As website owners become more and more aware about the advantages of making it to the top of Google search results, some of them are turning to evil ways to increase their page ranking. Many are trying spamming as a quick and dirty way to get to the top fast. 90% of the time it will take them to the top but 99% of the time the site will be penalized with a low search engine ranking from Google and other search engine giants. In this article I try to list 5 methods of spamming that will sky rocket an article’s page ranking.
1. Repeating keywords – Keyword stacking and Keyword stuffing
This is the most straight forward and easiest “ILLEGAL” way of boosting your page ranking. Spam websites repeat the same keywords over and over again by hiding them in the visible HTML, invisible layers such as the NOFRAMES tag and also in your meta tags. Repeating keywords over and over again by displaying them at the bottom of your document after a number of line breaks counts as well. This evil tactics is called keyword stacking. There is another similar kind of method called keyword stuffing. This is when you apply the above techniques to parts of the website which should not be optimized like the spacer images (usually used for spacing items on a page).
2. Jamming keywords or Tiny Text
Usually people use the font size to fit the viewer’s optimum viewing capacity. But for luring search engines to your site, people usually use a technique called jamming keywords. If you are displaying keywords in your web pages using a very small font then you are jamming keywords. This technique is also called tiny text. The key is to reduce the font size to such an extent that the user can barely see what is written. This will be then filled with keywords and related keywords to increase keyword density. Most of the advanced search engines like Google have identified these methods and now days are reducing the site’s page rank or completely taking it out of the index if they feel that it is a spamming site.
3. Hidden texts and links
Some people go to the extent of adding hidden texts and links in their articles. They usually achieve this by using the same font color as the background color of the page. This way, there will not be any color difference and the text will be completely invisible to the viewers. But if you try to use CNTL+A combination to select all your text in that page, you will be able to see text hidden like this. Needless to say, the text hidden will be keywords and related keywords to the topic. Another example is inserting keywords in areas not visible to the end user such as the hidden layers in style sheets. But just like tiny text, smart search engines have algorithms to spot these types of illegal methods. The result is the same, penalizing the site by reducing the page rank.
For example “travel, travel, travel free, free travel, free travel outside us, free travel Mexico” can be used as a repeating keyword strategy for the keyword “Travel”. This evil technique is also called Keyword stacking and we can readily identify sites which are doing this. A more camouflaged version of this kind of spamming is called keyword stuffing. This is when you use the keyword stacking technique in aspects of web site that should not be optimized like spacer images.
4. Jamming Keywords or “Tiny Text”
The tactic of using small fonts to disguise keyword stuffing is called jamming keywords. The fonts used will be so small that an ordinary reader will not readily identify such a spamming site. The basic idea behind Jamming keywords is to maintain the beauty of the website. A normal reader without much knowledge will not identify this trick and end up viewing a page which does not deserve to be in the top results of the search engine.
5. Invisible Text, Hidden Texts and Links
There are several ways to make a text invisible. If you use the same background color and the font color, a text becomes invisible. For a user the space will be appearing as blank but it will be stuffed with keywords to attack search engines. Same is the case with links. In SEO huge weightage is given for incoming and outgoing links on a webpage. You can hide keywords in your HTML document by making the text color same or almost same as the background or by inserting keywords in areas not visible to the end user like the hidden layers in style sheets.
Aren’t you repeating the pints? Points 2 and 4; 3 and 5? What sort of tactics is this? I wish you had said something about landing pages or elaborated hidden layer in style sheets.