Shades of SEO spam

Spamming intends to mislead search engines indexing programs and generate an artificially high ranking of web pages. This BMW case has become high profile for a major offense and is likely to gain attention for another couple of months. They exploited the supremacy of search engine with a view that promoting the business using unethical SEO techniques is an online business imperative. They used "borderline" techniques to gain rankings, and their traffic dropped like a rock. They took care of every impossible situation, buried keywords “gebrauchtwagen” (used car) and “neuwagen” (new car) many tens of times, relied on javascript code and CSS spamming to trick Google. They fed the search engine spider with a page full of their important keywords mentioned above without even realizing once that Google is smart enough and is strictly against the black hat SEO tactics.
BMW created a doorway page that featured “gebrauchtwagen” 42 times. In addition, a user’s browser immediately generated a JavaScript redirect to a completely different URL to the one seen by Google’s spider. This ‘cloaking’ technique broke one of Google’s fundamental rules. Search engine spiders ignored javascript totally in the past, probably because of this reason BMW endeavored to cover the real pages as best they can. The javascript they followed more or less looked like:

Because JavaScript is interpreted, loosely-typed, and has varying implementations Google immediately recognized the loopholes and demoted bmw.com.de for artificially enhancing its popularity. Though BMW Germany promptly removed the offending pages from their site, 2 hours after realizing what has happened, but it was obviously too late. It will be a minimum of 30 days that the BMW site will not appear in the Google results for any search. Rest depends on Google’s terms and conditions how long it keeps the site on probation.

The code for their CSS spamming was:

Google’s bullying campaign

The lure of getting top listings in the search engines, besides setting the stage for SEO spamming is giving rise to unethical SEO techniques. Though it can’t be overlooked that search engine rankings are extremely competitive and Website owners are under constant pressure to do all they can to gain visibility in search results, but that doesn’t mean that it should be done at the cost of irking or exploiting the search engines. The webmasters have done their part and now it’s time for Google to bully them and freeze their sites. BMW’s recent death penalty verdict by Google has already started a landslide of news and commentary on search engine spam and the black-hat tactics. It seems Google has become adamant to give the weightage to the sites which have incorporated legitimate techniques ensuring ranking improvements that was earlier given to the bad guys. Some of the black-hat tactics that can toss an artificially inflated site to the bottom of the ranking pile are:

• Hidden text or hidden links
• Cloaking or tricky redirects
• Link farming
• Programmed queries to Google
• Irrelevant keywords buried in HTML Pages.
• Use of unrelated keywords
• Multiple pages, sub domains, or domains with duplicate content
• Mirror sites hosted on different domains/website address
• "Doorway" pages created with an intention to trick the search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or duplicate content
• Results manipulated by deceptive practices

Now when Google and the other search engines have decided to act, the black hat methodology will definitely be axed. Google simply blacklists the penalized site and drops it PR to 0. Sometimes the entire site is banned from the search engines and once you are banned you may have to resubmit your site for re-inclusion in search engine directories which takes a couple of months before you see your site listed again in the search engines. Search Engines give credibility to content rich sites and that is the only key to earn high ranking. The much needed resources for good Search Engine optimizations are developers, content writers and SEO specialists. It’s better to follow the fundamentals to have a better user experience and enjoy better ranking.

Give your site visitors something worth

The usability and design of your site, strongly affect those factors that enhances the visitor’s experience. It is not a difficult task to create an attractive website and still be optimized for search engines. It is not obligatory to engulf a website with graphics when they can be overlooked. The heavy graphics only cause the page to download slower. The aesthetics of a site should be such that it serves the purpose of a webmaster, a user and most importantly do not exploit the search engine. Primarily due to a lack of knowledge the webmasters overload their web pages with graphics. Many of you might not know that Flash only websites, while attractive are not appropriate for search engine optimization.

On the contrary you can consider keeping 90% regular text HTML and can insert Flash elements to endow only the interactive attractiveness. Though we can’t restrict any web designer to limit the creativity but yes we can think about embedding code wherever possible over graphic elements. Equally, important are the complexity of the graphics as the web sites structure, layout and functionality of a site. There are also some advanced techniques that can endow your site an appealing look and increase its functionality. CSS, PHP scripts, JavaScript have become more prevalent, but these shouldn’t be used overwhelmingly because they run the risk of spamming also.

Search engines are for people who are searching for something, and your site should cater to those people as well. Writing well optimized web pages are still the number one method of finding information on the web. High quality content being the second to get high ranking in the SERP’s. So, to get a higher ranking you need to mull over what your visitors want and need. Think about the kind of content that your competitors are providing on their sites, and what you can provide that would better serve your visitors.

How to get your website listed without spending in bulk

By know everybody is aware of the fact that a site can get hundreds of thousands hits & visitors in a single day from just one properly ranked page, which can mean big, big profits. The internet that tools that promises you to get your site listed and improve rankings are Search Engine Submission, Keyword Research, Doorway Pages, Rank Checking, Link Popularity, Meta Tag creation, Top Keywords, and overall presentation. Search Engine Optimization is the most efficient and powerful way to optimize and promote your website in Search Engines, directories, classified sites etc. Most search traffic is likely to come from Yahoo and Google, and increasingly MSN. Now the thing that amazes most of the webmasters is that when everybody in the internet marketing industry is endeavoring to do well then why only 10% of marketers actually succeed. There are lots of strategies that are hyped-up and are a mere wastage of time and money. Moreover, most of the tricks you've probably never heard of work wonders for getting website visitors and sales. One such way is growing targeted opt-in lists. As we all know marketing is a major factor in the process of "creating" your Web site, growing targeted opt-in lists is among the best proven online marketing method. Here the best way is to grow targeted opt-in email lists and use tools that automatically email the people on the list -- personally, and on a regular basis. The technique works out in a simple way you simply give away something of value (a unique and free product or service) in exchange for some contact information
Many people think they'll put up a website and people will just start coming. You might have the best Web site ever created, but if people don't know of its existence, what would you do with this best site ever created. Just getting a site optimized, doesn’t completely solve our purpose. It calls for something more productive. As you might have guessed, search engine submission is definitely the most effective way to start marketing your Web site. The strategy of getting listed high in the search engines is not as simple as you might have guessed. First, you must figure out what keywords and Meta Tags to use. Keywords are the words that are used by visitors to find your Web site on search engines and they have to be specific to your product and location on the Internet. The hierarchy of getting listed in Search Engine involves:
Write a Page Title.
Write a Description META Tag.
Include Your Keywords in Header Tags H1, H2, H3
Make Sure Your Keywords Are in the First Paragraph of Your Body Text.
Use Keywords in Hyperlinks.
Make Your Navigation System Search Engine Friendly.
Develop Several Pages Focused on Particular Keywords.
Submit Your Webpage URL to Search Engines.
Submit Your Site to Key Directories
Submit Your Site to Industry Sites and Specialized Directories.
Request Reciprocal Links.
Write Articles for Others to Use in their Newsletters.
Issue News Releases.
Begin a Business Blog.
Participate in forum discussions.
Miscellaneous Strategies
Include Your URL on Stationery, Cards, and Literature
Viral Marketing
Email Strategies
Install a "Signature" in your E-Mail Program
Publish an E-Mail Newsletter

Google’s death penalty

Recently Google blacklisted BMW’s German website for violating its guidelines. According to the verdict termed as the "Google death penalty", "BMW" or "BMW Germany" will not return a direct link to the car company's German website, bmw.com.de for artificially enhancing its popularity on Google. Furthermore, bmw.com.de's PageRank has been reset to zero. Initially the site was removed for three day, but it really gave goose bumps the SEO Community because the bmw.com.de notoriously became the highest profile companies till date to suffer the “Google death penalty. It heavily relied on java script code that was unsearchable by Google’s spider and used text-heavy pages profusely scattered with key words to attract the attention of Google's indexing system.

What actually happened was that the cloaking was tactfully embedded in the webpage. A picture of what a search engine spider visiting the home page of the German BMW website saw, and what a user’s browser saw were very different. The spider was fed a page full of text containing words “gebrauchtwagen” (used car) and “neuwagen” (new car) many tens of times and not much else, and for the surfer there was a more standard-looking web page with smart pictures of automobiles and use of each of those words maybe twice.

It came as a surprise for everybody that how such a high-profile website got engaged in black hat SEO tactics and how such a global site that is geared to other countries, could abide with the disappearance of one of its national sites. It could have happened probably due to the company’s carelessness. They might not have checked the credibility of the SEO Company before hiring them. But the SEO professionals can’t be foolish enough to know that those JavaScript redirects could lead to the site being removed. Every second company uses this black-hat SEO tactic and that ways BMW is not any exception. This has left so many webmasters perplexed, because still it is not known to them that what raged Google.

BMW has already suffered the wrath because the search term "BMW" still direct web surfers to the main worldwide site, but for the lesser companies such a penalty could be catastrophic because in that case their visitors/customers might end up being directed elsewhere.

Now you might be wondering what Google requires to re-include the site in its catalog. Fundamentally Google wants that the site should get rid of all those JavaScript redirects then submit a re inclusion request. As such Google also has the right to know the SEO Company who optimizes the web pages and tell them what they exactly did. But in case of BMW Google wants the company to include details on who created the doorway pages, and an assurance that such pages won’t appear again before the re-inclusion of the domains.