SEO

David Segal, an investigative reporter with the New York Times, recently published an article which demonstrated that the company had hired search engine optimisation company SearchDex, which went on to indulge in some seemingly suspicious activities. The actions of SearchDex had propelled JC Penney to the top of Google’s SERPS for a multitude of search terms just before Christmas last year.

One of the techniques alleged to have been used is that of buying links. Ethical SEO experts would recommend that links are built naturally over time, but there was evidence to suggest that, in this instance, links had been bought, or rented, as they were from websites not relevant to JC Penney’s services.

When Segal contacted Google about the matter, it admitted that its attention had already been drawn by the suspicious activity, and it decreed that its webmaster guidelines had been violated.

As a result, JC Penney’s results were buried – instead of appearing first for the term “Samsonite carry on luggage”, it now ranks as 71st.

JC Penney has denied involvement with any nefarious activities designed to ‘game’ Google. Darcie Brossart, VP of corporate communications, said:

“The characterization of JC Penney in the New York Times article is misleading and unwarranted.”

“JC Penney was in no way involved in the posting of the links discussed in the article. We did not authorize them and we were not aware that they had been posted. To be clear, we do not tolerate violations of our policies regarding natural search, which reflect Google’s guidelines.”

The sad fact of the matter is that most businesses who hire SEO companies to do work for them have no idea that Google’s terms of service are being violated in their name. They do not know links are being bought, or indeed where the links are coming from. Some website owners even find that links to their site are coming from sites also linking to adult orientated websites – an association that most businesses don’t want but, thanks to their SEO company, have.

Do you know what your SEO company is doing in your name?

However, during the run up to Christmas 2010, it came top with startling regularity in search engine queries such as ‘bedding’, queries for which other stores such as Bed Bath & Beyond would usually be expected to be found. In fact, the company beat millions of other sites to get to the top of the rankings from generic terms such as “tablecloths” to more specific ones, such as “grommet top curtains”.

This drew the attention of the New York Times, who called in an expert to investigate the company’s SEO.

Doug Pierce, who has an illustrious career in SEO, described the company’s methods as:

“the most ambitious attempt to game Google’s search results that he had ever seen”.

He found that most of the links to JC Penney’s site were from sites not relevant to their products in the slightest. For example, the keyphrase “black dresses”, and links to the site, were found on a website about nuclear engineering, “evening dresses” popped up on a casino website and “casual dresses” turned up on wlistofbanks.com.

This is the product of an obvious paid links campaign.

The paper sent their evidence to Google SEO guru Matt Cutts, who confirmed that it broke their terms of usage. It remains to be seen what punitive measures will be taken against J C Penney, but Cutts stated that it had been caught employing black hat SEO on three prior occasions, but refused to say what punishment was meted out.

However, Cutt’s team had not seen this recent attempt to top Google’s SERPS. He said:

“Do I wish our system had detected things sooner? I do, but given the one billion queries that Google handles each day, I think we do an amazing job.”

If JC Penny can’t get away with trying to game Google, what chance does anyone else have? By using ethical SEO techniques and natural link building methods you can improve your website’s search engine rankings without the risk of falling foul of Matt Cutts and his Google spam team.

The search giant even took the aggressive step of emailing the webmasters of the offending sites to advise them why they had been dropped from their search engine results pages (SERPs). It advised them to remove each and every link or piece of coding that breached its rules and regulations in order to be considered for re-indexing. If they failed to comply, the websites might never appear within Google again.

Many within the SEO industry, feeling the heat of the competition in improving search engine results for their clients, resort to unethical, or ‘black hat’, methods to gain the upper hand on their competitors. Spammers are also engaged in a war with Google’s search algorithms, and so the blacklisting of sites is nothing new. However, this is a possible signal of a new, more open approach by Google, and offers proof that it takes sites trying to ‘game’ the system very seriously indeed.

The notice of the ban says:

“We’ve detected that some or all of your pages are using techniques that are outside our quality guidelines.”

“Look for possibly artificial or unnatural links on your site pointing to other sites that could be intended to manipulate PageRank.”

“We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines.”

Although this is undoubtedly a step forward in the on-going war against spam, some people in the industry feel that a definitive solution is still some way off.

SEO

But does it work? Can you actually get away with hiding text on your website and achieve decent Google rankings as a result?

Well, if it didn’t work, people wouldn’t still do it. We see countless websites that have had text concealed within their pages, stuffed with keywords (and often placed with h1 tags) for the purposes of fooling Google and, quite, often those websites actually rank for the keywords in question. They’re merrily lording it high up in Google for keywords they’ve spammed up their pages for, flying in the face of good quality, ethical, SEO.

So if it works, where’s the harm?

This is the problem – while using hidden text may well work (and often does) it is against Google’s terms of service and, as such, can get a website into a lot of trouble. Many smaller websites, particularly those optimising for geographical keywords, may well get away with it for a long time – but it is by no means a long term strategy, nor is it a platform on which to build a successful website.

It’s like cheating on your tax return. You may get away with it, you may find years go by without you ever getting caught, but do you really want to run that risk? If you do get investigated (by the taxman or by Google) you’ll find yourself in a great big vat of hot water, one which you’ll most likely drown. While the taxman will demand money, plus interest, Google will make no such demands – it will simply kick your website into touch, banish it from the index and reduce your Google traffic from a flowing river, to a trickling tap.

In order to placate Google you would have to remove the offending spam, and then request re-inclusion – which may or may not be forthcoming. Once you have done this of course, even if you do get put back into the index by Google, it won’t be near the top where you had previously featured as a result of the hidden keywords – it will be wherever Google genuinely feels you belong; probably quite far down.

You will then need to start from scratch with search engine optimisation, done ethically, to show Google what your website is about. This will take time but, if your business has grown used to the level of traffic and conversions your website has been enjoying, can you afford to wait?

The best option of course is not conceal text on your website at all (and not cheat on your taxes) because being found out will ruin anything you have built up. Do it properly from day one, and be rock solid in terms of SEO.

Friday the 13th

It’s the scary season once again; a time for dressing up as something ghastly and making merry in a ghoulish manner while handing out candy to children… that sounded better in my head.

Any way, it’s Halloween and while the celebratory day of All Hallow’s Eve may not be quite as big over here in the UK as it is in the US (they’ve been preparing for it for weeks) we Brits still use the event as an excuse for a party and to watch horror films. As with any Halloween, there are a lot of new horror movies coming out especially to scare the bejesus out of you and, just like any event of any significance, the black hat SEOs are there too, waiting to surprise you with their fiendish traps.

Online security firm PandaLabs has revealed that Halloween movie releases may lead to more of a scare than originally intended.

According to the security form, black hat SEOs have been preparing for Halloween longer than most Americans and have been targeting scary movies such as Friday the 13th and Paranormal Activity 2 with their SEO campaigns. The unpleasant fellows have been optimising websites for phrases related to these films knowing that unsuspecting Internet surfers, looking for a scare in the shape of a trailer or series of stills for the movies, can be royally shocked by downloading malware and other nasties instead.

Through the use of black hat SEO techniques, fake websites promising information related to the films are being promoted by the spammers to trap unsuspecting horror film fans. When fans find one of the fake websites, instead of watching a trailer or sneak peak of the film in question, they find their computer infected with a virus, Trojan or other form of malware, such as spyware or adware.

You can see some examples of the type of websites that appear in the search results from PandaLabs here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/panda_security/5116727543/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/panda_security/5116727615/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/panda_security/5116727397/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/panda_security/5116735747/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/panda_security/5117329440/

So if you’re surfing the Internet today, or in the darkness later tonight, be very careful what you click on… take a wrong turn and you could find your computer infected with diseased, brain eating zombies!

Or more likely experience a series of pop-ups for some medications that you probably don’t want.

SEO

Trojans prepare to attack Russian androids

The Trojan is a very costly application that Smartphone users in Russia are being tricked into installing on their phones when they search for adult related content. The makers of the Trojan have promoted it on numerous websites in Russia, and have optimised it using search engine optimisation. When a user finds what they believe to be an adult content rich application, they download and install it onto their Smartphone – only to find that their mobile phone bills go through the roof. Rather than offering adult content, the Trojan instead sends out text messages to premium numbers without the owner’s knowledge. Each SMS message that is sent from the phone costs the user $6 (over £3), and the phone shows no sign that the messages have even been sent.

The Trojan is called ‘Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.b’ and it’s finding its way onto thousands of Android powered phones in Russia because of the power of SEO. The makers of viruses, Trojans and identity-theft software have realised that SEO can be used to get their malware onto more computer systems and mobile technology, and are utilising it to great effect.

This news shows how effective SEO can be when used correctly, even if in this instance it is being used for malicious purposes. Those who have mastered the art of SEO have a responsibility to use it fairly, rather than for nefarious purposes.

SEO

No, black hat means something much worse. It means to conduct SEO practices it a dodgy, underhand manner and to ignore the rules of fair play laid down by Google and the other search engines (mostly Google to be honest, but we don’t want to appear biased).

Now you may be thinking that using black hat tactics and getting one over on the search engines is a good idea. They’ve loads of money and they’re too big anyway, we may as well do our best to slip one past them. You would of course be wrong, very wrong. More wrong in fact than the decision to remake ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’, another example of wearing a hat and doing bad deeds.

While getting one over on ‘the man’ isn’t necessarily a bad thing, donning your black hat and selling your soul to the devil isn’t going to set your website up for years of top rankings and quality traffic. When you engage in black hat tactics, or worse yet – hire the SEO services of an agency that uses them – you could be getting far more than you bargained with. You could be paying good money for someone to use, abuse and destroy your website in the rankings.

So, how black hat can it get?

Here’s an example for starters. We all know that links help websites in the rankings. If your website has links from other websites, using anchor text that you want to rank for, your website will receive a little boost. One black hat technique used by an otherwise reputable SEO company in Manchester was to disguise links to other clients’ websites in the code of their SEO on each website they worked on.

This means they would add code to your website, the client, linking to other clients of theirs, using your website for links. This would be done without your knowledge, and hidden in the code so it couldn’t be seen on the page. That’s against Google’s TOS, and very, very black hat.

If you wish to employ the services of a black hat SEO agency, you need to be careful what you wish for.

SEO

When these emails are sent via contact forms, or using Whois details, they don’t come from the actual company offering the services; they come from an email address created specifically to spam you, from a made up name. It could be a hotmail address, Yahoo or even Google’s Gmail, but if you replied to it you would receive a reply from the real company’s website and email address.

Of course, using spam tactics such as this are illegal and against the CAN-SPAM Act – this is why they use made up email addresses in the first place. Any company that does this is already demonstrating that they do not use ethical methods to attract business, so what would they do should they get their hands on your website? They could employ all manner of dodgy, black hat SEO techniques that could see your site banned, and could even use your website for link building to their clients – which does happen!

Just in case you haven’t received this email, here is the message in full. Watch out for it and delete it if you ever receive it.

We are interested to increase traffic to your website, please get back to us in order to discuss the possibility in further detail.