bad practice?

[metaphase]

I had a conversation with an seo company, who it appears uses "ghost pages", where a page is optimised for spiders only, and a small flash movie is embedded to forward human visitors onto the sites homepage (so they never see the content of that page), this gets round the javascript forwarding that google doesnt like.

Is this common practice? Its obvious its not good but is it a loophole thats taken for granted?

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

What you should ask yourself is: Does it work and what risks is involved.

I would definately never do such pages on my "brand" domain. Maybe on a "throw away" domain but never on a domain I want to keep long time. The risk is too high and the results often not good enough to justify it.

[sootledir]

The technique, as described, is hardly a grand slam SEO technique. There's no guarantee it will rank, and it could blow up in your face.

[David Wallace]

Do a search on this forum (and others) for "Traffic Power", read through some of the threads and you will soon realize that it is a very bad technique as a similar technique (if you can call it that) got this company into a lot of trouble.

I would say that it is NOT a common practice, nor a good one.

[Chris Boggs]

I would certainly agree with all three previous posts...stay away unless you are willing to give up the domain.

[mcanerin]

I've used the Flash example as a simple but accurate Flash detection method, but using it as a type of cloaking isn't recommended.

Ian

[summerherekids]

i use a similar technique with my real estate website, and i have a top 3 google ranking after being online only a few weeks.

i wouldn't worry about getting banned. read through these forums, and you'll hear alot of stories where people actually report sites like this, but the search engines simply don't seem to care.

i don't think that the search engine world is very different from the real world, where nice guys finish last.

good luck.

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

Anyone that has been in the search marketing business for some time will agree that just because you get away with something some of the times and even if you have friends that do too dosn't mean everyone will all the time. It only takes one ban to hurt. It is wrong to say that the discussed techniques are not risky. They are indeed! No doubt about that. The question is if you are ready to take those risks. I am not saying you souldn't, I would just never do so on an important (brand) domain - that is simply a foollish risk to take.

[Jill Whalen]

The bigger question (to me at least) is why bother?

Why not just show the content to the visitor? Is it so bad that users shouldn't see it? And if so, why is that? Can't be very relevant to your site then.

[Chris Boggs]

i use a similar technique with my real estate website, and i have a top 3 google ranking after being online only a few weeks.

i wouldn't worry about getting banned. read through these forums, and you'll hear alot of stories where people actually report sites like this, but the search engines simply don't seem to care.

i don't think that the search engine world is very different from the real world, where nice guys finish last.

good luck.

please follow up with us in a few months...I am curious about the longevity of this so-called "bad-boy" method.

As has been pointed out by Mikel, there is no harm in going this route if you are prepared to lose all the time and money you put into your site, eventually. Could be sooner, could be later, depending on your competition's awareness of unethical techniques.

[budda101]

I am in the satellite industry and asite was recently brought to my attention: <snip>It looks like this is proof that anything is possible and will rank. Check out the use of the h1, h2, and h3 in the source code along with the links at the bottom to every page for their keywords. Gotta love SEO companies that do this and flaunt their name.

[summerherekids]

this looks like a great site with a ton of content... whats the problem here?

as long as they aren't appearing in the serps for "fat free dog food." i see no issues.

i dont know, what does everyone else think?