The Truth About SEO Spam

Spam is the Internet’s version of the telemarketers who call you during
dinner and won’t take no for an answer. It pops up where it’s least
wanted, it’s more prolific than pine trees in Mississippi, and the only
purpose that spam really serves is to generate money for the spammers. And
they keep at it, because they assume that the law of averages is on their side —
send out enough spam and someone will respond.
Spam in SEO operates under the same principle, except SEO spam fills
the search engine results pages with results that have little to no value to the
searcher. If you do something that a search engine sees as spamming it, your
search rankings will be penalized. It’s even likely that you’ll be removed
from search rankings entirely.

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What Constitutes SEO Spam?

So, if SEO spam is so hard to define, how do you know whether what you’re doing is right or wrong?
Good question. And the answer is that you don’t always know, but there are some guidelines that
you can follow that will help you stay out of the spam category. Basic, good web-design practices
are your best defense. If you’re handling your web-site search marketing using the guidelines provided
by the various search engines you’ll target, you should be in a position not to worry about
being classified as a spammer.
 Don’t do anything that makes you worry that you’re doing wrong. It sounds like
simple advice, but when you think about it, if you’re doing something on your web
site that you have to worry is going to get you banned from a search engine, you probably
shouldn’t do it. This includes strategies like using hidden text on your web pages, using
doorway pages or cloaking your pages, and creating false link structures. Even if you
don’t know that these strategies are banned by search engines, when you consider the
sneakiness of the strategy, you’ll be able to tell that it’s not likely a strategy that you
should use.

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