Search Engine Marketing Scams and You

An informational series for the curious- part 2

The Internet is a vast place full of information, resources and, sadly, scams. Search engine optimization is a valid, useful tool to help boost rankings of legitimate companies and businesses. However, some companies are deceitful in their tactics. They can lead to loss of site credibility, loss of site aesthetics, and most of the strategies can leave your website banned from the search engines.

In this second article in a short series, “Search Engine Marketing Scams and You,” I reveal some illegal or unethical tactics and suggest alternatives. In order to make the World Wide Web a more reliable source of good, relevant information, Search Engines have started banning such activities as:

Link Farms

It has become more obvious recently that incoming relevant links to your website can help with website ranking. One marketing “technique” to avoid is participating in link farms. Link farms are created exclusively to increase a site’s link popularity. The more links you have going to your site, the more credibility is given to your site by the search engines. However, with link farms, sites whose links display on your site often are not relevant to your website topic. Search engines can recognize links that do not lead to relevant content and will disregard the link. It is becoming common for search engines not only ignore the spam type link, but they will often punish the sites found there.

Link farms can hurt your credibility and damage your ranking. As appealing as it sounds to “shoot to the top of the search engines,” real search engine optimization takes time. Try asking some professional associations that you are a member of or ask colleagues to add a link on their site to yours. These are just a few ways to get to the top of the search engines without cheating.

Noël Otten
Account Manager
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