In this knowledge base article we'll discuss how to avoid spamming techniques. When we hear the word spam, do you know what comes to our mind? We think of all those annoying emails with their poorly worded and often obscene messages that clutter your inbox daily and we want to avoid spamming. That’s spam, all right, but there’s another kind of spam that’s directed at search engines. In this knowledge base article, you find out about spam techniques that some websites use to fool or trick the search engines into delivering a higher listing on the SERPs or results page.
When you normally think of spam or to avoid spamming, the first thing that comes to mind is either the canned meat product or the junk email that’s clogging up your inbox. When we here in SEO‐land talk about spam, however, we mean something a little different than meat by‐products, unwanted emails, or British comedy troupes. Search engine spam (also sometimes known as spamdexing) is any tactic or web page that is used to deceive the search engine into a false understanding of what the whole website is about or its importance.
Any time you think you can achieve higher rankings by deceiving the search engines, you’d better think again! Google and the other engines get better all the time at sniffing out spam, and the penalties can be harsh. Even inadvertent spam can get a website in trouble, so in this knowledge base article we go over some of the more popular and dangerous methods that have been used. Then we delve into the guidelines search engines use to define what they consider spam, as well as our search engine optimization (SEO) code of ethics to help keep you and your blog/site in the clear.
It can be external or internal to your website, it may violate the search engines’ policies directly, or it may be a little bit sneakier about its misdirection. How spam is defined depends on the intent and extent and how to avoid spamming? What is the intent of the tactic being used, and to what extent is it being used? If you stuff all your metadata (text added into the HTML of a page describing it for the search engine) full of keywords (words or phrases relating to your site content that search engines use to determine whether it’s relevant) with the sole intent of tricking the search engine so that your page will receive a higher page rank on the results page, that’s spam. Also, if you do that all over your website, with your Alt attribute text (text used to describe an image for the search engine to read), your links, and keywords, trying to trick the search engine spider (the little programs that search engines use to read and rank websites) into giving you the highest rank possible, it’s a little harder to claim to the search engine that it was simply an accident and it was done out of ignorance.
Most technologies that are used in the creation, rendering, and design of websites can be used to trick the search engines. When a website tries to pull a fast one, or the search engines even so much as perceive it did, the search engines consider that website spam. Search engine companies do not like spam. Spam damages the reputation of the search engine. They’re working their hardest to bring you the most relevant results possible, and spam‐ filled pages are not what they want to give you. Users might not use the search engine again if they get spammy results, for starters. So if someone’s caught spamming, that person’s site could be penalized or removed entirely from the search engine’s index (the list of websites that the search engine pulls from to create its results pages).
In the following sections, we talk a little about what types of spam there and to avoid spamming are in SEO‐land and what not to do in order to keep your site from getting penalized or even pulled out of the engines by accident. Spam is any attempt to deceive the search engines into ranking a page when it does not deserve to be ranked. In the following sections, we describe spam that is known to be detected and punished by the search engines.
Do not attempt any of the discussed methods, because they will result in your site being branded as a spammer. This knowledge base article is not meant to cover every type of spam out there on the web. It’s just meant to give you the knowledge you need to recognize when a tactic might be venturing down the wrong path. Spammers use other advanced techniques that may also be detectable by the search engines, so avoid any attempt to deceive the search engines.
One of the more obvious ways to spam a site is to insert hidden text and links in the content of the web page (the content of a site being anything that the user can see). All text has to be visible to the user on the site. Hidden content can be defined as text that appears within the rendered HTML code that is not visible on the page to the user without requiring user‐interaction in order to see it. Hidden text can simply be a long list of keywords, and the hidden links increase the site’s popularity. Examples of using hidden text and links are listed below
A doorway page is a web page submitted to search engine spiders that has been designed to satisfy the specific algorithms for various search engines but is not intended to be viewed by visitors. Basically they do not earn the rankings but instead deceive the search engines into rankings by design and keyword‐stuffing tricks that you’d never want to put on a page for a user to see. Doorway pages are there to spam the search engine index (the database of information from which search engines draw their primary results) by cramming it full of relevant keywords and phrases so that it appears high on the results page for a particular keyword, but when the user clicks it, he or she is automatically redirected to another site or page within the same site that doesn’t rank on its own. Doorway pages are there only for the purpose of being indexed, and there is no intention for anyone to use those pages. Sometimes more sophisticated spammers build a doorway page with viewable, relevant content in order to avoid being caught by the search engine, but most of the time a doorway page is made to be viewed only by a spider. Doorway pages are often used in tandem with deceptive redirection.
This may be happened to you also for example you do a search for a cartoon you used to love as a kid, and you click one of the links on the results page. But instead of the page you were expecting, you get an entirely different website, with some very questionable content. What just happened? Behold the headache that is deceptive redirection.
Deceptive redirection is a type of coded command that redirects the user to a different location than what was expected via the link that was clicked. Spammers create shadow page/domains that have content that ranks for a particular search query (the words or phrase you type into the search text box), yet when you attempt to access the content on the domain, you are redirected to a shady site (often having to do with porn, gambling, or drugs) that has nothing to do with your original query.
The most common perpetrators of deceptive redirects are also a spam method: doorway pages. Most doorway pages redirect through a Meta refresh command (a method of instructing a web browser to automatically refresh the current web page after a given time interval). Search engines are now issuing penalties for using Meta refresh commands, so other sites will trick you into clicking a link or using JavaScript (a computer programming language) to redirect you.
Google now considers any website that uses a Meta refresh command or any other sneaky redirect (such as through JavaScript) to be spam. Not all redirects are evil. The intent of the redirect has to be determined before a spam determination can be made. If the page that you are redirected to is nothing like the page expected, it is probably spam. If you get exactly what you expect after a redirect, it probably isn’t spam.
Another nefarious form of spam is a method called cloaking. Cloaking is a technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the user’s browser, meaning that the spiders see one page while you see something entirely different. Spammers can cloak by delivering content based on the IP addresses (information used to tell where your computer or server is located) or the User‐Agent HTTP header (information describing whether you’re a person or a search engine robot) of the user requesting the page.
When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server‐side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content different from the visible page. The purpose of cloaking is to deceive search engines so they display the page when it would not otherwise be displayed. Like redirects, cloaking is a matter of intent rather than always being evil. There are many appropriate uses for this technique. News sites use cloaking to allow search engines to spider their content while users are presented with a registration page. Sites selling alcohol require users to verify their age before allowing them to view the rest of the content, while search engines pass unchallenged.
Unrelated keywords are a form of spam that involves using a keyword that is not related to the image, video, or other content that it is supposed to be describing in the hopes of driving up traffic. Examples include putting unrelated keywords into the Alt attribute text of an image, placing them in the metadata of a video, or placing them in the Meta tags of a page. Not only is it useless, but it also gets your site pulled if you try it.
Keyword stuffing occurs when people overuse keywords on a page in the hopes of making the page seem more relevant for a term through a higher keyword frequency or density. Keyword stuffing can happen in the metadata, Alt attribute text, and within the content of the page itself. Basically, going to your Alt attribute text and typing porsche porsche porsche porsche over and over again is not going to increase your ranking, and the page will likely be yanked due to spam. There are also much sneakier methods of using keyword stuffing: using hidden text in the page, hiding large groups of repeated keywords on the page (usually at the bottom, far below the view of the average visitor), or using HTML commands that cause blocks of text to be hidden from user sight. Read guide about Stay Anonymous while using Windows 10.
You might envision a “link farm” as a pastoral retreat where docile links graze in rolling green pastures, but alas, you would be wrong. A link farm is any group of websites that hyperlink (a link to another part of the website) to all the other sites in the group. Remember how Google loves links and hyperlinks and uses them in its algorithm to figure out a website’s popularity? Most link farms are created through automated programs and services. Search engines have combated link farms by identifying specific attributes that link farms use and filtering them from the index and search results, including removing entire domains to keep them from influencing the results page. Not all link exchange programs are considered spam, however. Link exchange programs that allow individual websites to selectively exchange links with other relevant websites are not considered spam. The difference between these link exchange programs and link farms is the fact that the site is selecting links relevant to its content, rather than just getting as many links as it can get to itself.
Thanks for reading now let me recommend you some other practical guides about penetration testing of Remote Access Protocols, Remote Desktop Protocol, SSH Network Protocol, Network Routers, Wordpress website using WPSeku from My Hack Stuff.
What is Spam and how to avoid spamming?
When you normally think of spam or to avoid spamming, the first thing that comes to mind is either the canned meat product or the junk email that’s clogging up your inbox. When we here in SEO‐land talk about spam, however, we mean something a little different than meat by‐products, unwanted emails, or British comedy troupes. Search engine spam (also sometimes known as spamdexing) is any tactic or web page that is used to deceive the search engine into a false understanding of what the whole website is about or its importance.
Any time you think you can achieve higher rankings by deceiving the search engines, you’d better think again! Google and the other engines get better all the time at sniffing out spam, and the penalties can be harsh. Even inadvertent spam can get a website in trouble, so in this knowledge base article we go over some of the more popular and dangerous methods that have been used. Then we delve into the guidelines search engines use to define what they consider spam, as well as our search engine optimization (SEO) code of ethics to help keep you and your blog/site in the clear.
It can be external or internal to your website, it may violate the search engines’ policies directly, or it may be a little bit sneakier about its misdirection. How spam is defined depends on the intent and extent and how to avoid spamming? What is the intent of the tactic being used, and to what extent is it being used? If you stuff all your metadata (text added into the HTML of a page describing it for the search engine) full of keywords (words or phrases relating to your site content that search engines use to determine whether it’s relevant) with the sole intent of tricking the search engine so that your page will receive a higher page rank on the results page, that’s spam. Also, if you do that all over your website, with your Alt attribute text (text used to describe an image for the search engine to read), your links, and keywords, trying to trick the search engine spider (the little programs that search engines use to read and rank websites) into giving you the highest rank possible, it’s a little harder to claim to the search engine that it was simply an accident and it was done out of ignorance.
Most technologies that are used in the creation, rendering, and design of websites can be used to trick the search engines. When a website tries to pull a fast one, or the search engines even so much as perceive it did, the search engines consider that website spam. Search engine companies do not like spam. Spam damages the reputation of the search engine. They’re working their hardest to bring you the most relevant results possible, and spam‐ filled pages are not what they want to give you. Users might not use the search engine again if they get spammy results, for starters. So if someone’s caught spamming, that person’s site could be penalized or removed entirely from the search engine’s index (the list of websites that the search engine pulls from to create its results pages).
How to discover the types of spam and avoid spamming?
In the following sections, we talk a little about what types of spam there and to avoid spamming are in SEO‐land and what not to do in order to keep your site from getting penalized or even pulled out of the engines by accident. Spam is any attempt to deceive the search engines into ranking a page when it does not deserve to be ranked. In the following sections, we describe spam that is known to be detected and punished by the search engines.
Do not attempt any of the discussed methods, because they will result in your site being branded as a spammer. This knowledge base article is not meant to cover every type of spam out there on the web. It’s just meant to give you the knowledge you need to recognize when a tactic might be venturing down the wrong path. Spammers use other advanced techniques that may also be detectable by the search engines, so avoid any attempt to deceive the search engines.
Hidden text/links Guide another avoid spamming guide
One of the more obvious ways to spam a site is to insert hidden text and links in the content of the web page (the content of a site being anything that the user can see). All text has to be visible to the user on the site. Hidden content can be defined as text that appears within the rendered HTML code that is not visible on the page to the user without requiring user‐interaction in order to see it. Hidden text can simply be a long list of keywords, and the hidden links increase the site’s popularity. Examples of using hidden text and links are listed below
- White text/links on a white background: Putting white text and links on a white background renders the text invisible to the user unless the text is highlighted by right‐clicking on the mouse. Spammers can then insert keywords or hyperlinks that the spiders read and count as relevant.
- Text, links, or content that is hidden by covering it with a layer so that it is not visible: This is a trick that people use with CSS. They hide spiderable content under the page that can’t be seen with the naked eye or by highlighting the page.
- Positioning content off the page’s view with CSS: This is another programming trick spammers use.
- Links that are not clickable by the user: Creating a link that has only a single 1‐x‐1 pixel as its anchor, that uses the period on a sentence as the anchor, or that has no anchor at all. There’s nothing for a user to click, but the engine can still follow the link. Using invisible or hidden text is a surefire way to get your site banned so that it no longer shows up in the engines. The reasoning behind this is that you would want all your content visible to the user, and any hidden text is being used for nefarious purposes. Usually, you find this as white text on a white background, but it could be any color as long as it’s not visible to a user (black on black, gray on gray, and so on). This is spam and will get your site banned.
What are Doorway pages? another avoid spamming guide
A doorway page is a web page submitted to search engine spiders that has been designed to satisfy the specific algorithms for various search engines but is not intended to be viewed by visitors. Basically they do not earn the rankings but instead deceive the search engines into rankings by design and keyword‐stuffing tricks that you’d never want to put on a page for a user to see. Doorway pages are there to spam the search engine index (the database of information from which search engines draw their primary results) by cramming it full of relevant keywords and phrases so that it appears high on the results page for a particular keyword, but when the user clicks it, he or she is automatically redirected to another site or page within the same site that doesn’t rank on its own. Doorway pages are there only for the purpose of being indexed, and there is no intention for anyone to use those pages. Sometimes more sophisticated spammers build a doorway page with viewable, relevant content in order to avoid being caught by the search engine, but most of the time a doorway page is made to be viewed only by a spider. Doorway pages are often used in tandem with deceptive redirection.
Deceptive redirection another avoid spamming guide
This may be happened to you also for example you do a search for a cartoon you used to love as a kid, and you click one of the links on the results page. But instead of the page you were expecting, you get an entirely different website, with some very questionable content. What just happened? Behold the headache that is deceptive redirection.
Deceptive redirection is a type of coded command that redirects the user to a different location than what was expected via the link that was clicked. Spammers create shadow page/domains that have content that ranks for a particular search query (the words or phrase you type into the search text box), yet when you attempt to access the content on the domain, you are redirected to a shady site (often having to do with porn, gambling, or drugs) that has nothing to do with your original query.
The most common perpetrators of deceptive redirects are also a spam method: doorway pages. Most doorway pages redirect through a Meta refresh command (a method of instructing a web browser to automatically refresh the current web page after a given time interval). Search engines are now issuing penalties for using Meta refresh commands, so other sites will trick you into clicking a link or using JavaScript (a computer programming language) to redirect you.
Google now considers any website that uses a Meta refresh command or any other sneaky redirect (such as through JavaScript) to be spam. Not all redirects are evil. The intent of the redirect has to be determined before a spam determination can be made. If the page that you are redirected to is nothing like the page expected, it is probably spam. If you get exactly what you expect after a redirect, it probably isn’t spam.
What is cloaking? Avoid Spamming Guide
Another nefarious form of spam is a method called cloaking. Cloaking is a technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the user’s browser, meaning that the spiders see one page while you see something entirely different. Spammers can cloak by delivering content based on the IP addresses (information used to tell where your computer or server is located) or the User‐Agent HTTP header (information describing whether you’re a person or a search engine robot) of the user requesting the page.
When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server‐side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content different from the visible page. The purpose of cloaking is to deceive search engines so they display the page when it would not otherwise be displayed. Like redirects, cloaking is a matter of intent rather than always being evil. There are many appropriate uses for this technique. News sites use cloaking to allow search engines to spider their content while users are presented with a registration page. Sites selling alcohol require users to verify their age before allowing them to view the rest of the content, while search engines pass unchallenged.
Unrelated keywords another avoid spamming guide
Unrelated keywords are a form of spam that involves using a keyword that is not related to the image, video, or other content that it is supposed to be describing in the hopes of driving up traffic. Examples include putting unrelated keywords into the Alt attribute text of an image, placing them in the metadata of a video, or placing them in the Meta tags of a page. Not only is it useless, but it also gets your site pulled if you try it.
Keyword stuffing occurs when people overuse keywords on a page in the hopes of making the page seem more relevant for a term through a higher keyword frequency or density. Keyword stuffing can happen in the metadata, Alt attribute text, and within the content of the page itself. Basically, going to your Alt attribute text and typing porsche porsche porsche porsche over and over again is not going to increase your ranking, and the page will likely be yanked due to spam. There are also much sneakier methods of using keyword stuffing: using hidden text in the page, hiding large groups of repeated keywords on the page (usually at the bottom, far below the view of the average visitor), or using HTML commands that cause blocks of text to be hidden from user sight. Read guide about Stay Anonymous while using Windows 10.
Link farms another avoid spamming guide
You might envision a “link farm” as a pastoral retreat where docile links graze in rolling green pastures, but alas, you would be wrong. A link farm is any group of websites that hyperlink (a link to another part of the website) to all the other sites in the group. Remember how Google loves links and hyperlinks and uses them in its algorithm to figure out a website’s popularity? Most link farms are created through automated programs and services. Search engines have combated link farms by identifying specific attributes that link farms use and filtering them from the index and search results, including removing entire domains to keep them from influencing the results page. Not all link exchange programs are considered spam, however. Link exchange programs that allow individual websites to selectively exchange links with other relevant websites are not considered spam. The difference between these link exchange programs and link farms is the fact that the site is selecting links relevant to its content, rather than just getting as many links as it can get to itself.
Thanks for reading now let me recommend you some other practical guides about penetration testing of Remote Access Protocols, Remote Desktop Protocol, SSH Network Protocol, Network Routers, Wordpress website using WPSeku from My Hack Stuff.
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