Bad cheap SEO tactics: backlink shenanigans

Those who seek to employ cheap SEO tactics may, in their desire to see results double-quick, resort to those tactics that are not exactly kosher in the eyes of search engines. As a matter of fact, "not exactly kosher" may be understating it. In many cases, once a search engine determines that a particular website is employing such shady techniques, said search engine can severely punish the site owner.

One area in which this sort of abuse is relatively common on the Internet nowadays - despite the fact that many people really should know better - is link building. As such the persistence of these bad practices, despite the fact that knowledge of what to do and what not to do is widespread, is indicative of the importance of link building itself.

Why is link building important? In a nutshell, when determining which webpages come up earlier in search results than other webpages when given search terms or keywords are used, search engines set great store on the quality (less the number - more on this later) of the sites that link to these particular websites. Links from more reputable sites such as, say, CNN carry more weight than links from sites which are less reputable, such as blogs whose content is of dubious quality and which are not updated very often. The inference is of course that the better the reputation of the sites that link to one's webpage, the higher the quality of one's webpage and one's content - and this is "rewarded" appropriately by search engines via higher placement versus sites that are linked to by less reputable sites and/or by a larger number of dubious-quality sites.

So it becomes very obvious that the sheer number of sites that link to one's webpage always takes a back seat to the sheer quality of these sites. And in addition, it can also be inferred that tactics that aim to build a site's page rank through simply increasing the number of these inbound links are frowned upon. Unfortunately, a lot of the less scrupulous SEO providers, as well as some of the SEO newbies, insist on trying to build up the number of these links while considering quality as being only secondary in importance - if at all.

What tactics are employed by these under-the-table practitioners? One is known as "web spamming" and involves the creation of a large number of websites that are all optimized for those particular keywords that one wants to rank highly for - using redirect pages, automatically-generated directories and the like. These sites are often set up from scratch and put online on secondary domains, and then the unscrupulous people behind them attempt to find link partners. Because they only add to online clutter and are of no value in and of themselves, these kinds of pages are often referred to as search engine clutter. Initiating links with these sites is perilous, even though it can result in an increase in the number of inbound links, as if and when one of these sites is banned, someone who has linked to them can be penalized for linking to them.

Secondly, of course, there is blog commenting. People trying to get inbound links to their sites try to find blogs that also discuss topics that their sites cover and comment on particular entries, hoping to get the owners of these blogs, as well as fellow visitors, to link to their page. This can be a good link building technique if not abused (if, say, blog comments that do not really add value and are just "carriers" for links are simply inserted in the body of the comment).

These "link shenanigans" are cheap SEO techniques that can do more harm than good, so make sure to stick to the straight and narrow and do the right thing!