Here’s a nightmare scenario for you … You head into the office and log-on to check your web site stats to see how your traffic is holding up. You’re excited because the big bucks you’ve invested in Search Engine Optimization are finally paying off. Your traffic and web-based sales are going through the roof…
But wait a minute. Your traffic has dropped to a crawl. It’s like Highway 77 through Wahoo, NE at 2 a.m. No traffic and, what’s worse, your sale’s gusher has dropped to a drip. What is up!!!
Unfortunately you’re a victim of your SEO company’s bad and/or deceptive search practices. Practices that have gotten them thrown out of Google or other major search properties. Practices like…
- Creating ‘doorway‘ pages loaded with deceptive keywords such as ‘sex’ that then redirect traffic to the legitimate site.
- Setting up or participating in ‘link farms‘ that falsely inflate the importance of the site by cross linking clients sites to each other even though there’s no connection.
- Setting up search engine ‘spamming pages‘ that are crammed full of key words
Don’t think this can happen to you? Neither did the customers of traffic-power.com. Traffic Power employees teams of high pressure telemarkters to constantly harass you into signing up with their service. For an initial payment of $3,000 they promise top placement on google and other search properties but what they don’t tell you is that the techniques they use are specifically banned by google and will get you banned too should they be used on your behalf.
If you’re unsure on what techniques to avoid in optimizing your own pages or you are concerned about the methods being touted by an seo firm; consider these from the Google Information for Webmasters‘ page:
Quality Guidelines – Basic principles:
- Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”
- Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
- Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
- Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service…
Quality Guidelines – Specific recommendations:
- Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
- Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
- Don’t send automated queries to Google.
- Don’t load pages with irrelevant words.
- Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
- Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
In short, develop meaningful pages full of strong content populated with relevant key words that is of interest to your customers and prospects. Build site maps, use appropriate meta tags (title, description, etc.) and do the hard work of letting others know about what you offer. Invite legitimate website’s with a complementary interest in what you offer to link to your site and afford reciprocal links where it makes sense. Start a blog or an ezine. Publish your URL on every piece of correspondence or collateral you send out. Offer not only solid products and services but solid value that goes above and beyond the expected. Your site will get noticed, ranked and visited. Guaranteed.
Sources I used for this post include:
- Richard Drawhorn’s article in the February 2006 MarketPosition Newsletter from Web Trends.
- Trafficpowersucks.com – the owner of this site believes he was defrauded by traffic-power and threw up this site as a means to draw attention to their methods and, hopefully, receive restitution for the several thousand dollars he spent with them to get his site
banned, er, ranked by these folks. Instead he’s being sued. - Matt Cutts personal blog – Matt is head of the webspam group at Google but normally doesn’t use his blog for official announcements such as confirming that, yes, Google has indeed tossed traffic-power.com and their clients from the Google index.
- ‘Optimize’ Rankings At Your Own Risk, the Wall Street Journal article by David Kesomdel that brought Traffic Power and their questionable practices into wide-spread public view back in September of last year.
- Traffic problems – an article published by City Life in Las Vegas that details specific consequences to Traffic Power customers including the stress management supplier who lost 80% of his business as a result of his affiliation with TP (at least he could dip into his product for a little relief). While most SEO efforts take 60-90 days to have an effect on your rankings. Our hapless supplier was banned from Google only 30 days after signing on with TP.
A Final Note…
Traffic Power is certainly not the only SEO firm using frowned-upon practices to get their clients high rankings but they were/are one of the most egregious examples of search engine optimization gone bad. I find it telling that not only are they still promoting their services via their web site and, no doubt, telemarketing efforts, but they make no mention anywhere of the fact that their techniques have resulted in their clients’ loss of ranking and revenues as a result of their efforts. Keep in mind that their are lots of legitimate, above board firms out there how do SEO right. If you need one I suggest that you familiarize yourself with Google’s guidelines and ask prospective optimizers if they adhere to these and other engines’ approved approaches.
