SEO Spam Primer Featuring Key Insights From Major Search Engines

Found this really great video of SMX East (US Search Engine Optimisation Conference) session on SEO Spam on Search Engine Land. Nothing really new from my point of view. But a succinct introduction to tactics that will get you in trouble with search engines… If your search engine optimisation company recommends the things discussed in this video, fire them.

This video is a useful primer on SEO spam for anyone who isn’t familiar with the issues. And it offers great information on finding out if you have been penalised by search engines and what to do about it. But it also has significant value as an insight into big search engines’ assessment of sites and attitude to links.

Talking About SEO Spam Means Talking About What Search Engines are Looking For

Random quotes/notes, many of which are music to my ears, as an exponent of an “offer content that is of value to your target audience and the search engines will value it too” approach to SEO:

• Don’t “lose track of the user perspective” in building links — for Yahoo it isn’t about whether a link is paid but whether it is a value link that makes sense with respect to the content of the source and destination of the link… good links point your users to content they will value.
• Nathan Buggia of Live Search reminds people of the all-important search engine perspective on assessing the Web. A perspective too often lost in the discussion around obtaining search engine visibility –
  

  “Goal of a search engine is trying to find really great content and connecting people that want that content”

• Nathan again: “stay focused on creating good content” … ahem… content is… um… king!
• For Aaron D’Souza of Google site owners should concentrate on, “building great content that users are going to create the links for you” — that is, offer content that people will want to link to rather than get involved in trading links, etc.
• Aaron also reassures people that the removal of the suggestion that people submit their sites to online directories from Google’s Webmaster guidelines didn’t mean those links had been devalued. Seems it is about discouraging the plethora of low value directories. Removing the suggestion makes it harder for these directories to convince nieve site owners that investment in listings on their sites was an essential part of obtaining search visibility.
• Sean Suchter of Yahoo! Search talks about an approach to web content I would heartily endorse, suggesting site owners create content that has “timeless user value”. He cautioned against adopting the latest techniques based on SEO’s interpretation of the latest algorithm changes. Future algorithm changes will inevitably discount that content’s value… “What might work this year or this quarter might stop working at some near future point if it isn’t necessarily user focused.”

So it might be a session about what you shouldn’t do to get search engine rankings but it ends up being a powerful insight in what you should do.

Search Engine Optimiser or SEO Buyer This is Stuff Worth Knowing… Worth Watching

Watch it for that and a really interesting discussion around the issue of paid links and PageRank (Google’s measure of link popularity/site authority, Link Flux” for Yahoo! and “Static Rank” for Live Search) and whether search engine rankings should take account of big brands’ profile…

All sound a little geeky? Some of it is. SEO spam involves some tricks that take you to the border of geek world. But if you are trying to get search visibility or employing search engine optimisers, you should take a look. You will learn something.


SMX East 2008: What Is Spam? from Search Marketing Expo on Vimeo.