spaming sites?

[gmich]

When marrisa mentioned sites that engage in spamming, what precisly was she reffering to? I am a little uneducated here and do not know if perhaps I am doing this and am unaware of it.

[Duncan Pollock]

One indication of a site that's spamming the search engines can be found in the description that the spider has drawn from the homepage. For example: "Real estate, real estate, homes for sale, homes for sale, listings" (or similar phrasing) is text written for the spider rather than the person arriving at the site.
I'm afraid that numerous real estate sites have been guilty of this -- and still are! -- but I think this is what Google has decided is a No No. Their relegation per the Florida Dance certainly seems to suggest so.

Duncan

[cbp]

SPAM = unethical methods to get a site ranked higher than it would naturally be (a good place to start is the breaking of the quality guidelines that Google states in the bottom half of this page: http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

BTW, a definition of SEO is the use of ethical methods to get a site ranked higher than it would naturally be.

CBP

[ronniethedodger]

BTW, a definition of SEO is the use of ethical methods to get a site ranked higher than it would naturally be.

CBP

Alternatively then, the definition of an unethical SEO is the use of un-ethical methods to get a site ranked higher than would naturally be.

Not all SEO's are created equally.

[greeneagle]

One good way to determine that a Site has engaged the services of a "Shady" SEO, is to go to a source that shows "sites that link to a site" such as Alexa. If the number seems extremely high click on a few and see if the same page pops up at different URLs. If so, they are listed in "link farms". GOOGLE has identified most, if not all the link farms and at best, does not credit those incoming links in their Page Rankings!

To check links coming into your site at Alexa:

Go to: http://www.alexa.com/
Type in your full domain: "www.yourdomain.com"

Hit "Enter" or click "Go":

You will see:

Traffic Rank for yourdomain.com: "xxx.xxx.xxx"
Your traffic ranking according to Alexa will be shown beside the domain.(Read Alexa disclaimers)

See Traffic Details

Click "See Traffic Details" hyperlink to view your site's traffic and determine whether your marketing endeavors are successful or not!

A very useful tool!

BY the way, posting on top forum sites such as WPW helps!


Hope this helps!
Ken

[ronniethedodger]

One good way to determine that a Site has engaged the services of a "Shady" SEO, is to go to a source that shows "sites that link to a site" such as Alexa.

oooh Ken....Alexa the "Shady SEO Sniffing" (SSEOS) search engine, eh? hehehe.

Seriously, another tool to find a variety of incoming links from a variety of search engines is at
http://tools.marketleap.com/publinkpop/

They cover all the major engines. Down towards the bottom the report page (after you have entered your query) there are some quick links to others. Pretty handy one that I use quite a bit.

Ken made a good point about using Alexa though. Alexa reports some links that it has found that come from very strange places that normally you will not see at Google or anywhere else. The point being is that if they show up at Alexa, and not at Google, that just means that Google is probably aware of them and is choosing not to report them.

I have 1 link at Alexa and 67 at Google, figure that one out. But the one at Alexa is apparantly from a user with the Alexa toolbar who used a homepage search form from ATT or GTE (i dont remember which). When you go to the site, my link is not there. It was probably there when Alexa captured the page, and probably had my site listed in the search results....thus Alexa is reporting it as a link.

While on this subject, use other search engines to see who is linking to you. Over at AllTheWeb, I am seeing some very strange linkbacks to say the least. I have no idea how they got onto those pages or why. I have checked them out, and the links do not appear to be harmful -- more good than not.

But still, it is a little worriesome to know that links to your site can pop up out of the blue without you knowing about it. You have no control over it.