Ten Common Mistakes of Spammers
Spammers get caught, they always do. Although when I say the term “spam” you may well be thinking of unsolicited email. In the context of search engine optimisation spam is the creation of duplicated content on a website in order to get a high search engine ranking position. The search engines have sophisticated algorithms to detect these websites conducting spam and usually results them being banned on the search engine i.e. the website will no longer be indexed on the search engine. This article discusses the top 10 mistakes of spammers in context to search engine optimisation (SEO):
- Too Higher Keyword Density;
- Too many Link Backs;
- Duplicated Website Content;
- Hidden Body Text;
- Title Keyword Spamming;
- Webpage Index Spamming;
- Article Copying;
- Wikipedia Link Spamming;
- High META Tag Keyword Density;
- Webpage Cloaking.
Too Higher Keyword Density
Many webmasters think that having a high keyword density will get a top 10 ranking for their websites. Having a too higher keyword density will harm your website and will usually push you lower in the search engine result pages (SERPs). If the keyword densities are extremely, the administrators at the search engines may audit your website to see if it is viable for their search engine.
Too many Link Backs
Websites receiving a high number of link backs in such a small period of time will be harmful to websites and could even get them banned on the search engines. Many spammers will signup to reciprocal link exchange networks which will automatically create the reciprocal links for you, these are actually harmful and the search engines detect these links as spam. Search engines prefer a natural link exchange process where links are slowly built over a long period of time.
Duplicate Website Content
A mere copy and paste exercise will surely work? Absolutely not! Search engines have very sophisticated algorithms to detect duplicate website content. Spammers will usually copy text from another website and paste it on their own, in the hope of receiving a high search engine ranking position. Unfortunately search engines are not worthy to duplicate website content and will not index the duplicate content. If too much duplicate content is found on your website, then it may well be investigated by an administrator.
Hidden Text
A classic black hat tactic performed by many spammers. They will use a random text generator to generate website content text, this text usually makes no sense when read by a human, but contains the correct keyword densities to receive an appropriate rank on the search engines. Search engines do not take kindly to this type of spamming and will usually result in the website being banned. Of course, there are ways to get round this, but it wouldn’t be ethical or appropriate to discuss them in this article.
Title Keyword Spamming
Title keyword spamming is another popular black hat tactic performed by many spammers and inexperienced webmasters. This involves using a high keyword density within the title tag of the webpages of your website. Many webmasters will repeat the keywords and use really long titles in the hope of obtaining a high ranking. The search engines monitor the title tags closely and having too many words within your title will have a negative effect on your search engine ranking position.
Webpage Index Spamming
This is a technique which inexperienced webmaster usually oversee. They will usually create hundreds of pages of “spammy” text which is sometimes duplicated content or random text created by a generator on their website, and the webmasters will try to index these webpages on the search engines. Indexing a website can be achieved by creating a sitemap containing all of the URLs within your website. The search engines detect this as spam as it doesn’t seem natural for a website to suddenly contain hundreds of new webpages within their website within a small timeframe, therefore the search engines flag or penalise these types of websites.
Article Copying
This element of SEO spamming closely ties in with duplicate content website content. Spammers will copy text i.e. article content from another website and simply paste these articles on their website. Alternatively, they may steal the article and post it on a different article directory to the one it was found on. This will provide the spamming website a one-way text link to their website. But yet again, the search engines will not give any value to duplicate content as well as indexing it within it’s database.
Wikipedia Link Spamming
Wikipedia – The global centre of the Internet for retrieving information as well as providing the general public the ability to post information regarding any topic. Many pages are freely available to edit allowing spammers to create outgoing links on the webpage to their website. There are also Wiki software packages entitling webmasters the opportunity to install a Wikipedia type dictionary on their website. The software can be setup on the website to allow webmasters to freely edit the dictionary without any author privileges. Thus allowing spammers/webmasters to create outgoing spam links on the webpages.
High META Tag Keyword Density
Webmasters usually over optimise webpages by spamming the keyword and description META tags within the HTML code. Over optimising these usually results in a lower webpage ranking. Common mistakes are repeating keyword and phrases as well as specifying too many keywords, all of which search engines detect as spam.
Webpage Cloakers
A very sneaky trick pulled off by spammers to fool the search engines and visitors to websites. Webmasters will create a webpage dynamically depending on whether a real person or a search engine is visiting the webpage. If a search engine is visiting the webpage, then spammy content is displayed in order to achieve a high ranking on the SERPs. But if a real person is visiting the webpage, the real content is displayed instead of the cloaked content. The spammy content usually has better keyword density and prominence values, therefore spammers will cloak webpages in order for the search engines to index these spammy content.
Spammers will always come up with inventive ideas to get round the search engine algorithms, although the search engines are always becoming more clever. Spammers should be aware of these methods as they do not prove to be successful. Good luck with your search engine optimisation!
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