SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible

S

pam is the Internet’s version of the telemarketers who call you during

dinner and won’t take no for an answer. It pops up where it’s least

wanted, it’s more prolific than pine trees in Mississippi, and the only

purpose that spam really serves is to generate money for the spammers. And

they keep at it, because they assume that the law of averages is on their side —

send out enough spam and someone will respond.

Spam in SEO operates under the same principle, except SEO spam fills

the search engine results pages with results that have little to no value to the

searcher. If you do something that a search engine sees as spamming it, your

search rankings will be penalized. It’s even likely that you’ll be removed

from search rankings entirely.

In SEO, there are clear-cut cases of spam, which is usually classified as “black-

hat SEO.” But there are also cases of spam that aren’t necessarily as obvious.

These fall into a gray area in which the practices used may or may not be con-

sidered spam, depending on how you handle them.

To make spam even more difficult to define, search engines change their defini-

tions of spam regularly. What works and is acceptable today may well be classi-

fied as spam tomorrow. And if you don’t know the change has been made or is

coming, you may look at your rankings one day and find that you’re above the

fold on the first page, but look at the same rankings the next day to find you’ve

been relegated to page 10 of the results.

Only the search engines know what constitutes spam from one day to the next.

And that makes it very difficult for you to stay off the spammers list if you’re

doing any SEO activities that are borderline spam. Sure, you can monitor the

search engine algorithms and try to keep up with the changes that are made,

but that’s no guarantee that you won’t get caught up in the changes. It’s also a

reactive way to manage your SEO campaign.

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IN THIS CHAPTER

What Constitutes SEO Spam? ..........................................................................................

What the big deal about

SEO spam?

Avoiding SEO spam

The Truth

About SEO Spam

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