SEO Tycoon

**vultren** · 05-22-2011, 08:20 PM

While updating some sites for my company, once in a blue moon a customer's website that needs attention will have hidden text or some sort of method of keyword stuffing to try and improve, as they say, "their ranking in Google". I don't change or delete any of their work as I am not allowed to unless that is what they want changed. But it just annoys me that SEO companies will do this dirty work so they can get fast money.

What's your guy's opinions on the sites or SEO companies that do this. I don't think Google or any other search engine crawler can pick this up unless it was reported.

I personally hate it, it's shady work.

**dWhite** · 05-22-2011, 08:22 PM

99.9% of SEO companies don't know what "SEO" is anyway.

I'm sure Chris will make a comment on this thread when he comes around again.

**Plexihost** · 05-22-2011, 11:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dWhite

99.9% of SEO companies don't know what "SEO" is anyway.

I'm sure Chris will make a comment on this thread when he comes around again.

A lot of "SEO companies" do more harm to your SERP than help it. So you really have to be careful when considering a company to outsource your SEO to, because to some companies "spamming" in their opinion is "advertising".

**logoonlinepros** · 05-23-2011, 02:51 AM

Google knows everything but its just waiting that some one report this type of site to google webmaster for doing black hat seo.

**vultren** · 05-23-2011, 03:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Plexihost

A lot of "SEO companies" do more harm to your SERP than help it. So you really have to be careful when considering a company to outsource your SEO to, because to some companies "spamming" in their opinion is "advertising".

This is exactly what I am seeing. Glad to know i'm not the only one who has noticed this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by logoonlinepros

Google knows everything but its just waiting that some one report this type of site to google webmaster for doing black hat seo.

I actually think Google is limited... if you think about it, all someone has to do is put a bunch of h1 tags everywhere and have them match the background... it's impossible for Google to know the violations.

**chrishirst** · 05-23-2011, 06:52 AM

Quote:

it's impossible for Google to know the violations.

Don't you go believing such fairy stries.

Google may well know all about the tricks and what pages are using them. In most case the "tricks" are unecessary and the page would perform EXACTLY the same without them, and "putting a bunch of H1s" becomes self-defeating, IF a heading has more weight and IF all the heading are scored how does the algo tell which words are "more important", everything inside the heading elements is going to be equal, therefore nothing is "important":
net result = ZERO.

Don't rely on other stupid people "getting it right" or even think they have got it right, they are just as clueless as you are and have had a lucky accident with one page.

A truly optimised site done by someone who knows what they are doing, should not look as if it has been "optimised", the pages might not even appear in the SERPs for the "most important" keywords that you lot waste your time chasing.

Instead it will have lots of pages that get shown to searchers, for hundreds of different words and phrase, getting more traffic per day overall than you will get in a week to your "home page".

**crama09** · 05-23-2011, 07:32 AM

Yes, Chris is right. A truly optimised site is optimised for long tail search and is getting a lot of traffic.

**vultren** · 05-23-2011, 10:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Don't you go believing such fairy stries.

Google may well know all about the tricks and what pages are using them. In most case the "tricks" are unecessary and the page would perform EXACTLY the same without them, and "putting a bunch of H1s" becomes self-defeating, IF a heading has more weight and IF all the heading are scored how does the algo tell which words are "more important", everything inside the heading elements is going to be equal, therefore nothing is "important":
net result = ZERO.

Don't rely on other stupid people "getting it right" or even think they have got it right, they are just as clueless as you are and have had a lucky accident with one page.

A truly optimised site done by someone who knows what they are doing, should not look as if it has been "optimised", the pages might not even appear in the SERPs for the "most important" keywords that you lot waste your time chasing.

Instead it will have lots of pages that get shown to searchers, for hundreds of different words and phrase, getting more traffic per day overall than you will get in a week to your "home page".

I agree, however when you have people who "keyword stuff" their sites, they usually have somewhat good rankings because of it... of course it's wrong, but in doing so, they are enabled to these keywords.

Quote:

A truly optimised site done by someone who knows what they are doing, should not look as if it has been "optimised", the pages might not even appear in the SERPs for the "most important" keywords that you lot waste your time chasing.

This quote has me thinking. I've never seen a site that has hired a SEO company that doesn't have that "optimised" look. What they are doing can't be wrong can it? And if it was, I was unaware of the scam that some of these companies provide. They should offer their best services, I mean isn't that what the customer is paying for?

**dWhite** · 05-23-2011, 10:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Plexihost

A lot of "SEO companies" do more harm to your SERP than help it. So you really have to be careful when considering a company to outsource your SEO to, because to some companies "spamming" in their opinion is "advertising".

Outsourcing is bad to begin with. So outsourcing is the first big mistake you can make.

**chrishirst** · 05-23-2011, 12:26 PM

Quote:

people who "keyword stuff" their sites, they usually have somewhat good rankings because of it...

You ASSUME it is "because of it"

It could well be "in spite of it", but you are using "rankings" as the yardstick which are vague, variable and never tell the whole story.

**PaulW** · 05-23-2011, 01:21 PM

And do these keyword-stuffed pages work to convert visitors to customers? Or do people think "this reads like it was written in a Karachi basement" and hit the back button?

**edgray** · 05-23-2011, 05:06 PM

It's simple really. And quite sad.

SEO, as a field, is new and misunderstood. Everyone wants on the bandwagon. And I've noticed it's become a haven for salesman - SEO (well, promotion really) is a monthy billable endeavour. This appeals to those looking for short term benefits - you pitch clients and get them to sign up for 3 to 6 months of "SEO" work, get them to pay upfront. The sales man then takes half and gives the other half to someone that claims know SEO and this is the result.

I know quite a few companies that have that as their business model. Get 6 clients to sign up for a 500€ a month package and you have a nice and easy income for the next 6 months by which point the client goes elsewhere. Rinse and repeat.

Unfortunately the lack of knowledge in the general public, especially small business owners, makes this an all too common occurrence.

**dWhite** · 05-23-2011, 05:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by edgray

..

I've seen those shady tactics too, and most of the time the client ends up getting banned or penalized on the SE.

That, or the results aren't what they paid for. I especially see this for "link building" junk. Clients pay to build links, the person/company they pay ends up spamming forums and blogs ending up getting banned and links removed, and/or comments rejected.

**vultren** · 05-24-2011, 08:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrishirst

You ASSUME it is "because of it"

It could well be "in spite of it", but you are using "rankings" as the yardstick which are vague, variable and never tell the whole story.

If you don't mind me asking, are there companies that can actually do SEO correctly? If so, who? I would be interested in seeing some of their work.

**mpw45233** · 05-24-2011, 09:46 PM

You should advise the site owners that when Google sees the hidden text and keyword stuffing they will de-index their site. And that's a fact.

**chrishirst** · 05-26-2011, 01:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mpw45233

You should advise the site owners that when Google sees the hidden text and keyword stuffing they will de-index their site. And that's a fact.

But then again they may not!

They may "know" about the hidden text etc and have already discounted it from the page weighting

**lynxus** · 01:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mpw45233

You should advise the site owners that when Google sees the hidden text and keyword stuffing they will de-index their site. And that's a fact.

de-indexing would just be too much hard work.

In most cases it would be much simpler and less resource intensive to just have the algorithlm pick up on such tactics.

What happens when a crawler finds the site again.. Is it going to hunt through a distributed database EVERY TIME it goes to a domain looking to see if they are banned?
A) Unlikely to nill.

Would it make more sense to be able to "detect" these tactics and just lower pr / other metrics based on this and still keep the site indexed..( but it wont appear on the first X amount of pages due to bad ranking )?
A) Yes..

Being completely dropped by google takes a lot of hard work and in 99.9% of cases wouldnt happen.
Your rank would just suffer instead.

Look at it from a google employees pov.. Why would you add extra load to any process when you can simply tweak a current process to fix the issue.

**chrishirst** · 05-26-2011, 02:40 PM

Yep that's about it.

When you are looking at document indexing on the scale of Google you find the simplest solutions.

To create a deranking penalty all it need is for a multiplier to be fed into the ranking algorithm as the data is retrieved for the page. The range only needs to be from zero to one to with a precision of 10e-6 (1 micro) to have an extremely fine control mechanism.

**lynxus** · 05-26-2011, 03:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Yep that's about it.

When you are looking at document indexing on the scale of Google you find the simplest solutions.

To create a deranking penalty all it need is for a multiplier to be fed into the ranking algorithm as the data is retrieved for the page. The range only needs to be from zero to one to with a precision of 10e-6 (1 micro) to have an extremely fine control mechanism.

It really worries me that they think Google,Bing etc have some elaborate mechanisms just to penalise their sites..

While I agree that yes im sure the whole Indexing, Analysing, etc is a very complex process, I just think that people overcomplicate matters with complete hearsay!

Google are not there to screw you or your sites over.
If you simply have a good site with a good product ( be it software,hardware,or just a blog) you will rank fine.

Yes you do need backlinks.
yes you do need unique content
but most importantly you need something that people want to see and want to come back to.

"Cheating" in SEO is only "cheating" if you think it is.
If you think your doing something underhanded and dodgy then the chances are that it is.

Google will notice this and most probably just IGNORE! what you are doing.
It would then go along on its merry way and keep ranking you based on your "non cheaty" methods.

/Simples really?

I might open a SEO school and charge £3000/ph
It would be a 1 hour course and you will be in a better position afterwards than you would of been if you spent the money on some Indian SEO pro....

**mpw45233** · 05-27-2011, 12:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lynxus

de-indexing would just be too much hard work.

In most cases it would be much simpler and less resource intensive to just have the algorithlm pick up on such tactics.

What happens when a crawler finds the site again.. Is it going to hunt through a distributed database EVERY TIME it goes to a domain looking to see if they are banned?
A) Unlikely to nill.

Would it make more sense to be able to "detect" these tactics and just lower pr / other metrics based on this and still keep the site indexed..( but it wont appear on the first X amount of pages due to bad ranking )?
A) Yes..

Being completely dropped by google takes a lot of hard work and in 99.9% of cases wouldnt happen.
Your rank would just suffer instead.

Look at it from a google employees pov.. Why would you add extra load to any process when you can simply tweak a current process to fix the issue.

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrishirst

But then again they may not!

They may "know" about the hidden text etc and have already discounted it from the page weighting

Well, at least you admit it's not good.