Search Engine Optimisation Web Log (BLOG)
Editor: Matt Paines

| This News Blog is dedicated to bringing news, information and innovations targeting the Search Engine Optimisation industry.

Getting Away with Spam

What is "Spam"? simply put - anything that is done to influence a sites ranking that has no value to the user. So anything that is invisible, so that could be white text on a white background, it could be concealing text in layers off to the left of the page, or cloaking pages so that the search engines are presented with different content to a human visitor.

Without question the process of "on the page" optimisation, where the content was filled with unnecessary keyword repeats are long gone. But spammers are much more likely to be involved in techniques like "guest book" or "blog spam". This is where a webmaster places links in guest books - not commenting about the site but placing a link for the value of that link.

Blog spam is very similar, I'm sure you'll have seen the "permalink" which invites readers to comment on a blog article. There are millions of blogs on the Internet, quite often the owners of the blog will stop after 6-9 months - at this point the site is effectively left unmonitored. So now a BlogSpammer can attack the permalinks generating large numbers of links to sites they wish to promote.

You may remain undiscovered by using these techniques, some of the automated functions don't always pick up the spam, however obviously the goal is to rise in the search engines. If you are successful then you will raise your profile with other webmasters. And this is the point - it will be your peers that will report you to Google, Yahoo or MSN. If you are not concerned about your url, it's a minor inconvenience. If you have a brand you wish to protect, optimisation the hard way is the only real option.

M.P

Concerned about avoiding being caught for SPAM - stay within the guidelines read our tutorials.