Spamming Versus Creative / Real World SEO Tactics

[! !]

:confused:
How does one draw the line between SPAMMING AND
Agressive , Creative SEO techniques....

There is the Theoretical and the REAL-Life concerns

for example if you have lots of Graphics and Flash on your site

would it not be unreasonalble to use techiques that are only designed to appeal to spiders, knowing that - while Humans may enjoy the Beauty and animations of a site - spiders are completely unsympathetic.


Also, how can a no-money- nobody Compete with the Thousands of Dollars that major companies can spend on Promotion and Marketing..

Is some real-life techniques understandable to a certain extent?

Or is do you advocate a "zero-tolerance" policy???

[seobook]

zero tolerance is an unsubstantiated claim to artificial superiority.

any form of seo is at least somewhat spam.

I think you should draw the line at what seems like it is common sense.

writing a good title and good page copy. fine
using good internal linking strategy. fine
registering a site at a directory. fine
creating a resource directory and exchanging a few links. fine
sponsoring a few sites. fine

creating tons of machine generated pages to capture clicks seems a bit greedy to me, but if you are willing to take the risks associated with it then it is fine. Danny Sullivan recently wrote some articles about the changing standards for various people.

the reasons individuals can compete really cheaply is that you do not need to be big to be good. for example, I have only been playing on the web just over a year (still under 1.5 years I think) my cost of living per month is somewhere around $500 because I live with a friend and we bought the place we live at. It is very easy for me to work at cheap rates because I do not have much living expense.

some firms have stock options and investors and people who bring them coffee in the morning and answer their phones. I wake up, slide 3 feet away from the bed, and start typing on the keys. on a price level basis they have no way to compete with one or two really talented seos. one thing though is many very good seo's will not usually want to work for many people because they can make far more money by creating their own ideas and promoting them. I rarely work for people who contact me.

I also am smart enough to know that I can't do everything. if I try to design a site it looks like it just came out of the rear end of some dead animal on the road.

my friend who was on the submarine with me was able to teach himself mysql and php in two days. he is an amazing site designer and is going to be going to school on the montgomery GI bill. with his low cost of living he does not need to make tons of money either.

the web is nothing but a big social network. by treating people fairly and honestly and working hard you can develope a network of people who want to support you and actively lower your costs.

in the last month I have been offered free seo software from multiple vendors, free hosting, free domain and hosting reseller accounts... it is all about working hard to try to establish yourself and then it continues to pay even on your days off.

[Mel]

Is agressively optimizing pages that are relevant for the results returned spamming the search engines?

I lean toward the theory that relevancy should be more important than saying this technique is bad, but this technique is ok in that almost every technique has its good and bad uses.

I can't recall exactly where I saw it but there was a suggestion in a forum that you might be considered spamming if you were unwilling to show your competitors how you obtained your rankings.

[David Wallace]

I can't recall exactly where I saw it but there was a suggestion in a forum that you might be considered spamming if you were unwilling to show your competitors how you obtained your rankings.
If someone did say that, they are in the twilight zone IMO.

Aggressive SEO is not spamming. SEO should be aggressive a marketing is war.

People will have different definitions for search engine spam but mine are related to the following practices - where you either deliberately deceive (cloaking, hidden text, etc.), where you try to dominate the SERPs with multiple listings (domain spam, multiple doorway pages, etc.) and then when you try to increase link popularity through useless link farms. The term spam as related to email paints a picture in my mind of "intrusiveness" so many of the things that are labeled search engine spam are also intrusive (the same company hogging the SERPS for a particular keyword phrase, multiple useless sites for the sole purpose of linking, etc.)

[bhartzer]

Even though major companies have thousands of dollars to spend on search engine marketing, from my experience it has been quite the opposite from what you're suggesting.

Obviously, the larger the company the more money they have to spend on advertising. However, they are the ones that are not paying any attention whatsoever to search engine marketing. The larger the company, the further away from SEM they get.

It's amazing to me that even some of the largest online companies do absolutely no search engine optimization--it's all PPC or ads through the Ad networks.

[cuzco]

I’m often surprised by the lack of big names seen in the results for one industry i work with (auto dealers). Seems only the little guys have seen what the web can do for sales.

Think a lot of the bigger companies stay away from SEO as they are already big and content with what they already do. Its only when they see a competitor get bigger that they take notice.

Another problem I encounter is when trying to explain the advantages of SEO to business people who lack even basic internet knowledge. The warning sign is when you get a puzzled look and frantic mouse flailing after saying “start up your browser”.

Then there are those who think SEO is a scam, get confused with generic results and PPC, think $1000 is too much but don’t hesitate to spend $1000 on a single newspaper ad that gets them nothing.


As for spam i tend to agree with Mel

If its relevant and the users are happy with the results then i don’t have a problem with any technique, unless it beat a site I’m going for then its spam – though i only use methods i consider low risk myself.

[AussieWebmaster]

I’m often surprised by the lack of big names seen in the results for one industry i work with (auto dealers). Seems only the little guys have seen what the web can do for sales.

Think a lot of the bigger companies stay away from SEO as they are already big and content with what they already do. Its only when they see a competitor get bigger that they take notice.

Another problem I encounter is when trying to explain the advantages of SEO to business people who lack even basic internet knowledge. The warning sign is when you get a puzzled look and frantic mouse flailing after saying “start up your browser”.

Then there are those who think SEO is a scam, get confused with generic results and PPC, think $1000 is too much but don’t hesitate to spend $1000 on a single newspaper ad that gets them nothing.


As for spam i tend to agree with Mel

If its relevant and the users are happy with the results then i don’t have a problem with any technique, unless it beat a site I’m going for then its spam – though i only use methods i consider low risk myself.
The car dealers use places like AutoTrader.com to deal with the online advertising... they get the site and the search placements...

[cuzco]

true,

The dealers i work with still use the autotraderUK, though they get much more custom from the magazine adverts - spending about £2k a week on adverts.

However, they now get a lot more customers by having all their stock online and paying to have the site promoted. This is despite the Autotrader being able to rank top 5 for the more popular terms. Nearly all of the largest dealers also have their stock online, but surprisingly most of them are nowhere to be seen for competitive terms.

[Anthony Parsons]

:confused:
How does one draw the line between SPAMMING AND
Agressive , Creative SEO techniques....

Easy! Would you mind explaining it to your competition!

for example if you have lots of Graphics and Flash on your site

would it not be unreasonalble to use techiques that are only designed to appeal to spiders, knowing that - while Humans may enjoy the Beauty and animations of a site - spiders are completely unsympathetic.

That's when you simply create a static site one for your visitors with slower connections and two, the search engines.

Also, how can a no-money- nobody Compete with the Thousands of Dollars that major companies can spend on Promotion and Marketing.

What you must remember is that the big companies have the same techniques employed upon their sites, just in a larger scale. More money is spent on other marketing techniques external to their site. You can compete against it with time, patience and know how.

Is some real-life techniques understandable to a certain extent? Or is do you advocate a "zero-tolerance" policy???

I have a zero tolerance policy to spammers that cannot achieve the rankings and effective website promotion within the search engines editorial guidelines. Stuff em and report them.

[seobook]

Originally Posted by ! !

How does one draw the line between SPAMMING AND
Agressive , Creative SEO techniques....

Easy! Would you mind explaining it to your competition!

I would explain just about any bad idea to competition, but they need to spend their time reading it. I also would explain just about any good idea too.

As long as I am a month ahead I really don't care if they see what happened last month. Researching SEO is by no means hard.

The biggest difference in disclosure in my opinion is that there are certain ways of thinking which your competition probably does not understand. Anyone thinking about promotion purely from an SEO standpoint is shortsided in my opinion.

Giving away all creative ideas and techniques is probably not that smart. but old time seo anyone can research. If they see my sites at the top of the search results and most people do not hate me for what I have done then likely I have no reason or nothing to explain to any competitor and no shame for good rankings... :)

[Anthony Parsons]

You know what I mean in contrast Aaron.

If you have hidden text, cloaked pages, etc etc....would you tell your competition that? If so, how long would it take them to report you? If you wouldn't explain it to them knowing fair well they couldn't report you, then don't do it IMO.

I don't understand why so many attempt to work against the engines? I work with them and have great success from non-competitive to competitive phrases. It is only these people who have no real idea nor could apply commonsense to achieve the desired rankings within the guidelines of the engines. Go outside the guidelines, expect to be caught I say. If you get away with it...then good o also.

[seobook]

Perhaps what you meant to say is things you would openly disclose to engines in a banner across the top of every page of your site :)

the reason so many people work against the engines is that not everyone is creative or interested in building something long term and they have no reguard for the engines. many people just want to make money. most good SEOs could probably make at least 6 figures a month promoting drug products if they were so inclined. if i were a bit more greedy perhaps i would have automated bots and promote those types of sites.

it is the competitive landscape of an environment which determines what techniques are used. if something is easy & profitable there are plenty of people who are willing to do it.

it is the engines job to stop "spam" though they rarely ever adequately define it.

as an seo making good money you can practice fail safe conservative methods, but some newer people are not lucky enough to have a reputation built up that helps them along.

some people compete in markets where the only way to compete is to be shady. it is hard to promote sites which want people to "buy phentermine" because it is not an idea that naturally wants to spread.

[Anthony Parsons]

Well said Aaron....well said mate.

[Irony]

Search Engines are run by great teams consisting of very-very intelligent people... but to think how much time and effort those great people have to spend developing various anti-spam filters!

That depresses me.

If not for spammers, SE teams would be free to work on their algos, improving relevancy and quality, and the SEs would already be sort of human-made miracles. Instead, they are forced to think how to detect new link-farming patterns or other loathsome tricks!

Not to mention searchers who have to squeeze their way through all the sort of spammy garbage... Not to mention the client -- often ignorant of the methods used... -- and their domain names put at risk... Spammers seem to respect no-one. Not a proper way to be online.

Sorry for being too emotional, but the Internet is sacred for me.

[mcanerin]

I remember someone once defined search engine SPAM as:

Sites
Positioned
Above
Mine

Although not completely true, it hits close to home for a lot of complaints I see. I'm known for being anti-spammer, but you have to choose your targets carefully - just because someone is doing a better job than you, or you don't like their color scheme, content or design, doesn't automatically make them a spammer.

Also, I would argue that if someone is, for example, spamming but doing so in such a way that it's not affecting their position (comment and meta tag spam comes immediately to mind - both are ignored by the SE's for the most part) then it's not really worth getting upset over.

I do look closely at sites that do that on the assumption that if they are spamming there, they may be spamming (in a more effective manner) elsewhere. But I personally don't report stupid spam - just effective spam.

I'm not sure if I can post live links (Mods, please edit if I can't) but here is a list of places to report spam to (the top half of the page is typical marketing stuff, so ignore it and skip to the bottom)

http://www.mcanerin.com/search-engine/spammers.htm

Hopefully that helps,

Ian

[Anthony Parsons]

If not for spammers, SE teams would be free to work on their algos, improving relevancy and quality, and the SEs would already be sort of human-made miracles. Instead, they are forced to think how to detect new link-farming patterns or other loathsome tricks!

Well said Irony. Its like a question a client ask me the other day. The title attribute in the href. They asked why it was their. Obvious Answer. To properly describe the link to the user eg: href="Buy Now" title="Purchase Andy Pandy" just for examples sake.

The next thing to the top of their mind was, you guessed it, can we stuff phrases in their to help rankings? I completely sympathise with you. It pisses me right off.

[seobook]

If not for spammers, SE teams would be free to work on their algos, improving relevancy and quality, and the SEs would already be sort of human-made miracles. Instead, they are forced to think how to detect new link-farming patterns or other loathsome tricks!

In any business or industry you will have competing forces that try to destroy your business model. Typically search engines have access to more information and greater group knowledge than any "spammer" and for that I don't feel sorry for them if they have to spend a portion of their time defending their business models.

Most of us have enough free time to chat because we understand how search engines work or how to manipulate their results better than the average person.

In an ideal world where there was no spammers SEOs would have no jobs. This reminds me of one of my all time favorite SEO quotes by none other than MakeMeTop

When I pay a search engine and manipulate the code (to their satisfaction) - it (apparently) is not spam! When I don't pay them, then it (often) is (by their definition). As far as I personally am concerned, I manipulate search engine results for the benefit of my clients and/or myself if it is an affiliate site. An important secondary consideration is not annoying the surfer, after all I want them to buy something. So, in my own mind, I'm a spammer, what I do is spamming and what I allow search engines to index is 85% spam! The difference is I'm a very elegant spammer - who takes such a professional pride in my spam that only I know that's what it is

source: http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=47262%20

[Irony]

seobook, I still think that "not annoying the surfers" means making the site better. And therefore it is not spam (unless it is cloaking that's discussed).

Anthony, thanks for your understanding.

[seobook]

I still think that "not annoying the surfers" means making the site better. And therefore it is not spam (unless it is cloaking that's discussed).

Spam is becomming better and better targeted. people are usually trying to be relevant.

the same problem with "spam" is the same problem that occurs with the web everywhere in that many commercial interests like to overly promote commerce and them taking a cut. try finding honest information about prescription drugs (not the bogus stuff from a manufacturer). you likely will only see a few alternative views and many sales letters showing you just how commercially the web is built up in some areas.

with or without "spam" there would still be a ton of people building up sites in the high profit areas.

[Mel]

But not every instance of cloaking can be said to be spamming.

You deliver to text based browsers and bots content that can be understood by them, a different content for people with IE and another for Netscape, etc and that is clearly cloaking but its not spamming.

[cuzco]

I use IP Delivery for supplying different content to different countries – have also tweaked the pages i believe are crawled by google(i don’t detect any bots) more than the others, purely because i’m too lazy to tweak the pages i know are not crawled.

[Nick W]

would it not be unreasonalble to use techiques that are only designed to appeal to spiders, knowing that - while Humans may enjoy the Beauty and animations of a site - spiders are completely unsympathetic.


Guffaw! -> Surely you jest?

We all spam, it's why we're here, their are just differing levels of it, but NONE of them are acceptable to G. We are their worst nightmare, but we also produce some of the best sites out there so...?

Nick

[David Wallace]

We all spam, it's why we're here, their are just differing levels of it, but NONE of them are acceptable to G. We are their worst nightmare, but we also produce some of the best sites out there so...?
Speak for yourself! I don't spam and I am not here to learn how to spam either.

[Nick W]

You missed my point, read it in context ;-)

Nick

[cuzco]

Guess it depends on your definition of spamming.
1. any manipulation of the page to improve ranking
2. anything that purposely gives deceptive results
3. anything not in the google guidelines

Personally I don’t use techniques that I think the engines will clamp down on, even if they aren’t now. That might put me a disadvantage but i look for long term relationships with my clients.

[seomike]

But not every instance of cloaking can be said to be spamming.

You deliver to text based browsers and bots content that can be understood by them, a different content for people with IE and another for Netscape, etc and that is clearly cloaking but its not spamming.

This is a form of cloaking that WMW uses. If you've ever gone their you'll notice you aren't fed meta tags. Why? you don't need them because you're not a spider. Just taking them out saves hundreds of megs of bandwidth a month for Brett.

Yahoo Cloaks. Ever mouse over a link and see what the url is pointing you to go? Legit, Why? All done in the name of click tracking.

NPR cloaking the content of broadcast for the spider that doesn't cache an audible files contents.

I think people shouldn't get their panties in a wad like some of the ultra white hats do when you say you're feeding a spider certain content. The more you server content based on browser type, location, screen res and computer platform the less you have to worry.

a spider vs user content feed can be written off as black hat to any SEO newb with a bookmark to googles spam report

a spider vs browser vs location vs language vs screen res vs platform fed page that isn't spam will probably be shrugged off by google or any other engine with a brain.

On top of that you should put a disclaimer in your code something like this. LOL

<!-- This site was not submitted to any search engine. If it shows up in any known search results, it is due to the fact that a spider/bot followed a link to it as a reference to undeniably good content. Therefore it does not fall under the TOS of the search engine that one must agree before submitting a site.

If you do not understand the usability of this site then email the webmaster for a written explanation. If the code you see differs from other users, bots, caches that is due to powers beyond your control -->

hehe

[David Wallace]

As I said earlier in this thread, I define spam as surrounding the following elements:

1. Where you deliberately deceive the search engines and users (cloaking, hidden text, etc.).

2. Where you try to dominate the SERPs with multiple listings (domain spam, multiple doorway pages, etc.).

3. When you try to increase link popularity through useless link farms.

I don't think optimizing a title tag is spam.

I don't think optimizing html copy is spam.

I don't think optimizing (not keyword stuffing) alt attributes behind images is spam.

I don't think making sure the site has good internal link structure is spam.

I could go on and on. One would argue that any "manipulation of a web page to gain better results" is spam but I would disagree because the four things I mention above are all "manipulation" if you will and yet they are not considered spam techniques but rather "improvement" or "optimizing" techniques.

[Irony]

But not every instance of cloaking can be said to be spamming.



I use IP Delivery for supplying different content to different countries

According to Alan Perkins, IP Delivery is not necessary cloaking, but cloaking is always spam.

http://www.highrankings.com/issue041.htm#guest

Why Cloaking Is Always A Bad Idea

I totally agree with all the ideas and definitions given in this article

[Irony]

And, Nick, if you define all SEO as spam, please read the following:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html

Google does approve of SEO but it doesn't approve of spam :p

For me, the difference between good, creative SEO and spam is obvious: as long as your site provides something really useful for your human visitors, and the SE spiders see exactly the same, it cannot be spam. But it can be SEO (and as a matter of fact it often is).

Good articles on any given theme are often naturally well optimized for keywords.

Good, logical structure and navigation help both humans and spiders.

Good on-topic links are what the Web is based upon.

Well optimized titles help visitors to define the purpose of the site.

And so on... and so on... discussed so many times...

[K.S. Katz]

Technology on the most part is neutral. It's how the technology is used by people is where the white/black hat comes into play. Because techniques (like cloaking) have been widely abused by spammers, the engines have a problem with it.

[seomike]

According to Alan Perkins, IP Delivery is not necessary cloaking, but cloaking is always spam.

That's the dumbest most narrow minded thing I've ever heard.

So what about all this crap about people taking copies of your site down and cloaking it so you get a duplicate site penalty and your rankings go bye bye.

I mean think about it how easy is it to by a domain point a ton of links to it from all your sites, beaf up your PR higher then the competitor site, spider the competitors site down, cloak it, and put it up online? A cloaker could do it in a few hours after the PR hits on his site.

Sorry to all the white hats but CLOAKING YOUR SITE IS NOW A SECURITY MEASURE if all this duplicate penalty stuff is ringing true. I know a cloaker did it for the nigritude ultramarine contest and made sites infront of him drop left and right.

[AussieWebmaster]

While you may get value from inbound links Google does realize that in most cases you do not have control over who links to you... thus most cases are of the inbound being pulled down and the existing site examined before penalty is given to it.

[Irony]

That's the dumbest most narrow minded thing I've ever heard.


Dear me! What a language!

Well, I don't mind being insulted. Not so much of an expert, after all... need to learn a lot more. But in this case you've insulted one of my worshipped Teachers. Too bad a mistake... too bad.

The situation you've described only confirms one of my theories.

Sorry to all the black hats, but your industry is agonizing, guys.

Sorry... but I do not feel sorry for you.

[seomike]

Dear me! What a language!

Well, I don't mind being insulted. Not so much of an expert, after all... need to learn a lot more. But in this case you've insulted one of my worshipped Teachers. Too bad a mistake... too bad.

The situation you've described only confirms one of my theories.

Sorry to all the black hats, but your industry is agonizing, guys.

Sorry... but I do not feel sorry for you.


Then according to you Yahoo is black hat because they have a cloak system that tracks you everytime you click a link.

and NPR is black hat cause they cloak their radio broadcasts...

I can go on and on. Cloaking can be use as SPAM but it is also used to present content to people based on IP, Location, Browser compatibility etc. Welcome to the real world of building high end websites.

Cloaking can make your site:

1. More user friendly by server pages that are browser specific
2. Less expensive server overhead by feeding Spiders text/printable versions of pages instead of tables and bloated code that they parse out anyways. You can even take out the stop/common words.
3. UNDUPLICATABLE you don't have to worry about people jacking your content to hang you with a duplicate content penalty.
4. You can feed language specific pages via IP location.

I'd say there are a few reasons why people don't like cloaks.

1. They can't see the code (as if it's their business)
2. They are being out ranked by a cloak
3. The cloak stays even after reported
4. The cloak was so bad even my grandma could uncover it (and still out ranks you)
5. You don't know how to do one.
6. You assume it's spam

Last but not least if you've ever seen a cloak then it wasn't a real cloak.

Oh by the way I'm not blackhat. :eek:

[David Wallace]

Just a quick reminder what Google say about cloaking in their guidelines:

Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.

Therefore whether one is using cloaking for "technology" reasons or to be "deceptive", they may risk having Google look at them with a jaundiced eye.

Now they seem to combine "cloaking" along with "sneaky redirects" so IMO, their basic stance against it would be where there is deception of some sort in play and not necessarily all instances of cloaking.

[Mel]

Just a quick reminder what Google say about cloaking in their guidelines:

Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.

Therefore whether one is using cloaking for "technology" reasons or to be "deceptive", they may risk having Google look at them with a jaundiced eye.

Now they seem to combine "cloaking" along with "sneaky redirects" so IMO, their basic stance against it would be where there is deception of some sort in play and not necessarily all instances of cloaking.

I think its important to understand that what Google says and what Google does are most often two different things. I never expect to find any valuable information on Googles algo or filters in thier public pronouncements, and that should not be surprising at all, since one of their primary objectives is to NOT reveal any information about their algo.

IMO all technology is neutral, its the way that humans use it that sometimes causes problems.

[Irony]

Then according to you Yahoo is black hat because they have a cloak system that tracks you everytime you click a link.

and NPR is black hat cause they cloak their radio broadcasts...



Now I see clearly that you haven't read the article I linked to.

BTW, I never bother to analyse who outranks me and why. Not to mention reporting them. Used to have more urgent work to do.

[seobook]

BTW, I never bother to analyse who outranks me and why. Not to mention reporting them. Used to have more urgent work to do.

How do you know how much effort you need to put in or how much work you need to do if you do not know what the top sites are doing?

Analyzing the competition is one of the few steps I consider important time and time again. Often you can find out a bunch of quick promotion ideas and learn a bunch by looking at the top few sites. To ignore them sounds absurd to me.

[Irony]

Well, perhaps.

But since I'm currently only doing SEO for our own corporate site, I can afford looking a bit absurd:)

For now, log analysis and new content added from time to time works fine with me. And of course I search for link building opportunities, so my previous statement is not exactly correct.

When I see that some potential link exchange partner is obviously spamming, I simply do not exchange. Cloaking is not that obvious... so I just keep my fingers crossed:)

But good promotion ideas get picked up on the fly, of course. And there are also forums, and they are full of ideas, too.

When (and if) SEO turns into a separate service, I guess I'll change my approach... but not much... not much...

[seomike]

Now I see clearly that you haven't read the article I linked to.

Sorry but I don't associate with spammers or their forums. Plus I'm not welcomed their anyways because I chewed out the higher ups for slandering an seo.

Nothing like 30,000 articles with links back to you to get high rankings :p That's not optimization in my book that's google bombing.

[Irony]

If you've chosen to insult all the people I really respect, I think further discussion is useless.

We are too different.

The subject is closed for me.

[Incubator]

Cheers SEOMIKE,
A fresh approach is needed regrading this cloaking issue

An older but interesting post

http://www.searchengineblog.com/interviews/interview_ralph_tegtmeier.htm


Cheers

Wayne

[seomike]

Irony, obviously you can't see the use of cloaking. I've done test cloaks and have never had them broken. Fantomas claims to have never been caught. How can you dispute that?

Am I crazy enough to cloak a clients core site? Hell no. But there are jerks out there that own websites that screw over SEO's. If I think someone is a risky client and I don't feel like putting all my efforts into their core site because they might not pay up. I can easily do it in a 3rd party cloaked domain that sends the traffic right to their core. That way you push traffic into their site. If they don't pay up you turn off the traffic. It's called covering your butt. Is that ethical? to some maybe it's not but I like to get paid for the work I do and I do like to have some control. Not paying your bill is very unethical and since there are jerks out there you have to have a back up plan in a risk situation.

If they behave and pay their bills then we'll tidy up their core site and drop the cloak. Otherwise if they go so do their rankings. We tell them this and put it on the table. It's in the contract. Nothing for nothing. Not something for nothing. I think anyone that has been screwed over will agree to what I'm saying here.

Irony you've been indoctrinated by extremist white hats. Yes there are really good (good as in know what they are doing) SEO's over there, some of them post here, but I think I can safely say a lot of people look at that forum as a joke.

Welcome to Real World SEO tatics. Sorry to say cloaking is one of them.

[torka]

Just because you've never been detected doing something doesn't necessarily make it right. Doesn't necessarily make it wrong, either, of course. All it means is that you've been good (so far) at not getting detected. :)

Others are free to make decisions different from mine for their businesses. I'm not here to try to sway everyone to do things the way I do in any respect. But if I WERE going to try to convince somebody that my way is the preferred way to do business (or even an acceptable way of doing business) I think I'd try to find a stronger argument than "it works at the moment and I haven't been caught so far". Just MHO, of course.

As to the idea that it's the only way you can protect yourself against "risky clients"... would it be crass of me to ask why exactly you're taking on clients that you think won't pay you? If you're doing well -- and from what you say it sounds as though you are -- then you don't NEED to take on any client that doesn't appeal to you for any reason, which, one would think, would include clients that you suspected were going to try to sneak by without paying the bill.

Naturally, YMMV. :)

--Torka

[Incubator]

Hi Torka,

With many SEO/SEM professionsals acquiring any new client , as in any business a model, must be layout. For YOU as a service provider your only as good as your last client and will YOU will only stay in business as long as your clients are paying. In corporate structure or any new aspiring dot.com looking for SEO/SEM, US a smaller industry must set financial guidelines that they should understand from the beginning. Education and de-education work hand in hand with clients.
"Riskey paying" clients are one factor in new biz dev. as in any business model you must allow for that "expenditure" to plan and develope your business in long term goals.
I have been in this business for awhile now and I fortunate but I would have stay this long if it was for taking "riskey clients " in the beginning, they were bread and butter to me . Now 7 years later, I have been very fortunate to say that..... YES I have also fired clients (2 in total) were they "risk payees"... no not at all, just tied our hands technically as well as thier own internally problems....could that have lead to something larger ...possisbly.. well to me shows a "risk' for my business to continue to be assosicated with them. All clients in the begging have a risk factor to begin with thats the nature of an online business

Cheers

Wayne

[seomike]

Good arguement Torka :) Sometimes we don't know if a clients a risk or not. We usually find that out after the first bills are sent out lol.

[mcanerin]

Comment on the "All SEO is Spam" theory.

Personally, I completely disagree with this. Most obviously because it takes away from what SE spam really is. It's the basis and beginning of the "everyone does it, so why can't I?" thinking.

Let me give an example. Is there a difference between cheating on a test and studying for it? Both are done for the purposes of "ranking higher" Both are artificially increasing these rankings. You want to REALLY know what someone learned, give them a surprise quiz 6 months after the course. Anything else is little more than a short term memory test, not a knowledge test.

Some would argue that studying IS cheating, for the above reason. I didn't understand why the person making this argument to me was doing so until they came up with part 2: if studying is cheating, then it's no different from having a cheat sheet in a test room, really. Since they are both cheating, and no one is committing an actual *crime*, then everything is OK - it's only wrong if you get caught.

Wrong. There is a difference between cheating and studying. Learning how to write an essay for maximum effectiveness in an academic environment is working smarter, not unfairly manipulating the system. Writing copy and making sure your site appeals to a search engine is not cheating (aka spam), it's common sense.

Manipulation itself is not spam - everything we do is manipulation in some way.

Heck, that argument would allow for the claim that simply *posting* a website (and therefore allowing it to be accessed by spiders) is manipulation of the SERPS (the site wasn't there and now it is) and therefore spam.

Nonsense. By broadening the definition of spam to include almost everything, those making the argument are apparently hoping to make it mean almost nothing.

Won't work, sorry. :rolleyes:

Ian

[seomike]

You know I'm still waiting for my first royalty check from Google and all the other search engines for making money off of my copywritten content.

Until then they can take what I serve them and stop all the b**chin' :D

[Incubator]

Interesting thought seomike. Im sure the New York Post, USA Today, Tribunes etc...... would agree with you on that point.... :D

Once you throw on NO ARCHIVE tabs on your page your competition or someone at an SE ASSUMES you are doing something "unethical" :eek:


Cheers

Wayne

[seomike]

That's why you make it a common practice so it gets watered down.

I've looked over sites that were done by do-it-yourself site owners. Some of them have the no archive in them because they read about it somewhere and though they needed it. Didn't know they would get "called" a cloaker for doing it.

infact he still ranks page1 rank 1 for his term http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=lampe+berger

LOL funny thing is rank 4 is spam by a known white hatter LOL. Way to catch that one G.

If you believe your code is between you and search engines then that's your perogative.

Just because you can pull up a hot chicks skirt and see what's underneath doesn't mean you have the right to. :eek: Same goes for my websites.

[seomike]

Im sure the New York Post, USA Today, Tribunes etc...... would agree with you on that point....

Yeah for someone that says don't scrape us or we'll block your IP Google sure does scrape the hell out of everyone else. Plus they make money off of it. Ha! go figure who's the black hat now??? :D

[Incubator]

LOL :D Great Point!!

If my memory serves me correctly, Google was also one of the first big boys to serve a cookie that didnt expire as well...... now if think they have changed it to like 50 years now ;)

Wayne

[David Wallace]

Great post above, Ian.

I always find it amusing when someone spams the search engines, gets away with it, has some success at it and then brags about it. However, what inevitably happens is they get caught, they get punished and then they cry about it. I have been in this field for going on 8 years now and I have seen it time and time again. History just keeps repeating itself.

I would much rather practice SEO in a way that is not going to risk me or my clients being penalized, banned, de-ranked, whatever you want to call it. I want to do business with each client for a long time as it is much easier to keep a client than to get a new one. I want their businesses to grow. I want their web sites to be informative and to convert well.

Any search engine marketer that would risk their client's reputation, their business model, their marketing agenda, etc. for a quick and easy buck will eventually get what is coming to them IMO.

In fact, I have see people put more effort into spamming than they would have had they simply "optimized" the various elements of a web site. It is kind of like using a cannon to kill a mouse when all you need is a simple mouse trap. Then their cannon blows up in their face.

[AussieWebmaster]

I take it everyone saw that Congress decided not to start a do not spam list....

[Irony]

Torka, Ian, it's really so reassuring to see your beloved nicks and to read you simple but reasonable words.

Great posts!

Just thought you all decided not to get involved. The White Sword gets a bit too heavy sometimes for me :)

Greetings friends!

Irony,

indoctrinated by extremist white hats (forever and ever)

[AussieWebmaster]

I don't know anymore... white hat/black hat.... it is a thinline... but on the fringes of both are fanatics... the one thing that is important is that some of the methods used years ago may be frowned upon now... but were used by both sides... now today there are other tactics that many use that have elements...

[seomike]

That why it's best to know both ends of the spectrum. and sitting nice and luke warm in the middle.

Extremism is so narrow minded in a field that is expanding. Cloaking is here to stay. It's good. And Google and all the other search engines will be hard pressed to crack down on it since they are the biggest cloakers of them all.

But let's face realities here: while the search engines may take a strong arm stance against cloaking in public, they don't really seem to worry too much about it in everyday life. One of the reasons being that there's so much legitimate cloaking about, it would simply be impossible to weed it all out. Else, you might well expect the world's top 1000 web properties to disappear from the search engine indices, and where would that leave them, loss of advertising revenue apart? ~ Ralph Tegtmeier

I'm a flash programmer and that is why I learned about cloaking. I'm doing nothing wrong by cloaking a flash site. I'm doing the exact same thing as NPR is doing with their radio broadcasts. Don't hate Irony. If I happen to our rank one of your sites it's all good. :D

[nuclei]

If someone did say that, they are in the twilight zone IMO.

They did in fact say just that on another board. The poster was Anthony P.

[nuclei]

I remember someone once defined search engine SPAM as:

Sites
Positioned
Above
Mine

Although not completely true, it hits close to home for a lot of complaints I see.

It is a lot more true than you think mate. I would estimate that over 90% of the so called "ethical" SEO's out there think that finding little things that competitors are doing and reporting them as spam is a valid SEO technique.

Granted these are the people who are only good at self promotion and really have very little success with competitive keywords due to low ability, but the fact that they think this is acceptable is beyond low.

Most of these same people were just 2 short years ago saying content is everything, but now, less than 2 years later are all on link building binges with the rest of us.

The funny thing is those people know who they are and it obviously gets under their skin and no doubt will start flaming shortly. :)

[Mel]

...
I'm a flash programmer and that is why I learned about cloaking. I'm doing nothing wrong by cloaking a flash site. I'm doing the exact same thing as NPR is doing with their radio broadcasts. Don't hate Irony. If I happen to our rank one of your sites it's all good. :D


But the <noembed> tag will get your flash content into the search engines easier and with less risk, IMO, so why cloak?

[Irony]

Don't hate Irony

I don't hate you seomike. Sorry for being too emotional or sarcastic from time to time, but that's what I am.

All this misunderstanding is caused by our different definitions of cloaking. When the term means absolutely different things for two people, there is no use discussing it further.

Let us both have our own ways. Cloaking is here to stay? Well, so be it. The time will show who is right and who is wrong... very soon I believe. No, no, I ain't gonna report you, it's not my style (cheers nuclei!).

Again and again, I don't really care if you outrank my site. Not sure we share the niche, but all the same. I've got my share of targeted traffic, and Google loves me without cloaks. It's ROI that troubles me now, and no cloaks will help me with it :(

We can discuss anything else if you wish, but please not cloaking again (for the reason I mentioned above).

Hope I'm not flaming ;) And yes, you are right, it's all good.

As for "indoctrinated by extremist white hats" I think I should thank you for this phrase. Makes a nice signature (unfortunately they seem to be disabled here :( )

[seobook]

As for "indoctrinated by extremist white hats" I think I should thank you for this phrase. Makes a nice signature (unfortunately they seem to be disabled here :( )

You can still change your tagline. I am a recovering former left handed person...

[Irony]

Thanks seobook, I'm considering it :)

[cuzco]

Comment on the "All SEO is Spam" theory.

Personally, I completely disagree with this. Most obviously because it takes away from what SE spam really is. It's the basis and beginning of the "everyone does it, so why can't I?" thinking.

Let me give an example. Is there a difference between cheating on a test and studying for it? Both are done for the purposes of "ranking higher" Both are artificially increasing these rankings. You want to REALLY know what someone learned, give them a surprise quiz 6 months after the course. Anything else is little more than a short term memory test, not a knowledge test.

Some would argue that studying IS cheating, for the above reason. I didn't understand why the person making this argument to me was doing so until they came up with part 2: if studying is cheating, then it's no different from having a cheat sheet in a test room, really. Since they are both cheating, and no one is committing an actual *crime*, then everything is OK - it's only wrong if you get caught.

Wrong. There is a difference between cheating and studying. Learning how to write an essay for maximum effectiveness in an academic environment is working smarter, not unfairly manipulating the system. Writing copy and making sure your site appeals to a search engine is not cheating (aka spam), it's common sense.

Manipulation itself is not spam - everything we do is manipulation in some way.

Heck, that argument would allow for the claim that simply *posting* a website (and therefore allowing it to be accessed by spiders) is manipulation of the SERPS (the site wasn't there and now it is) and therefore spam.

Nonsense. By broadening the definition of spam to include almost everything, those making the argument are apparently hoping to make it mean almost nothing.

Won't work, sorry. :rolleyes:

Ian

Good analogy, though I like to compare SEO to motorists trying to get from A to B as quick as possible.

Group 1, will drive within the speed limit, but never over it. They can still win the race if there is no competition or the others go off in the wrong direction. They are just happy to be driving and not really in the race.

Group 2, will drive just over the limit but low enough to avoid the wrath of the police and traffic cameras knowing they have some leeway. Everyone knows they do it but its not considered breaking the law.

Group 3, go even faster, especially in areas they know they wont be detected. They keep an eye out for cameras and police. They might gain a few penalty points but never enough to get banned.

Group 4, risk twice the speed limit. They sometimes get away with driving this fast for a long time, but when they are caught its an instant ban.

Occasionally the powers install speed bumps and other traffic calming measures which slow down some, or make them try a different route.

Sometimes they install new traffic cameras which catch groups 3 and 4 by surprise.

One day the powers install the more sophisticated cameras that calculate the average speed, or they just clamp down on speeders which catches groups 2, 3 and 4.

Each group thinks the next group up are law breakers but never see any harm in what they do themselves.

Now to make it a bit more like search engines, imagine there are no signs telling you what the speed limit is. The only advice from the powers that be is don’t drive recklessly, use your judgement and a few other driving tips. The few traffic cameras are hidden but overtime some drivers work out their location and what the limits are. There are no police so its left to other motorists to report people for bad driving.

:D

All good fun!

[Irony]

The worst of it is that cars get crashed from time to time.

But yes... very good analogy indeed. I love races, especially Formula 1.

[nuclei]

very good analogy indeed.

I would agree.

[Nick W]

According to Alan Perkins, IP Delivery is not necessary cloaking, but cloaking is always spam.


Nick W is now rolling all over the floor, tears streaming down his face as he chokes on that dribble....

Wonderful thread with 3 distinct groups going head to head:

1. The "im not a spammer brigade" -> So busy justifying their actions that for the most part they entirely miss the point.

2. The "im an seo, so i know im a bad boy crowd" -> Mostly folks that know the score with a handfull of real bad boys thrown in for good measure..

3. The "what's all this crowd" -> Read it an weep guys, this is good stuff if you can read between the lines and sort the facts from the dillusional fiction.

What fun!

Nick

[! !]

http://www.blockedpr.com/

There seems to be a theory that Google is BLOCKING the passing of PageRank from certain selected sites that are deemed to meet certain standards :eek:

_ or is this just some algorithmic flaw that is statistically bound ot happen when there are BILLIONS if webpages reverse engineered?

:confused: What are YOUR opinions :confused:

[Incubator]

We are currently seeing this with a client regarding PR. After watching google for awhile we have seen the links from goggle showing only PR4 or higher anything elses seems to go to the section "containing the term" on google
All the PR3 PR2 etc.... have migrated over to none clickable links

WC

[David Wallace]

I have seen this as well and a very popular site that offers search engine news and tips seems to be affected by this although I don't know why. They are not on the list (blockedpr.com) and I am not going to name them here publicly but it does seem for some reason that some sites are not passing any PR benefit to the sites they link to, at least by what the tool bar shows us.

[Incubator]

After watching google over the months , we use to be able to do link://http:www.mydomain.com and recieve a count on that factor .

Now that same return offers link:TYU77V61sTAJ:http://www.mydomain.com.
The TYU77V61sTAJ seems like a filter or part of an ALGO.

any opinioons on that ?

Cheers

Wc

[Incubator]

I have emailed google and will post reply regarding my last post


WC

[! !]

Remember the "Controversy" regarding WHEN.COM Cloaking and being dropped by Google & Yahoo - (this was the incentive for originating this post) they have now been given another chance - they are now on the SERPs again :eek:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=whenu
http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3354171
http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/whenu-spam/
http://www.tweakxp.com/DisplayNews.aspx?id=14644

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=whenu&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-tab-web-t&cop=mss&tab=


Meanwhile, Google's response was swift: I notified Google of the cloaking infractions on Sunday, and WhenU's sites were removed from Google by Wednesday. Try a Google search for "whenu" and see for yourself: You'll get critics' sites and news coverage, but not www.whenu.com itself.

[Incubator]

After watching google over the months , we use to be able to do link://http:www.mydomain.com (http://www.mydomain.com/) and recieve a count on that factor .

Now that same return offers link:TYU77V61sTAJ:http://www.mydomain.com (http://www.mydomain.com/).
The TYU77V61sTAJ seems like a filter or part of an ALGO.

any opinioons on that ?

Cheers

Wc
Here is the reply from Google

Thank you for your note. Please be assured that the new search behavior does not affect your link search listings. Our engineers are currently investigating this new behavior. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Regards,

The Google Team

[Webmaster T]

Interesting discussion with the same old arguments from both sides. Not all cloaking is bad and in some cases is necessary due to laws governing some industries. Should Google penalize a pharmaceutical company for cloaking? No it's against the law to sell some of their products in some countries. Cloaking is also used to enhance the user experience for instance language the page is using or server load balancing.

I have used some content delivery programming to enhance the user experience. For instance loading code with no JS if the browser doesn't support it. This inadvertently gives SE a different version but the page content is the same. Links just won't open in a remote window they'll point to the static page. There's a difference between sniffing for SE IP or useragent and sniffing for browser configuration. I don't think this is cloaking but some do. It's awful tough to say either way because you have to know the intent of the implementation. I think cloaking is a good technique to use the "Am I doing this just for SE" test for determining "appropriate" and "inappropriate" techniques.

I think the Google/Yahoo! does it why can't I argument makes no sense because they own the index it's up to them to make and enforce the guidelines as they see fit. They use the techniques to add functionality to the site not to get placement for free ads! SE are not public property so the owner should have the right to decide what it sees as unwanted manipulation.

No one likes to be told how they should conduct business, why should SE be held to a higher standard? Sure, in a way they are a public trust but I think it is pushing it to think they should have to to follow their own guidelines afterall they make them so if they choose to not enforce them on their site or any other that is IMO, their right as owners of the index. They make the rules we can disagree but saying it should be OK because they do it is not being realistic about why they do it and why some cloakers do it.

Google isn't doing anything wrong when they scrape a site because for the most part if you deny them access using a Robots.txt they will obey it. No deny in Robots.txt is IMO, an invitation to index the site. Yes sometimes they slip up but IMO, it's never intentional.

Danny has said in the past that Feeds are a form of cloaking and I agree with that but don't see anything wrong with it because it is a sanctioned technique. Someone usually gets paid for clicks from cloaked listings (most are based on clicks AFAIK) why shouldn't the SE get paid it's their index? I see this as SE just giving the consumer a SE sanctioned alternative to cloaking. One that is easier for them to monitor and control quality of the pages. This was lax for a time but seems to have been clened up some recently.

Using cloaking to get flash sites indexed seems a short sighted solution it doesn't really address the problems where no plugin is loaded. Why not just put the same amount of time spent cloaking the site into developing an HTML version? That enhances the user experience and gives SE what they want in a way they feel is "appropriate". I think some people just believe if there is no hocus pocus involved it can't be a good SEO solution.

[! !]

Athough, Google STEMS to some degree there are different SERPs for different Stemmed versions - apparently favoring the ORIGINAL wording of the search.

Searches like Website & Web Site, e-commerce & ecommerce, optimization & optimisation etc...Return different SERPs althought they mean the same thing.



Common Misspellings eg. Britney Spears Searches - produce thousands of extra queries
http://www.google.com/jobs/britney.html


__________________________________________________ _________

Would Optimizing Doorway pages to attract that vibrant traffic cross the border of Spamming


Look at the SERPs for


search engine OPTMIZATION

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=search+engine+optmization

A common misspelling. Assuming they mean ...

Search Engine Optimization

some are established firms that have optimized - but some are actually selling SEO services - unaware of their misspellings. :o


__________________________________________________ _

Sometimes even the Major Search Services can't agree on a Spelling...


TAKE WEB SITE/ WEBSITE for examples


inventory.overture.com - keyword suggestion tool - will automatically change WEBSITE to WEB SITE under all circumstances...


Yet Yahoo which owns it - as well as Google will suggest WEBSITE near the top of the SERPs

Did you mean: website - Google

Did you mean: website? - Yahoo!
:confused:

[! !]

Google now reads Javascript

http://www.webpronews.com/printable.php


http://www.girardgibbs.com/traffic-power.html


http://www.experts-exchange.com/Web/Online_Marketing/Q_20890106.html

http://forums.seochat.com/showthread.php?t=10791

javascript redirects & deceptive doorway pages


But the fundamental purpose of any search engine is to offer relevant informaiton

If sites are pulled - the user still is deprived of THAT information

Perhaps the next evolution of search is to algorithmically neutralize those SEO affects - but still allow the VALID information to come up in relevant searches :cool:

[nuclei]

Google now reads Javascript

From what i have seen this is marginal so far. Their Googlebot/Test bot is an excursion into reading javascript and apparently CSS. However, so far results for it seem to border on only some outbound links hidden by lower level javascripting. Google still can not read extreme cases of links that use javascript to not pass PR. I have not seen any cases where redirects are yet seen as what they are, but that is coming sooner or later too.

[Mel]

Not sure what it means yet, but if you view source of Googles new text cache and compare it with the regular cache, the only apparent difference is that the text cache removes all of the Javascript and replaces it with blank lines.

[paulhiles]

I sincerely hope that Google is able to read JavaScript, as this will inevitably lead to the detection of all manner of unscrupulous techniques (particularly redirects). I've tried reporting sites for using this sort of technique but without any success. The usual response from Google is that with 4 billion sites in their index it may take them a while to get round to dealing with it! ;o)

So the sooner they find an automated way of dealing with this problem the better it will be for all concerned.