An article published in the New York Times on February 12 almost makes it sound like you need to cheat to get top natural search results. The article describes how JC Penny fooled Google into giving it top ranks on dozens of keywords using a link spam operation, possibly resulting in millions of dollars in sales during the Christmas season.
The dilemma for site owners is whether to jump on the ‘black hat’ bandwagon for quick results, risking the wrath of Google, or to take the slower but safer route to high natural ranks.
Spark’s position is that website owners can benefit greatly from pursuing higher search engine ranks through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) even using ‘fair white hat’ techniques, without risking penalties. Natural search itself is changing rapidly with the addition of real-time results, location filtering, personalization, and other ways that search engines try to improve the relevancy of results. Below we briefly list some ways SEO as practiced by a firm like Spark makes it an important – and ethical – tool in your company’s marketing strategy.
Why Do People Cheat?
People cheat to make more money, the usual reason. Website owners can profit handsomely from top ranks because the vast majority of referrals come from them, and ‘black hat’ SEO practitioners make money helping them get the rankings through techniques the search engines outlaw.
‘Black hat’ SEO means using mostly irrelevant links and pages to trick the search engines into giving high ranks to a site that is not necessarily the most relevant one for a search query. This violates search engines’ terms of service because their goal is to provide neutral results with the most relevant websites for a query at the top. When a black hat spammer is caught, the web site suffers penalties.
In the JC Penny case, the company benefited from a campaign to place links to the company’s product pages on thousands (if not millions) of extraneous websites. Many of these websites are virtually shells whose only purpose is to gather revenues from participating in link farm schemes and/or advertising. When it works, these external links using important keywords as anchor text are counted as inbound links by Google, with more links boosting natural search results because the search engine thinks the targeted website is authoritative.
Getting Caught
After the Times uncovered the JC Penny scam and told Google, Penny’s rankings dropped like a stone from #1 and #2 to fifth page or lower for the same search queries. Google can, and sometimes does, manually re-rank a site.
Google goes to great lengths to police search results because its most important value is in providing fair, accurate results. When it finds a spam scheme skewing its results, it will penalize the perpetrator and try to tweak the algorithm to make it harder for spammers to use that particular scam. Over time, Google eliminates cheating, but in the short run, some people will always try to beat the system – and some will succeed.
High Natural Ranks You Can Keep
Getting high natural ranks is important, and every Search Marketing firm works to improve clients’ positions. Here at Spark we understand that natural search is changing because the Internet itself is changing. Inbound links are still important for being found, but SEO means more than just links. With your website at the core of a search marketing ecosystem, we pursue visibility in many ways.
Content is STILL king. The most basic element of authority of a website is its content. We emphasize blogging, website updates, and content revisions to keep a site expanding, focused on our most important topics. This content is crucial to your site’s relevancy AND it can help to get inbound links.
Expanding the publication sphere multiplies visibility. Content published in forums, external blogs, article publishers, and various content publication sites (like YouTube) help create both traffic and visibility. These external publications will include inbound links to your site that are valid and helpful.
Location matters. Your physical location may be an important factor in your business, and if it is, it greatly affects how you can be seen online. Especially for smaller businesses or for chains that compete in local markets, local search visibility opens up a whole new array of tools.
Social media magnify effects. For both inbound links and basic buzz, social media amplify both the good and bad about your company. You need to participate to shape the conversation, and be alert to issues. In the process, you again add content to the ecosystem and create links and traffic to your site.
Creativity counts. Intelligent use of public relations or even outbound advertising can help make your site more visible in natural search as well.
Visit some of the pages on the Spark website to get a fuller picture of how we approach search marketing. Buying low quality inbound links is not your long term path to search dominance or business growth.
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Posted by GlennSilloway on February 14, 2011 |
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Tags: Google, Inbound Marketing, search marketing, SEO, seo tips
