No one likes spam. Not in your physical mailbox, your email box, or on social media. The earliest forms of spamming involved the sending of unsolicited messages. Today there are more sophisticated forms of spam. It is safe to say spamming of any type is at best annoying and at worst illegal and should be avoided. Consider the following 5 types of spam you want to keep away from your business.
5 Types of Spam: Search Engine Spamming
Search engine spamming is deliberately modifying HTML pages for the sole purpose of increasing their chance of ranking higher in search engine results. It is dishonest and Google and other search engines don’t like it. A company specializing in managed IT services will keep your business safe from would-be hackers. In like manner, a firm specializing in SEO and content management will drive better results and keep you honest. Stay away from the following 5 methods of search engine spamming:
1) Keyword and Meta Tag Stuffing
One criteria search engines use when ranking sites is keywords. Older versions used a simplistic keyword count to determine a particular site’s relevance. This gave way to the practice of keyword stuffing, or purposely repeating a word beyond normal use simply to increase its frequency on the page. Another related technique is meta tag stuffing whereby keywords are repeated in the meta tags along with other words unrelated to the main website content. Both of these techniques are dishonest attempts to exploit the system. Search engines are now much more sophisticated and will recognize it and penalize you.
2) Cloaking
With cloaking, there are two different versions of a website- one that is shown to the search engine when it looks at your page and a different one for the human visitors. It is used to deceive search engines into displaying a page they would not otherwise display. It is also is used to trick a search engine into ranking a site higher than it normally would. Not only is this technique dishonest it is no longer effective. Search engines are much smarter today.
3) Hidden Links and Hidden Text
Similar to keyword stuffing, this spamming technique uses repeated keywords and links that are invisible to human eyes. White text might be displayed on a white background. Search engines would pick it up, but human users couldn’t see it. Sites employing this method used to get ranked higher, but search engines have wised up to it. It no longer works.
4) Link Spamming
Google’s PageRank algorithm gives a higher ranking to your website the more other websites it has linked to it. Spammers began creating multiple websites with different URLs that all linked back to one another. In this way they created an artificial appearance of a website with links to several others. Again, search engines are smarter than that now.
5) Doorway Pages
These are low-quality pages stuffed with keywords and phrases and very little other content. These pages are created strictly for search engines and have no benefit for visitors. They may feature content copied directly from other sites. With no navigation menu, doorway pages typically have a “Click here to enter” in the middle of other text.
Protect Your Business
While it may be tempting to find ways to “beat the system”, your efforts will be much better rewarded sticking to legitimate SEO techniques. Search engines have developed much more sophisticated ways of ranking websites today. Get started with this guide to different types of spam that can harm your business. Enstep is your Houston area resource for IT services and security. Contact Us to learn more about spamming and IT solutions for your business.
