Search engines are an integral part of most web users' experience. When a potential customer gets on the Internet their first instincts will take them to their favorite search engine, and from there they will try to find someone or some site to fill their specific needs. Only occasionally will a user know exactly what URL they are looking for and go directly there. (Though this would happen more in the case of bookmarked sites.)
For this reason, search engine optimization (SEO) has become an important aspect of any good online marketing campaign. Most users never look beyond the third page of search results, so if you want to get noticed, if you want to be found, you need to find a way to reach those top rankings.
SEO stopped in and gave companies a way to move up the rankings. But it isn't quite so straightforward as many marketers might normally hope. There is Whitehat SEO, the kind that is considered ethical, best practices, and Blackhat SEO, the kind that is not. And then there is the case of Grayhat SEO, the stuff that falls somewhere in between. These practices (the Gray and Blackhat techniques) are the ones that can incur the wrath of the search engines.
In some cases companies have been willing to risk a little wrath just to climb the rankings a little faster. Those who have did so under the impression that either a) they can outsmart the search engines or b) that the search engines are the enemy and must be conquered at any cost. These arguments are extremely flawed.
First, the idea that the search engines won't catch you, that somehow you can outsmart them is wishful thinking at best. There are certain measures, certain techniques, that can help you increase your rankings. There are certain things that search engines use to judge your site. And when you try to manipulate those things, it is not difficult for the search engines to catch on.
Second, the search engines are not the enemy. Their own success is based on the ability to deliver the most relevant results. In other words, if that is you - if you have the most relevant material to a given keyword - then the search engine actually wants you to reach the top.
So what kind of SEO activities fall into the Wrath Inducing category? There's quite a few and many of them have been around for a while, and others that are relatively new attempts. This includes practices like cloaking, which is the process of serving one page to the search engines and a completely different one to your customers.
Keyword stuffing - filling your pages and/or metadata with the same targeted keyword - is a wrathful endeavor. So is hiding the keywords by making them the same color as the background.
Recently the search engines have started weighing links much heavier than just keywords. So this has led to many SEO attempts at hiding links or spamming sites that might allow links to a site. Again, this is behavior that will just get you more wrath.
Links are a little harder to disguise than regular text, but many sites have tried. Sometimes they will hide them just below the fold, they they aren't technically hidden, but they're also not technically displayed. They are also often characterized by the use of the same keyword in the links over and over again. This kind of technique would likely fall into a "gray" area. It is grounds for wrath, but it is also likely to receive a lot of debate as to whether or not it deserves the wrath.
And what form, exactly, does Search Engine Wrath take? It could come in loss of rank, it could come in a range of penalties, but most likely it will just come as a ban from the search engines. And when you get removed from the index, all the SEO in the world can't help you. No one will find you because you are not there to be found. If you rely on the Internet for your business, this kind of wrath can quickly end it.
Andy Eliason is a writer at Main10, Inc, a Utah SEO company. If you'd like to learn more about search engine marketing and working with the search engines, visit their site today.
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