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And yet all the advice and recommendations are that this kind of thing is bad practice and will land the site with a calamitous penalty - despite the fact that some of these sites have been listed highly for the past couple of years.
So why bother with "good" practice when "bad" practice can serve you better?
One day they will get found and banned
Play nicely and I reckon you will be rewarded.
Cheers
Despite what we keep being told, the spam scammers almost always seem to be able to beat the search spiders and clog up Google's first page.
I also kind of think that so long as the site "does exactly what it says on the tin" - ie all the SEO techniques are promoting something that the site actually does, rather than attracting unsuspecting traffic in the manner of porn sites - then why should you be penalised for providing searchers with what they were after in the first place?
1. Continue "playing by the rules" and your site will be around for the long haul. Google should eventually find the problems by themselves and your site will remain.
2. Beat them at their own game.
Both options can work and both can be profitable.
Personally I've found that such "hidden" techniques on the page where the spam cops can come along and find it is a waste of time. It's too easy for them. Better to really dig in and learn what the algo really looks at and play on a higher level. This type of "spam" usually flies right over the average spam cops head.
All you can do is report the site, if you want, otherwise it's water of a ducks back and onto the next problem
Google should eventually find the problems
Thet's assuming that G actually considers it a problem. We, (not you in particluar DrCool!) often talk about 'problems' and 'rules' and 'ethics' but we're all subject to whether google actually finds these practices harmful to it's SERP's
A good example is the discounting of guestbook links last year, they dissappeared for a while then came back. Why? - G clearly didn't see an improvement in the SERP's. And neither did many here at WebmasterWorld that have commented upon it.
On page factors count for little these days, hidden text is nothing to be worried or distressed about IMO.
Like DrCool says, either way can be profitable, it's up to you to decide which path you take.
Nick
Exactly. In fact, you can create two sites, a pure whitehat version and a blackhat version. Double Minty Fun.
Come Luke, explore the dark side...
Good boys get to heaven, bad boys get to top positions.
Heaven is eternal and when God (Google?) decides that the bad boys require lightening bolt up their ass he will send many plagues of the White Toolbar. :)
The idea of creating a white and black hat sites is however a way of getting the best of both eternities . Just dont get your domains mixed up and get the one you really want to keep booted :)
If you go for the "unethical" approach make absolutely sure that your site is independent and non traceable to you and your other work.
Almost every site I work with has at least one competitor in the Top Ten listings that uses such things as hidden text.
How do you know that not 10 competitors are banned because of using that technique? It is not just the point of being ethical or unethical, but if you can take the risk of being banned after the next update!
I think that a clean design and a well organized site structure are far more important than hidden text etc.
I can only recall a few key points but I believe it revolved around the same topic that is being discussed now. Credit goes to whoever brought it up.
It did not go exactly like this but...
Let's say that someone discovered the cure for cancer but could only post it on a web site. No media. No medical journals. No money for PPC. Etc. Of course this wouldn't happen in the real world but great example nonetheless.
They only way they could tell the world about their brilliant discovery, would be to dump their recipe on a brand new web site.
This would be one of the greatest discoveries to mankind. Because of the current flaws in information retrieval and search engine algos, it would take a long time for this cure to reach the masses by being "ethical" alone.
Ethical in the minds of many here = Content about a topic and that is it.
Would you, and many others, want to wait a year or more to know that there is a cure for cancer?
The point is, if you want to get your information/products out there fast, you have to implement certain things to manipulate the search engines in your favor. They won't do it for you and it takes much too long to wait for others as well.
You can switch-hit, too. Put on your black hat, run the site up in the serps to get recognition and backlinks because it's there for everyone to see. Once the site starts to produce, put on your white hat and clean it up. There is a certain amount of brinkmanship in this, but that's nothing new for most SEO-types.
Create site - email news agencies - instant world recognition! For free no less!
If only my content carried the weight of a cure for cancer....:)
Back to the big G topic:
Do you think that they could be shooting themselves in the foot by not taking more action on less ethical websites?
Personally, I think if the situation were to escalate a lot (ie the majority of the SERPs were dominated by spammy techniques) then Google would lose credibility with ethical webmasters.
This would in turn lead to a lot of people turning to other search engines for traffic, and would further "soil" Google's SERP's.
I would say that Google's main selling point just now (aside from it's market dominance) is that it is percieved to deliver quality results. If that changed, so would Google's market share!
>Exactly. In fact, you can create two sites, a pure whitehat version and a blackhat version. Double Minty Fun.
Hmmm.....that does sound fun! ;)
Scott
Widget.com is a nice clean friendly site that has good alt and meta tags, good page titles, loads quickly, no java or frames etc. Yet on many searches, widget.com does pretty badly. It is actually very difficult to write any content about widgets without it seeming unecessary, obvious, overblown etc. Added to this, there are laods of new blue, yellow, red etc. widgets coming out each week but their names are all different and nothing to do with widgets.
So, in order to improve their serps performance and deliver these fine widgets to the hordes of hungry widget lovers, they webmaster pushes things a little bit. The site changes like this...
Beside each strange widget name there is a category name eg. blue widet, yellow widget etc. For serpsand aesthetic reasons, this text is made discreet ie. but one shade away from the background colour. It is also small and in [h1]. The title blue widgets, big blue widgets, yellow widgets is put in large text at the top of the page, again, almost the same colour as the background. There is a short descriptive paragraph at the bottom of the page mentioning the huge variety of widgets etc. etc. You get the picture.
The point is this...
Which is 'ethical' and which is 'unethical' - The widget site with the unecessary, waffle content as an excuse to use 'widget' and other keywords OR the 'spam' version which does not have the pretence of having paragraphs of interesting content but strips it right down to keyword phrases, finds an excuse to use them and keeps the site coherent by making them as discreet as possible?
If the surfer gets what the surfer wants and the site looks tight and clean, how can the method of ranking it be considered unethical?
Your thoughts would be appreciated.
I am surprised at the professional advice you received here. Some was good in understanding the ethics side of the issue.
The bottom line Rossie? It categorizes you or your business - "ethical" vs. "unethical". To those who DO "get it".
Pick a path, it says a great deal about your company. I would prefer to use "The Force" (being every rule following practice available to you)and fight the (urge)dark side which we do everyday. Sure, short term they may SEEM to do better, (right now, today, etc.) but the Huge Roundtable will change all that in time - "goes around comes around".
Results are extremely important, but so is my conscience, my reputation, my business, and even our kharma.
It's a great question - and you can select your assistance based on their answers. When you find these businesses online using those practices, this IS a reason to steer clear (for us anyway). Example - we would never consider any Joint Ventures or any other type of business involvement with those firms - you get to decide and that is the real choice. Speaks volumes about you.
Hope this helped -
- Scott
- Timely addition -
- Scott
[edited by: heini at 2:12 pm (utc) on Mar. 4, 2003]
[edit reason] we don't do politics / thanks [/edit]
But, is "hide and seek" clearly defined? Are the facts being reported to us acurately? Do we believe everything we read?
At the end of the day we make our own definitions of what's ethical and what's not.
Some people choose to challenge Google, some push the rules to the edge and try to get away with it.
But only as an individual can you deterine your own ethics (ok, with some influence from society, no doubt).
To answer the original quesion, "whats the point in being ethical?".....
....there is no point. You act ethically because of who you are and not because of what other people are doing.
Scott
