One thing that’s become ever so common on the internet is SEO spam. It not only makes one’s online experience frustrating but also results in fallacious information and ideas being spread online. For those of you who are not quite acquainted with the term “SEO spam”, here is a brief explanation:
It is basically a technique employed by webmasters (an immoral one) to bolster their website’s ranking on Google and other major search engines. It’s also known as “spamdexing”. SEO spammers include irrelevant backlinks, information’s that’s of absolutely no value to the readers, excessive use of keywords, etc, to improve their website rank on the major search engines. Now as illegitimate as it sounds, many people are resorting to this technique, seeking a short-term boost.
However, this devious method of directing more traffic to one’s website certainly has dire repercussions. For example, if the search engine detects any sort of “spammy” action on your site, it may ban you permanently from its engine. Then forget about getting a high rank, you won’t even get the last spot. Therefore, it’s highly important to follow ethical SEO techniques in order to ensure reliability and quality.
Furthermore, due to the increasingly high amount of SEO spam on the internet, Google has taken a number of strict measures to minimize its damage and impact. For example, it created a page ranking system that expelled spam sites and gave exposure to more reliable ones.
Here are some common methods used for SEO spamming:
Misdirecting Links
Everyone has probably come across a link that appears to direct you to a particular page (of your interest), but ends up leading to an entirely different page. A link that says sports bikes, but leads you to some sort of online dating site is an example of a misdirecting link.
Excessive Keywords
This is perhaps one of the most common techniques of SEO spam. Spammers often bombard their page with excessive keywords (which is quite noticeable to the users) in order to get a higher page rank.
Web Scrapping
A website that copies all its content from another site (also known as plagiarism) is subjected to web scrapping. Such websites are generally not liked by search engines due to their lack of authenticity.
Unseen Links
This is another clever technique employed by SEO spammers. They include links on the page which are practically un-seeable by the visit because its color is identical to the page’s background.