Interview With Jim Stob of Position Technologies

[ihelpyou]

This is written by Robin Nobles of the Academy:

http://www.searchengineguide.com/aws/2001/submissions.html

I agree with some parts of the article but other parts I certainly disagree with. This is one of them:

Though Northern Light prefers that you submit just one page to the engine, you can submit your interior and doorway pages, and you should.

However, as with all engines these days, make good use of hidden links on your main page to other important pages of your site.

"make good use of hidden links"

He must be joking or must of lost a couple of brain cells temporarily.

[Hope]

You are correct Doug, he has lost his mind. I would have to say that this is some of the worst advise I have seen in a while. It is up there with comment tags and keyword stuffing.

[ihelpyou]

yea... the thing is, it may take awhile for the engines to recognize the fact that a site is trying to trick them with hidden links, BUT, what is not mentioned, is the FACT that there are many of us out there who dislike ALL tricks with a passion, and would not hesitate to report a site for using tricks to deceive the search engines.

Just DON'T do it.....

[Hope]

I have always followed the rules. I don't use doorways, cloaking, hidden text, comment tags or hidded links. I have never used any of these and I never will. If a search engine says it is wrong, then it is much safer to keep away from it.

Unfortunately there are many people who don't believe in this. They are spamming the engines and causing all kind of problems for those of us who don't. The way I feel about the whole things is, if you have a good site, it will rank. If you can't get your site to rank, take a look at it and see what is truly wrong with it (useless information, no content, etc.)

Comments like this one only cause confusion and trouble. When I started working with search engines, there was very little information. Once the information started to come out, most of it was old and useless or spamming technics. As a new marketer,it is so hard to find credible information.

[ihelpyou]

Good post Hope.

Amazing. Inktomi is using PT for their "pay for inclusion" program. Wonder if Ink knows how PT feels about "tricks"?

I have Never used any tricks either. Not for my sites or my client's but always seem to get and keep good ranks.

Right again! It's all about content and relevant information.

[Advisor]

Read Robin's book. It's chalk full of fun things like hidden links and doorway pages, and resubmitting pages often to "get them in front of the search engines."

Now, it takes awhile for books to get published, so giving her the benefit of the doubt, perhaps she has changed her methods since...but still... :(

Jill

[ihelpyou]

yea, I believe her and Jim Stob of PT have some kind of affiliation with each other.

I have also read some things from that Academy that are extremely uncool when it comes to optimizing.

I just don't understand why people feel the need to spam and trick the engines?

This is the biggest problem and reason that the SE's are so leary about all SEO's. The spammy ones out there give the rest of us a bad name.

We should all do nothing but get along with the search engines. Then, the engines might be more apt to work with us instead of constantly redoing their spam filters to get rid of all those spammy doorways, hidden links, randomized content, and all else, only designed and made to influence the search engine results.

[Advisor]

Well...I guess that one person's spam is another person's livelihood!

Sometimes something that one of us may consider spam, someone else does not.

However, there was some really nasty remarks at one of those "other" search engine forums recently where some people there were saying how the search engines are our enemies! They are the ones we're working against, and blah blah blah... boy...talk about a bad way to approach things. I'd much rather have the people from the search engines liking me. Which kinda made it hard for me to write that review I did about AV's pay for inclusion program. But I told them before granting them an interview that if I did it, it might not be favorable, and they said no problem. So that made me feel better about it!

But generally, I think people need to work with the search engines. We can help them build relevant results. Being enemies just seems kinda dumb to me.

Jill

[JuniorHarris]

Hmmm...where was this an issue recently? :rolleyes: Never a good idea to hide links from a user, it's really not that difficult for them to be found...especially by competitors who will find much gratification in reporting such tactics!~ :eek:

[I.Q. bandit]

what is not mentioned, is the FACT that there are many of us out there who dislike ALL tricks with a passion, and would not hesitate to report a site for using tricks to deceive the search engines.

Hmm, I will agree that there is no honor in cheating. However I try not to be like the crowd on the Jerry Springer show, and just listen to one side of the story before I boo the other guy off the stage. ;)

Honestly, I am amazed that people are still ABLE to cheat the "system". If they can do it, and not get caught. Well I must tip my hat to them. I personally liked the saying, "It ain't a crime if you don't get caught." :cheers:

If they do get caught well I think that's what we from the backwoods call an "idiot" :D

I think people need to work with the search engines.

There's nothing better than having a useful skill, and not having to worry about who's looking over your shoulder. Which is why I would prefer to take the honest route, and learn how to do things legitimately. With the help of you guys of course. :)

[ihelpyou]

Good points bandit. The main problem with doing this unless you get caught is that eventually you WILL get caught. Either by the search engines, or by a competitor who reports you to the search engines.

You would not believe how many people call me to ask how to get unbanned or if they are penalized because a former SEO did this or did that.

These tactics Hurt everyone. They snowball unsuspecting people with web sites who really do not know any better. These people go to forums, other sites to learn, newsgroups, etc, and get fed ALL kinds of stuff. They end up learning the hard way when the site is penalized or banned.

Who is one to believe?

The search engines and their robots/spiders are getting smarter and smarter. Eventually the page with the "tricks" is going to get caught.

I would much rather have peace of mind and longitivity knowing that my ranks are completely legitimate and FREE from any and all kinds of "tricks".

[Advisor]

Although I totally believe that all links should be visible, there are occasionally reasons where this can be a legitimate technique. For instance, what about a dynamically driven site (due to a particular shopping cart software) that has pages with question marks in the URL which can't be followed by many search engines? One way of "legitimately" getting around this is to copy the dynamic pages, make them static html pages, put them on the server, and then use hidden links to link to them from the main page of the site.

Yes, I'm sure there are other visible tactics that could be used, and one could say that you could make the links visible, but really, in a situation like this, it appears to be the quickest, easiest "fix" that also the search engines should not mind. You'd only be showing the exact same pages from your dynamic site, but they can be indexed by the engines. I haven't used this technique a lot, however, I have used it when the need arises and it works beautifully and is not dishonest (in my opinion).

Sometimes there are legitimate reasons to use techniques that may otherwise seem illegitmate, and we need to remember that when discussing different kinds of techniques for high rankings.

Like I said in another post, one person's spam may be another person's livelihood"!

Some may consider using keyphrases in Alt tags spam because they don't "legitimately" need to be there. Some may consider putting keyphrases at the bottom of your page for no real reason a form of spam. However, all of these things are different things that some of us are willing to try and see what happens. It is my feeling that the people at the search engines are not out to ban all "optimized" pages at any cost. They are not looking to see how many sites they can ban today. Any technique that I use, I first try and think like a search engine programmer. What would the guys and gals programming the search engines think about this technique? If I were a SE programmer, would I mind if people were doing this on their pages? I truly believe that using this method of thinking is one reason why I have been so successful with all of my client's sites in the engines.

Jill

[ihelpyou]

Agreed.

The thing about dynamic pages is that why can't the site just have a few static html pages also?

They only need a few of very content rich pages to be found. They could be q and a pages or anything at all. They could link from the index. Just because the url does not have the ? mark in it does not mean it could not look like the rest of the site and be a part of the site. Seems to me this would be the simplest way to do it.

One problem with allowing only certain hidden links is that this seems to open the door for hidden links, period. There are no "hidden link police" going thru the databases of the engines to decide what is good and what is bad. This puts more work on the engines to give us real good results. All tactics used by web sites makes things harder for everyone.

Pages should stand on their own. OR, why not just make the Url's friendly by taking out the ? marks? This is what we did with these forums.

[Advisor]

Yes, certainly those things could have been done, but I'm talking about the quickest, easiest (i.e., cheapest) way to do this. They had lots of products. All great for being found in the engines. Making other pages for them that could be part of the site, really didn't make sense (they already had a page for each product...it's just that the shopping cart system made it necessary to have weird urls.) Sure they could have used a whole new shopping cart...lots of time and money to change though. Possibly there is some workaround to take out the question marks, but the method used was a perfect, easy solution. We even wrote great new copy for each product, etc., and put it on both the dynamic pages and the new static ones. There's nothing that smells of spam, as the content is all the same on the static pages and the shopping cart pages. The only hint of spam would be those hidden links. And really, how could anyone be faulted for that given the facts of the situation? Like I said, I rarely use this technique and usually do try to think of other solutions, but in some cases, this is a viable alternative, and in my opinion, is not even close to being spam.

Every situation is unique. It's our job to figure out the best method for each client. These can vary wildly!

Jill

[JuniorHarris]

I suppose the biggest factor engines will review, is how relevant the results are. I believe most are tolerant to a certain degree, and as long results are relevant it may be acceptable. This is not to say that one day the engines may indeed flag and filter for hidden links, but it may very well depend upon the hidden links implementation and it's true intent.

Initially our site utilized query strings, and I did create a few static doorways to help get engine placement and traffic. It worked to some degree, but it never came close to the success I've had since converting everything over to spider friendly URLs. Now everything in the entire database is indexable!~ Look Ma, "no hidden links!~"

I'm not necessarily casting judgment on hidden links. But for me it's a relief not to lay awake each night wondering when this practice will become passé, and with what little sleep I manage each night it makes a difference!~ :D

[Blue]

You would not believe how many people call me to ask how to get unbanned or if they are penalized because a former SEO did this or did that.

OK. Say some naive small business owner that has absolutely NO experience with either computers or the internet unknowingly hired an unethical SEO and then got banned.

What can they now do to honestly rectify their situation?

And I realize that no one should blindly go into any situation without first arming themselves with knowledge (buyer beware and all that), but as you say, this happens a lot, and, for instance, I receive numerous inquiries from just this type of person (naive small business owners) seeking to get on the Internet.

Maybe we should be reporting the person who used the unethical SEO methods rather than reporting the "naive small business owner". This would seem to me to be a better way of accomplishing the task of eliminating the problem.

As well, we should be spreading the "use ethical SEO techniques" message, as does Doug, through both these forums and on his business site.

So, back to my question....How can someone duped by an unethical SEO get unbanned? Can they?

[ihelpyou]

Well, you cannot report the SEO because ALL engines would want proof the particular SEO actually optimized the particular site.

You can report the site that is spamming only. You do need proof though and show the engine axactly what the site is doing.

How can you get unbanned? Not easy. Usually just takes patience.

One way:

Never immediately email the engine and say "I'm sorry, please unban me" ... before you actually fix the problems with your site first! Once you identify why you were banned, fix it, and THEN show the engine it is fixed.

They will usually re-list you.

Another example:

Many times a new webmaster does not know that they are actually spamming. They get banned and have NO idea how to fix it. They built their own site and did NOT hire anyone else to promote it. They got into trouble for reading all the stuff out there in books, on site, etc.

If that is the case, you need to ask someone you trust what it is that got you banned. Then fix it, then show the engine that you fixed it.

Another point:

If you just email the engine before fixing anything, and ask them what it is you did wrong,... they will NOT tell you. You have to figure it out yourself. They will point you to their help pages on the site.

[Advisor]

Doug makes a good point. Many, many people simply do not have a clue. You wouldn't believe how many people I get asking me why they can't just use hidden text the same color as the background (or maybe you would believe it). It's absolutely amazing to me that this kind of question still floats around out there. And yet, you can still find hidden text on sites that are pretty new. So some designers are still using it! Talk about totally uneducated!

Jill

[ihelpyou]

Yeppers.

We cannot expect the search engines to tell us what we are doing wrong. The site that is in trouble just needs to get educated. Once they do, the search engines are actually very easy to understand.

AND,

Even easier to get noticed on, with good ranks as your reward for understanding.