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15 Shades of SEO Spam
By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor,
StepForth Placement Inc. (c) 2006

Sp@m, in almost any form, is bad for your health. The vast
majority of web users would agree with that statement and nobody
would even think of the finely processed luncheon meat-product
made by Hormel. Even the word itself is infectious in all the
worst ways, being used to describe the dark-side and often
deceptive side of everything from email marketing to abusive
forum behaviour. In the search engine optimization field, sp@m
is used to describe techniques and tactics thought to be banned
by search engines or to be unethical business practices.

While writing copy for our soon to be revised website, the team
put together a short list of the most outrageous forms of sp@m
we had seen in the last year and a short explanation of the
technique.

Please note, we do not encourage, endorse or suggest the use of
any of the techniques listed here. We don't use them and our
clients' sites continue to rank well at Google, Yahoo, MSN and
Ask. Also, since Google has been the dominant search engine for
almost five years, most of the sp@mmy tricks evolved in order to
game Google and might not apply to the other engines.

1. Cloaking
Also known as "stealth", cloaking is a technique that involves
serving one set of information to known search engine spiders
while displaying a different set of information on documents
viewed by clients. While there are unique situations in which
the use of cloaking might be considered ethical in the
day-to-day practice of SEO, cloaking is never required. This is
especially true after the Jagger algorithm update at Google,
which uses document and link histories as important ranking
factors.

2. IP Delivery
IP delivery is a simple form of cloaking in which a unique set
of information is served based on the IP number the info-query
originated from. IP addresses known to be search engine based
are served one set of information while unrecognized IP
addresses, (assumed to be live-visitors) are served another.

3. Leader Pages
Leader pages are a series of similar documents each designed to
meet requirements of different search engine algorithms. This is
one of the original SEO tricks dating back to the earliest days
of search when there were almost a dozen leading search engines
sorting less than a billion documents. It is considered sp@m by
the major search engines as they see multiple incidents of what
is virtually the same document. Aside from that, the technique
is no longer practical as search engines consider a far wider
range of factors than the arrangement or density of keywords
found in unique documents.

4. Mini-Site Networks
Designed to exploit a critical vulnerability in early versions
of Google's PageRank algorithm, mini-site networks were very
much like leader pages except they tended to be much bigger. The
establishment of a mini-site network involved the creation of
several topic or product related sites all linking back to a
central sales site. Each mini-site would have its own keyword
enriched URL and be designed to meet specific requirements of
each major search engine. Often they could be enlarged by adding
information from leader pages. By weaving webs of links between
mini-sites, an artificial link-density was created that could
heavily influence Google's perception of the importance of the
main site.

In the summer of 2004, Google penalized several prominent SEO
and SEM firms for using this technique by banning their entire
client lists.

5. Link Farms
Link farms emerged as free-for-all link depositories when
webmasters learned how heavily incoming links influenced Google.
Google, in turn, quickly devalued and eventually eliminated the
PR value it assigned to pages with an inordinate collection or
number of links. Nevertheless, link farms persist as uninformed
webmasters and unethical SEO firms continue to use them.

6. Blog and/or Forum sp@m
Blogs and forums are amazing and essential communication
technologies, both of which are used heavily in the daily
conduct of our business. As with other Internet based media,
blogs and forum posts are easily and often proliferated. In some
cases, blogs and certain forums also have established high PR
values for their documents. These two factors make them targets
of unethical SEOs looking for high-PR links back to their
websites or those of their clients. Google in particular has
clamped down on Blog and Forum abuse.

7. Keyword Stuffing
At one time, search engines were limited to sorting and ranking
sites based on the number of keywords found on those documents.
That limitation led webmasters to put keywords everywhere they
possibly could. When Google emerged and incoming links became a
factor, some even went as far as using keyword stuffing of
anchor text.

The most common continuing example of keyword stuffing can be
found near the bottom of far too many sites in circulation.

8. Hidden Text
It is amazing that some webmasters and SEOs continue to use
hidden text as a technique but, as evidenced by the number of
sites we find it on, a lot of folks still use it. They
shouldn't.

There are two types of hidden text. The first is text that is
coloured the same shade as the background thus rendering it
invisible to human visitors but not to search spiders. The
second is text that is hidden behind images or under document
layers. Search engines tend to dislike both forms and have been
known to devalue documents containing incidents of hidden text.

9. Useless Meta Tags
Most meta tags are absolutely useless. The unethical part is
that some SEO firms actually charge for the creation and
insertion of meta tags. In some cases, there seems to be a meta
tag for virtually every possible factor but for the most part
are not considered by search spiders.

StepForth only uses the description and keywords meta tags
(though we are dubious about the actual value of the keywords
tag), along with relevant robots.txt files. All other
identifying or clarifying information should be visible on a
contact page or included in the footers of each page.

10. Misuse of Directories
Directories, unlike other search indexes, tend to be sorted by
human hands. Search engines traditionally gave links from
directories a bit of extra weight by considering them links from
trusted authorities. A practice of sp@mming directories emerged
as some SEOs and webmasters hunted for valuable links to improve
their rankings. Search engines have since tended to devalue
links from most directories. Some SEOs continue to charge
directory submission fees.

11. Hidden Tags
There are a number of different sorts of tags used by search
browsers or website designers to perform a variety of functions
such as; comment tags, style tags, alt tags, noframes tags, and
http-equiv tags. For example, the "alt tag" is used by
site-readers for the blind to describe visual images. Inserting
keywords into these tags was a technique used by a number SEOs
in previous years. Though some continue to improperly use these
tags, the practice overall appears to be receding.

12. Organic Site Submissions
One of the most unethical things a service-based business can do
is to charge clients for a service they don't really need.
Charging for, or even claiming submissions to the major search
engines are an example. Search engine spiders are so advanced
they no longer require site submission to find information.
Search engine spiders find new documents by following links.
Site submission services or SEO firms that charge clients a
single penny for submission to Google, Yahoo, MSN or Ask Jeeves,
are radically and unethically overcharging those clients.

13. Email Sp@m
Placing a URL inside a "call-to-action" email continues to be a
widely used type of search marketing sp@m. With the advent of
desktop search appliances, email sp@m has actually increased.
StepForth does not use email to promote your website in any way.

14. Redirect Sp@m
There are several ways to use the redirect function to fool a
search engine or even hijack traffic destined for another
website! Whether the method used is a 301, a 302, a 402, a meta
refresh or a java-script, the end result is search engine sp@m.

15. Misuse of Web 2.0 Formats (ie Wiki, social networking and
social tagging)
An emerging form of SEO sp@m is found in the misuse of
user-input media formats such as Wikipedia. Like blog comment
sp@mming, the instant live-to-web nature of Web 2.0 formats
provide an open range for SEO sp@m technicians. Many of these
exploits might even find short-term success though it is only a
matter of time before measures are taken to devalue the
efforts.

Search engine optimization sp@m continues to be a problem for
the SEO industry as it tries to move past the perceptions of
mainstream advertisers. When under-ethical techniques are used,
trust (the basis of all business) is abused and the efforts of
the SEO/SEM industry are called into question. Fortunately,
Google's new algorithm appears to be on the cutting edge of SEO
sp@m detection and prevention. Let's hope 2006 is the year the
entire SEO industry goes on a sp@m-free diet.
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Jim Hedger is a writer, speaker and search engine marketing
expert based in Victoria BC. Jim writes and edits full-time for
StepForth and is also an editor for the Internet Search Engine
Database. He has worked as an SEO for over 5 years and welcomes
the opportunity to share his experience through interviews,
articles and speaking engagements. He can be reached at:
jimhedger@stepforth.com
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