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I've toyed with link-farms, I've been guilty of keyword stuffing, I've created additional sites and crosslinked them solely to get additional incoming links, I've signed hundres of "Guestbooks" (keep up the good work!) and left a link to my site.... and so on.
I've done all this, not for commercial gain (none of my 10 sites are comercial in any way) but as sort of a "hobby"... I just enjoy creating and working a site into a good position. All my sites provide local and visitor information on a particular regional location.
It all started as a game - to try and oust the "official" (and as I saw it, "monopolistic") regional tourism site from it's top position.
It took nearly two years, but I succeeded, way beyond my expectations. At the same time I built up quite a following and received plenty of support from within the community. I have ended up becoming the top site for the region, and even forced the "official" tourism site to modify it's style of operation in return for a more favorable treatment from from my site. In the end all the little mom 'n' pop tourism operators that I supported (B&B's, specialised tours, boutique wineries etc) were very happy, and were thereafter able to have their services listed on the official site for a nominal fee (as opposed to the exhorbitant prices previously charged). I think I helped to change the face of the web in our district for the better.
So now, with that battle largely over, I want to continue to develop my site, and perhaps include a commercial element in the future. I have a PR of 6, and it's been steady on that for many months.
Now here is my dilemna: The site now consists of thousands of pages, many where I tried "this trick or that" (nothing too extreme) but I have no hope of finding everything or knowing what to delete or change. I am not sure if the site, as it is now, is beyond the pale or not.
I wish Google had something like the SPAM report page, but as a sort of AMNESTY page... somewhere I could report my own site for evaluation, and if it did not pass muster, be given a chance to change it. I'd be happy to pay a fee, sort of like a reverse "paid-submission" fee to get a Google Report.... nothing specific... just (a) Danger, Danger, or (b) You are on This Ice, or (c) Carry On, Nothing to Worry About.
Heck, I'd be prepared to pay $200 for that piece of mind. Any thoughts?
Rebuilding such an established web presence on a new domain would take a LOT of work, so why not invest the same energy to clean up your existing site(s)? It doesn't sound as though you're suffering any penalties at the moment, so you're not forced into any corners just yet.
Your approach would depend on how you made your pages in the first place. If you made them using a site editing program, you should be able to use global FIND features to help with the hunt for things that ought to be cleaned up. Example: searching for COLOR tags to zero in on links or text that ought to be "un-hidden", finding those links to that suspect site, etc. If you made your pages "by hand" it might be well worth investing in a program that offers such functionality (e.g. Dreamweaver?). A few passes through your content like that would enable you to find and clean up quite a few dodgy bits, and even if you didn't catch it all your margin of safety would be wider.
Then, as time permitted, you could go through your content a section at a time, and do a detailed "safety check" for each page. While you're there you could also update your pages with CSS, and make some tweaks to improve the optimization. If you're like me you know more about both CSS and SEO than when you first started making pages.
With the amount of content you have, and the community support you've developed, you should have no trouble developing your commercial potential.
I know we get the "my site is penalized what do I do" question a lot, but we at least need to read the posts before replying.
If the webmaster is thinking that there "may" be trouble ahead, then time to look at plan B, C and D.
be PROactive rather than REactive.
The last 2 months has woken a lot of people up, including me, who are thinking that something major is going to happen to all the little tricks here and there.
the choice is yours, either spend your time looking for "every" trick used, or go to plan B.
good luck
Shak
[edited by: Shak at 3:33 pm (utc) on Mar. 16, 2003]
be pro-active rather than re-active.
good advice that......one great thing about starting afresh is that you can plan ahead this time, with some hindsight.
maybe its time to wean some of those links on to another domain!
I have a couple fo sites in this boat. I spend a bit of time every month trying to polish them and clean them further, because they are now serious sites worthy of their good placement. I always feel that I have to look over my shoulder though in case I missed something... and I would be more than happy to pay Google to give me a thumbs up and clean bill of health.
As others have said, no need to throw away your domain. As for what to do, look over your site for any dodgy links to link farms, etc. and get rid of them. Check all pages for keyword stuffing. Please note for Google for this to be a sin really requires hidden text, or huge blocks of text at the bottom of the page just for the spiders, etc. Forget about the guestbooks. Google shouldn't count these given the ease of a competitor doing such as sabotage. Also, you say you've become "the top site for the region". If so, then you must have lots of legit inbound links, and those guestbook links are meaningless. Signing guestbooks is for PR2 sites with no inbound links, not the top site of a region.
Do nothing does NOT mean to throw away your domain.
It means don't do anything at this time.
Building a clean domain using a different strategy is a plan used by many to compensate for SEs weirdnesses.
It sounds like he has such a large amount of content that an extra domain might actually be helpful to fill a niche area of his content. But more importantly, if his site were ever penalized, he wouldn't be starting from square one.
Not that this would happen, but suppose Webmaster World was penalized, Brett could immediately crank up SearchEngine World. The key here: there is a backup plan in place.
Concerning the current site, if it is over 1000 pages, maybe it's time to rework some of the titles H1 tags and link text to further improve the SERPs. And of course, look for blatant problems, such as hidden text. I agree with rfgdxm1 you have to really mess up in order to get the whole site penalized.
In a way, I agree with all of you. He should get a new domain AND clean the existing site.
But staying away from duplicate content? That's a lot of work. Or maybe he should duplicate the content and shut down the original site?
It does seem to me that he's on ice, how thin is anyone's guess. The important thing for me is that if you intend to cultivate a site for the long run, it's important for it to be squeaky clean. So I'm leaning towards duping the content and ditching the old site.
Like taking a road trip across the country: Which car is the best choice for driving cross-country? Will you drive the car with 180,000 miles on the odometer? Or the car with 20,000 miles?
You aren't going to get much for $0.05 per page. For a service like this, and the liability that it would add, I don't think that it would be worth considering for less than $500 per PAGE.
What exactly does Google consider to be spam?
Google has a webmaster page that tells you. It's easy to find.
In fact, most search engines have a similar page that lays down in black and white what they do and don't like.
As a webmaster and/or SEO, it is a good policy to research the search engine you're interested in by actually visiting the search engines.
That means going to Google, Inktomi, whatever and clicking through all the news, about, press release pages.
Don't just read what others have to say about it. You can read it from the search engine web site itself. :)
What exactly does Google consider to be spam?
It would help if there were some definitive rules instead of wooly guidelines.
The guidelines aren't woolly; they're quite clear:
[google.com...]
IMHO, most Webmasters and SEOs who get into trouble with Google are victims of their own hubris. They try to see what they can get away with, and they get caught.
I wish Google had something like the SPAM report page, but as a sort of AMNESTY page... somewhere I could report my own site for evaluation, and if it did not pass muster, be given a chance to change it.
Why would that be good from Google's perspective?
From the search engines' point of view, a site operator should do nothing more than create a content-rich and user-friendly site, leaving it up to the spiders and algorithms to determine then which pages are more relevant for a given query.
If they believe that they are able to do that successfully, they have no reason to help any of us to determine exactly where the point is where "optimization" becomes "spam".
The lazy deserve to stay in the dark. Those who are motivated will be able to find that link. In fact, any webmaster who cares should be clicking around through Google's web site. There's lots of important information there.
By making it easy I think it encourages the "Gimme gimme" attitude. I think it's better to encourage them to click around and discover all the great content that all the search engines have.
Google does not even try to hide the fact that some things are considered "good". link, allinurl, allintitle, allinanchor should give you a few hints. Produce lots of content. Get links to that content, because it is good content. Use good titles, use descriptive file names, and get your keywords in the anchor text.
When I was first working on my site, one of the members, that was "in the business", said we should use hidden text. But it just seemed wrong to me. Why use hidden words when you should be concentrating on the real content.
There are a lot of ways that I can improve my results in approved ways, why should I even bother to mess with that other stuff.
My next big endevour is to start adding real content to some of the 800 pages that I always considered to just be navigation only pages. It gives me a whole bunch of new visible content. Why spend the time on hidden text when i can make some that won't get me in trouble.
There are loads of these issues that Google clear up could if it wanted, so why doesnt it?
Again, why should they? There's no reason for a search engine to reveal in specific what "is or is not spam".
In SEO, the process seems to be something like this: come up with keyword phrases for which to compete. Modify your pages in such a way that they place well for those queries, making changes up to the point where going one step further would be classified as "spam". So knowing exactly what that point is would make that process safer.
From a search engine's viewpoint, the process should be: create content-rich and user-friendly pages about your topic. Let the spiders work and let the algorithms determine which search queries those pages are "relevant" for.
There are only two real reasons for a search engine to give any information on what might be considered spam: public relations, to keep unhappy webmasters from making too much noise; and lessening spamming by creating some amount of fear of the spam filters.
why is there another thread running around in circles at the moment trying to decide whether the use of CSS style sheets on H1 tags...
JudgeJeffries you raise an interesting question about a very common concern. I've asked the same question myself.
The short answer is to download google's style sheet and you'll see that they are using CSS to style their H1 tags. End of discussion.
And that is what I mean about people not using their heads to figure things out. (I think that's my theme for this weekend, "Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.)
How clear can Google's guidlines be? Never clear enough: Consider a STOP sign, then consider all the folks who blow through them every day.
The short answer is to download google's style sheet and you'll see that they are using CSS to style their H1 tags. End of discussion.
Agreed.
downloading a few million pages would say the same thing. you wouldnt want to sacrifice quality pages from the index purely because the author isnt that savvy with HTML.
AFAIK, most of the measuring/weighting is relative. I can quote from a google paper, but I've read another paper that says that each tag has its own weight.
Bottom line, for me, is that H1 is a HEADER tag, for HEADINGS, and should be used as such. You can style them any way you like.
//added
remember that G extends their hand to WW, in the form of googleguy ;) Google is not an F.A.Q. for how the web should work.........
Hope that helps solve the H1 problem :)
//2nd added
martini, apologies, hopefully this is the end now
