Avoid Being Blocked By Google |
It's important to note that while websites can be rewarded for proper use of keywords, they can also be penalized for the improper use of keywords. Hostway’s objective should be to optimize its pages using keywords, but to do so through a thoughtful yet balanced and natural approach.
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1. Cloaking |
"Cloaking" is when your web site is set up such that search engine spiders get different pages from those human surfers get. How does the web site know which are the spiders and which are the humans? By identifying the spider's User Agent or IP—the latter being the more reliable method. A "User Agent" is a way a program that surfs the Web identifies itself. Internet browsers like Mozilla use User Agents, as do search engine spiders. Cloaking is an easy way to misrepresent site content—feeding a spider a page that's designed to get the site hits for pudding cups when actually it's all about baseball bats.
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| 2. Text Spam |
Text is hidden by putting words or links in a web page that are the same color as the page's background—putting white words on a white background, for example. This is also called "fontmatching." That goes for other page content tricks too, like title stacking (putting multiple copies of a title tag on one page), putting keywords in comment tags, keyword stuffing (putting multiple copies of keywords in very small font on page), putting keywords not relevant to your site in your META tags, and so on. Google doesn't provide an exhaustive list of these types of tricks on their site, but any attempt to circumvent or fool their ranking system is likely to be frowned upon.
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| 3. Doorway Pages |
Doorway pages are pages that have been developed to rank highly for a specific keyword or phrase. It's also true that there has been some abuse in this area. People have developed so-called 'doorway pages' that were meant to deceive the end user. The result of that is that many have automatically called any kind of a doorway page spam.
A doorway page contains all of the elements associated with any other web page. The only difference is that the title, keywords, description, and body content have all been optimized for one or two specific keywords or keyword phrases.
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| 4. Dynamic Pages |
Any web address that contains a question mark (?), or some other like character, is a major stumbling block to most spiders. This is most often seen with dynamic pages that use Perl, ASP, Cold Fusion, etc. Some of the larger search engines are now beginning to index dynamic pages, (specifically Google), but this advanced capability is not widespread.
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| 5. Meta Refresh |
This tag has been so abused by the XXX industry that it is now considered spam by the engines. Perhaps it is not really a stumbling block, but the spiders have been programmed to run from it.
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| 6. Image Maps |
Can be read by some spiders but cannot be read by others. If you plan to use an image map, make sure there are other links on the page (perhaps on the bottom) those links to your other pages.
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