Cheating the Search Engines

Hope you had a great weekend.

Upon browsing the web, I came across a new (and clever) tactic based on an old technique of cheating the search engines. (I was going to give the website address, but decided I didn’t want to help the cheater advertise). The cheaters are populating phony blog sites with an abundance of links and keywords. The idea here is to load up on words and links to get their website listed higher in the search engines.

Well, it’s only be a matter of time before these deceptive practices are flushed out. Google says,

“We investigate each report of deceptive practices thoroughly and take appropriate action when abuse is uncovered”.

It is Google and other search engine’s responsibility to provide relevant search results. It not, users will go elsewhere. So it is in their (search engine companies) best interest to flush out the cheaters and provide only quality results.

Instead of using deceptive tactics search engines HATE, use some techniques that the search engines LIKE:

• Choose a keyword rich domain name – See my blog, “It’s all in a Domain Name” for more info.
• Keyword Text Formatting – Add your targeted keywords to Heading tags (H1), bold keywords and Capitalize words. Search engines differentiate between large and small text. The larger the text the more important it must be.
• Keyword Rich Links – When creating links, don’t use ‘click here’, add your targeted keywords and phrases to your links. Example: For more information, see our web design portfolio.

With anything, use in moderation. The suggestions above, when abused, can lead to your entire site being removed from the search engine index.

Google has a Guideline section for web developers explaining what techniques are acceptable and not acceptable when creating your web pages.

Google also has a submission form to report any cheaters using any kind of deceptive search engine practices.

Mike Swartz says, “Check it Out.”