Sponsor's Message

Some unscrupulous site operators and so-called experts are prepared to use a wide range of "cheats" in order to achieve this goal but this is bad news for all concerned.

Back in the good old days, most search engines used pretty simplistic rating algorithms and it was an almost job trivial to design your webpages so that they would soar to the top of the rankings.

These cheats included things such as keyword stuffing -- where a small group of keywords were repeated, sometimes hundreds of times, on the same page. These keywords were often hidden from view by displaying them in the same colour as the page's background.

As the search-engine marketplace became more competitive however, the various players realised that visitors wanted relevant results and that these cheats were severely degrading the integrity of their offering.

Eventually the simpler cheating tactics were identified and the ranking algorithms were adjusted to demote those who sought to unfairly improve their position.

Readers Say (updated irregularly) Copyright... - Peter USA/NZ Trade Deal... - Mark Copyright... - Steve MP3s and the great... - Cliff Have Your Say

These days, stupid tricks such as keyword stuffing will actually result in your site immediately being pushed to the bottom of the ranking list.

But the cheats are always looking for new ways to fool the search engines and several new tactics have appeared recently.

I'm going to mention these cheats here because I trust that most readers aren't silly enough to try and use them to hike their own site's position. You can bet your bottom dollar that the guys at Google are already aware of these unscrupulous tactics and are preparing to shoot down any site that is caught using them.

Using one of these cheats may give you a temporary lift today, but it will almost certainly come back to bite you in the backside tomorrow, next week or sometime in the near future. And remember that once you've been shuffled to the bottom of the deck, it's awfully hard to get back up.

First up are the link-farms. These are networks which offer to provide a myriad of links to your site in return for you linking to other sites.

Most modern search engines consider the number of sites which link to yours as a fair indicator of your site's importance and quality. As a result, a heavily linked-to site will generally rank more highly than one which has been largely ignored by the rest of the web.

I gather however that as the various link-farms are identified by search engine operators, their members are being penalised for their involvement.

It is interesting to note that known spammers Lymree.co.nz are using the linkfarm at www.links4trade.com in a vain attempt to hike it's own position. I think that speaks volumes as to the ethics of such tactics.

Another cheat being increasingly used by those who can't actually build a site worthy of a high ranking on its own merits is what I call guestbook stuffing.

Many small personal websites operate a guestbook where visitors can leave their comments.

Back in the good old days when spam and search engine cheating was virtually unknown, a guestbook was a nice addition to such a site. These days however, many of them have become nothing but a giant trash can, filled with dross, marketing messages and search engine cheaters.

A growing number of cheats have discovered that by leaving messages in hundreds of guestbooks, complete with the URL of their site or the site they're trying to promote, they are effectively bumping up their linked-to index and thus their ranking.

Here's an example of just one such cheat's rampant guestbook stuffing activities.

The smarter guest-book stuffers actually have automated systems that identify sites running well-known guest-book scripts and stuff them with entries containing phrases such as "Great site!" followed by the URL they're trying to boost.

Once again, I'm pretty sure that the major search engines have or will see this type of activity as unreasonable and deal to those who have used it.

The battle between the cheats and the search engine operators will doubtless go on forever -- but it's important to realise that unethical tactics will ultimately result in a mighty fall in rankings from which it may be impossible to recover.

So what's the best way to get well ranked?

Just build a good site with good content. People will link to it by choice and, providing you've structured it properly paying due care and attention to the basics then you will get the ranking you deserve.

Contacting Aardvark
As always, readers are invited to submit their comments on material covered in this column. If you'd like your comments published here then please be sure to use this form and select For Publication.

Other media organisations seeking more information or republication rights are also invited to contact me.

Just add a couple of lines of JavaScript to your pages and you can get a free summary of Aardvark's daily commentary -- automatically updated each and every week-day.

Aardvark also makes a summary of this daily column available via XML using the RSS format. More details can be found here.

Contact me if you decide to use either of these feeds and have any problems.

Linking Policy
Want to link to this site? Check out Aardvark's Linking Policy.

Did you tell someone else about Aardvark today? If not then do it now!