How To Always Spot Search Engine Optimization Spam

This post will examine different kinds of search engine optimization spam and the shady SEO’s who create them. The easiest way to spot a beginner search engine optimizer is to examine pages for keyword stuffing, text in odd places, an over abundance of links, long gratuitous keyword stuffed filenames,

Hidden text at the top or bottom of the page
In the past, a company would try to use questionable search engine optimization to stuff pages with more keywords, inserting barely readable text in odd places and coloring this keyword stuffed text nearly the same color as the background. Apparently even churches need to falsely manipulate their search engine placement.

Extraneous links

After looking at thousands of web pages, these tricks and techniques stand out extremely well. It is very easy for an experienced SEO or spam engineer such as Matt Cutts to find unethical search engine optimization.

My advice is to create pages with information that will help another user and provide real value. Creating 5 pages that repeat the same text dozens of times will never garner any links. However a page that shows a person the 5 key steps to get social media traffic will gather lots of links.

Advanced SEO’s are master linkers. They know that the key to long term top 10 search engine placement is by getting lots of quality links. Acquiring links is hard, boring, and tedious. But after getting dozens of links from authority sites the Google Gods will smile upon your site.

Extra Long Footer Links
Beware of sites with 20+ links in the footer. This is very easy for search engine algorithms to detect, and it looks unprofessional for your users. The footer is a good location to place secondary links and additional resources. Listing all 100 cities in the state you serve is a bad idea.

Selling & Buying Links for PageRank
Link brokering is the oldest profession on the internet. Some websites have the goods, and people are always willing to get a piece of high net work link action. Resist the urge to succumb to your carnal desires and take a shortcut to backlink heaven. Buying links is expressly forbidden by all the search engines and the penalties can be severe.

Penalties for uncontrolled link buying range from mild (link is given no value) to strong (your links loose the ability to pass pagerank). Many professional sites such as Findlaw have tried to sell links while claiming they don’t.

If you sell links, setup a quality directory. I have compiled a list of directories that should be on every search engine optimization checklist.

There are many ways to do bad SEO.

To ascertain whether you should do a particular change ask yourself this question and you will never make bad decisions: Will my users be better off for this change, will it make my message clearer, will users be better able to find what they are looking for and will it make my site easier for search engines to index?