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Search Conference Vindicates SEO Basics, Exposes Bad Boy SEO
By Mike Banks Valentine (c) Nov. 16, 2004

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.

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.

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Mike Banks Valentine practices ethical Search Engine Optimism 
at: http://SEOptimism.com/SEO_Contact.htm

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