Spam is not bad for your health. Spam means you are finally getting noticed.

SEO Spam – The vast majority of web users would agree with that statement, and nobody would even think of the finely processed luncheon meat product made by Hormel. Even the word itself is infectious in all the worst ways, being used to describe the dark side and often deceptive side of everything from Email marketing to abusive forum behaviour. In the search engine optimization field, SEO Spam is used to describe hacking or spamming tactics that are considered banned by search engines or unethical business practices.

1. Cloaking

Also known as “cloaking,” this technique involves serving or feeding one set of information to known search engine spiders or agents, while displaying a different set of information to general visitors on the same webpage. While there are unique situations in which the use of cloaking might be considered ethical in the day-to-day practice of SEO, cloaking is never required. This is especially true after the Jagger algorithm update at Google, which uses document and link histories as important ranking factors.

2. IP Delivery

Internet Protocol (IP) Delivery is a simple form of cloaking, in which a unique set of information is served based on the IP address from which the information query originated. IP addresses known to be search engine-based are served one set of information, while unrecognized IP addresses (assumed to be live visitors are served another.

3. Leader Pages

Leader pages are a series of similar documents, each designed to meet the requirements of different search engine algorithms. This is one of the original SEO tricks, dating back to the earliest days of search, when there were almost a dozen leading search engines sorting through less than a billion documents. It is considered SPAM by the major search engines as they see multiple instances of what is virtually the same document. Aside from that, the technique is no longer practical as search engines consider a far wider range of factors than the arrangement or density of keywords found in unique documents.

4. Mini-Site networks

Designed to exploit a critical vulnerability in early versions of Google’s PageRank algorithm, mini-site networks were similar to leader pages but on a much larger scale. Establishing a mini-site network involved creating several sites related to specific topics or products, all of which linked back to a central sales site. Each mini-site would have its keyword-enriched URL and be designed to meet the particular requirements of each major search engine. Often, they could be enlarged by adding information from leader pages. By weaving webs of links between mini-sites, an artificial link density was created that could heavily influence Google’s perception of the importance of the leading site.

5. Link Farms

Link farms emerged as free-for-all link depositories when web admins learned how heavily incoming links influenced Google. Google, in turn, quickly devalued and eventually eliminated the PR value it assigned to pages with an inordinate number of links. Nevertheless, link farms persist as uninformed webmasters and unethical SEO firms continue to use them.

6. Blog and/or Forum Spam

Blogs and forums are amazing and essential communication technologies, both of which are heavily used in the daily conduct of our business. As with other Internet-based media, blogs and forum posts are easily and often proliferated. In some cases, blogs and specific forums also have established high PR values for their documents. These two factors make them targets for unethical SEOs seeking high-PR links back to their websites or those of their clients. Google, in particular, has clamped down on Blog and Forum abuse.

7. Keyword Stuffing

At one time, search engines were limited to sorting and ranking sites based on the number of keywords found on those documents. That limitation allows admins to insert keywords everywhere possible. When Google emerged and incoming links became a factor, some even went so far as to use keyword stuffing in anchor text.
A typical example of keyword stuffing can still be found near the bottom of many websites.

8. Hidden Text

Amazingly, some webmasters and SEOs continue to use hidden text as a technique, but, as evidenced by the number of sites we find it on, many people still use it. They shouldn’t.
There are two types of hidden text. The first is text that is coloured the same shade as the background, thus rendering it invisible to human visitors but not to search spiders. The second is text that is hidden behind images or under document layers. Search engines tend to dislike both forms and have been known to devalue documents containing instances of hidden text.

9. Useless Meta Tags

Most meta tags are absolutely useless. The unethical part is that some SEO firms actually charge for creating and inserting meta tags. In some cases, there seems to be a meta tag for virtually every possible factor, but for the most part, search spiders do not consider them, especially Google.

In general, StepForth only uses the description and keywords meta tags (though we are dubious about the actual value of the keywords tag), along with relevant robots.txt files. All other identifying or clarifying information should be visible on a contact page or included in the footers of each page.

10. Misuse of Directories

Search engines traditionally gave links from directories a bit of extra weight by considering them links from trusted authorities. A practice of spamming directories emerged as some SEOs and web admins hunted for valuable links to improve their rankings. Search engines have since tended to devalue links from most directories. Some SEOs continue to charge directory submission fees.

11. Hidden Tags

There are several types of tags used by search engines or website designers to perform various functions,  such as comment tags, style tags, alt tags, noframes tags, and http-equiv tags. For example, the “alt tag” is used by screen readers for people who are visually impaired to describe visual images. Inserting keywords into these tags was a technique used by many SEOs in previous years. Although some continue to misuse these tags, the practice appears to be receding overall.

12. Organic Site Submissions

One of the most unethical things a service-based business can do is to charge clients for a service they don’t really need. Charging for, or even claiming submissions to, the major search engines is an example. Search engine spiders are advanced enough that they no longer require site submissions to find information. Search spiders find new documents by following links. Site submission services or SEO firms that charge clients a single penny for submission to Google, Yahoo, BING are overcharging those clients radically and unethically.

13. Email Spam

Placing a URL inside a “call-to-action” email remains a widely used tactic in search marketing spam. With the advent of desktop search appliances, email spam has actually increased. StepForth does not use email to promote your website.

14. Redirect Spam

There are several ways to use the redirect function to fool a search engine or even hijack traffic destined for another website! Whether the method used is a 301 redirect, a 302 redirect, a 403 error, a meta refresh, or a JavaScript redirect, the result is still search engine spam.

15. Misuse of Web 2.0 Formats (ie, Wiki, social networking, and social tagging)

An emerging form of SEO spam is found in the misuse of user-input media formats such as Wikipedia. Like blog comment spamming, the instant live-to-web nature of Web 2.0 formats provides an open range for SEO spam technicians.

Many of these exploits may even find short-term success, but it is only a matter of time before measures are taken to devalue their efforts. Search engine optimization spam continues to be a problem for the SEO industry as it tries to move past the perceptions of mainstream advertisers. When unethical techniques are used, trust—the basis of all business—is abused, and the efforts of the SEO and SEM industries are called into question.

Fortunately, Google’s new algorithm appears to be on the cutting edge of SEO Spam detection and prevention. Let’s hope 2006 is the year the entire SEO industry goes on a Spam-free diet.