed to were on-page javascript and inline CSS as barriers to search engine robots crawling
thousands of pages. An extreme example was given of a corporate home page that ran to 21 printed pages of jscript
and CSS - before any visible page text was finally reached! Reference those javascript and CSS files
offpage folks!
In the same session, we heard from IBM SEO Bill Hunt with a story of finding and removing rogue robots.txt files
that kept SE spiders out of literally thousands of pages. Quizzing audience members on the issue he got only a
sprinkling of upraised hands when he asked how many thought that problem might be significant.
Hunt warned them that they'd better take it seriously when pages are not being indexed and look for unknown
robots.txt files that may be found lurking on client servers of monstrous corporate sites. He noted that the
starting point for large site SEO is often the bare essentials (the standard Title, Heading and Metadata) on
global templates, followed by resolving "barriers to crawling" like dynamic URL's, cookies and session ID's in
visible URL's through URL rewrites.
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The after lunch "SEO Super Session" served mostly to frighten and anger any honest and ethical SEO's when a panel
discussion exposed the so-called "Black Hat" SEO techniques as common, acceptable and routine for at least one
panelist and some audience members, who shared a laugh over illicit ranking techniques. Even though one panelist
pointed out the presence of Google's Matt Cutts in the back of the room, the panelist grinned through his "do what
works" justification for even more black hat techniques and said, to more laughs, "You're not a true SEO until
you've been banned at least once!"
I beg to differ on that point and hope the friendly chuckles passed around that session aren't a true reflection
of the majority of this audience so accepting of underhanded black hat trickery. I literally got physically ill
over the spamming techniques and cloaking skullduggery so easily accepted in the name of "client advocacy" by
many SEO's. Panelist members mentioned that they'd been surprised at the number of people at SEO conferences who
refuse to offer a name and occupation when greeted because they don't want to be identified as one of those bad
boy SEO's. I'm proud of my occupation and refuse to use questionable "algo-busting" trickery readily acccepted
with a wink by some.
The latest widespread dirty trick is done using an IP delivery ruse which forwards recognized search engine spiders
to a higher ranked site through a "301 page moved", inheriting the forwarded site's PageRank, while showing other
visitors the true pages. Although I suppose I'll be seen as a naive and gullible-SEO-prude opposed to using "brute
force" techniques to manipulate the search engines, I'll accept the inevitable ribbing and sleep well at night.
An audience member wondered out loud why Google hasn't done something to correct this latest underhanded IP
delivery technique. Panelists had no answer, but suggested attendees corner search engine representatives present
from Google (Matt Cutts) and Yahoo (Tim Mayer) to see what they had to say on the subject.
Though I've lost clients to those willing to employ rotten egg techniques that attract visitors like maggots, I
don't have to return later and clean up the mess left by the buzzing bugs crawling over the stench left when
techniques die suddenly, are discovered and banned. I've earned substantial money doing the cleanup for previous,
banned SEO's. I hated that work and the extensive cleanup of rotting doorway pages, stinky cloaked pages and
endless putrid piles of deteriorating mirror sites.
I just this week lost a job to a black hat SEO team. The work I bid on and lost was from a substantial company
seeking to cover up bad press that is ranking in top spots, right below their sales site. The clear honest solution
is to displace those bad press results with high ranking and legitimate press releases, FAQ's, glossary of terms
and relevant contextual sites that rank above them. I will, in the future, refuse the inevitable job of cleaning
up the mess left by the black hat winner of that contract.
Though more sessions capped the first day agenda, none could hold my attention after a stomach turning black hat
technique discussion - I had to flee to my hotel room to my illness in private. Damn! I hope some good
announcements or innovative ideas emerge from days two and three of the "WebMaster World of Search #7" so I can
get over that upset stomach brought on by the bad boys of search. I know there will always be those willing to
cheat, lie and steal as long as there is money to be made. I also know I won't be one of them.
About The Author
Mike Banks Valentine practices ethical SEO. Contact Mike at:
SEOptimism.com. This article is available online at RealitySEO.com
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