July 1st, 2010 by Nick

Spam is something that everyone knows about but no-one can really define effectively. The actual example of spam will depend on what industry you’re in, and from what perspective you’re looking at it. The search engines have their own definition of spam, one which every site needs to become familiar with before they implement SEO.

Any site that pays absolute attention to the search engines’ rules will be in a bit of a fix when it comes to spam. The search engines have a very broad definition of unacceptable behaviour, one which is very difficult to conform to. Their basic rule is ‘don’t do anything you wouldn’t do if search engines didn’t exist,’ which is clearly naive. There are a lot of things that sites wouldn’t do if search engines didn’t exist – including the entirety of the book of SEO techniques – but which they have to do to survive on the net.

The search engines would prefer that no site perform any form of search engine optimisation. This is fair enough. The search engines ideally want unsullied results. They put up with the SEO industry, however, because SEO actually improves a site’s communication with the search engines. What this means is that while the search engines tell site owners to do nothing to their sites, what they really mean is don’t do anything completely underhanded.

The huge grey area of what is and is not acceptable to the search engines leaves a lot of room for error. The best path is to discover what search engine spam is, and find the solid examples of it that you should avoid.

Search engine spam is generally described as anything done to a site that deliberately manipulates. This is not really a great definition, because, as pointed out above, everything done during search engine optimisation is a manipulation of the search engines. Just as SEO has on-page and off-page components, search engine spam can be off- or on-page. Although there are large grey areas, the SEO industry is generally agreed on the things a site shouldn’t do. You can discuss this with us at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk, but here are some of the things to watch out for:

On-page spam
*Keywords in miniscule or otherwise unreadable fonts
*Cloaking – placing keywords in the same colour as the background of the page to hide them
*Hiding keywords in the alt text
*Hiding keywords behind graphics
*Forwarding users through a doorway page which is saturated with keywords
*Hiding keywords within the page code

Off-page spam
*Being involved in a link farm, or exchanging links simply for the sake of boosting your link profile
*Filling a whole link profile with paid links
*Creating satellite sites to provide links to the central site

These are just some of the things that can get a site into real trouble with the search engines. There are plenty more areas that are full of danger for the unwary. Many SEO techniques are acceptable for the most part, but can be used in unacceptable ways. It’s best to consult a professional if you’re uncertain.

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