SEO Technique?

[Joelt]

I was doing some SEO research and came across an SEO technique I was unaware of. The site I was analyzing (www.discountlaptops) is using the
<NOFRAMES> feature for stuffing anchor text links.

Is this a viable SEO technique? It seems legit to present people with no frames anchor text links that go to your site. The question is, do search engines give ranking value to this technique, or is this a dangerous option?

[bhartzer]

Is this a viable SEO technique

No, it's not a viable technique. It's probably not helping their rankings as far as Google is concerned.

That 'technique' is spam and can get a site banned or penalized. I wouldn't do it.

[Joelt]

Thanks bhartzer,

The thing that surprised me was that they had a 12% keyword denisty rate for notebook on the Keyword Density Analyser. I coulnd't see any other reason for them to rank so well, other than the spam technique. I guess it's just a matter of time before Google calls a penalty.

[bhartzer]

If the site has been around for a while, then it probably has a penalty already. Google is pretty quick when it comes to those sorts of things.

In that case, though, if it's ranking well then the other major ranking factors (i.e., links) by far outweigh the bad stuff they're doing on the site. The site owner probably thinks that they're ranking because of the keyword stuffing, but they're not.

It's either that or the page is extremely new and Google hasn't had time to apply any penalties to the page. If that's the case, then it won't be around for long.

[Joelt]

Okay, I agree, but then I did some more research.
I came accross http://colorcases.com/ and if you highlight the page - you'll see text appear...the ol' hide the keywords in white trick.
we all know that's trouble, but they only have 38 back links, a PR of 4 and terrible density. The more research I've been doing, the more I see that Google's not catching everyone, and legitimate sites like ours suffer in rank because of this.

[bhartzer]

Google's not catching everyone

So, tell Google if you find someone not playing by the rules.

[buddhu]

While I agree with everything bhartzer says, I know from experience that Google very often fail to take detectable steps against specific spammers, even after repeated reports from multiple complainants.

It is a frustrating manifestation of Murphy's law that many of your competitors will get away with blatant SE spamming, while you will no doubt incur penalties for the smallest accidental transgression. Grrr...

Some SEs say that they don't always take direct action against reported SE spammers because of the sheer number of offenders and complaints. They say that they use the information from complaints to improve algorithms instead.