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What is Search engine spam?
Search engine spam is the process of spamming search engines to reach top positions. In other words it is the use of unethical techniques/methods in order to improve listings in search engines. Many optimizers unknowingly take part in search engine spamming and many others do it knowingly. The content below gives explanations on various ways that search engines can be spammed and why this should be avoided.

Search Engine Spamming Techniques that should be avoided
Use of Invisible text
Using invisible text is an extremely common search spamming practice in which a spammer uses a similar color for fonts as well as the background. Invisible text is used to stuff pages with keywords that are visible to search engines, but invisible to the viewers. All major search engines today can identify this kind of spamming easily and can penalize the site.

Stuffing keywords
Keyword stuffing can be done in many ways. One most common way of doing this is by using invisible text. Other methods involve using keywords in very small fonts at the bottom of pages, using keywords in hidden tags (like no frames tag, alt tags, hidden value tags, option tags etc.) or stuffing the main content with repetitive keywords. Keyword stuffing is a trick that most search engines today are able to sniff out.

Link Spamming
Link Spamming is the process of spamming search engines by getting thousands of inbound links from link farms, forums, blogs, free to all pages, unrelated websites or even by registering hundreds of domains and getting links from all of them generating a link empire. To put it in simple words link spamming is the process of getting inbound links through unethical practices solely for the purpose of ranking higher in search engines.

Most search engines give high level of importance to in-bound links and consider them as an indication that the site is credible. Participating in free for all and linking farms can get any site thousands of in-bound links which can make them look important in the eyes of the search engines when they actually aren't. Most search engines today have come up with strict measures to deal with such kind of spamming and can even ban an involved website completely from their search listings.

Cloaking
Simply put, cloaking is any process that involves presenting search engines with one set of information and the visitors with another. The copy presented to the search engines is highly optimized and hence the search bot may rank it higher. When a visitor clicks on the link he is either redirected to a new location using CGI, JavaScript or Meta refresh tags or is tricked to enter a new page by using a mouse-over function.

Meta redirects are also used by webmasters today for legitimate reasons. For instance, a website owner who has changed his domain name would need his older visitors to automatically get to his new site using a redirect. This is where search engines face a real challenge in identifying the legitimate sites from the illegitimate ones. But most search engines today are able to identify almost all kinds of cloaking techniques to a large extent.

Creating Doorway Pages
Doorway pages are pages that are highly optimized for search engines. They are similar to junk pages and contain nothing but keywords and irrelevant content. When a visitor enters such a page he is either automatically redirected or asked to click on a JavaScript link. So in many ways creating doorway pages is as good as cloaking.

It is not necessary that all doorway pages should always look this way. There are ways in which good and related information can be provided making the doorway pages an informative page instead of a page that contains nothing but junk. Only when anyone tries to take shortcuts does he relent to creating junk pages instead of offering informational content.

Page redirects.
Often people create spam filled Web pages intended for the eyes of search engines only. When someone visit those pages, they are redirected to the real page by META refresh tags, CGI, Java, JavaScript, or server side techniques. There are legitimate reasons for cloaking and similar techniques, but don't use them unless you know exactly what you are doing.

Creating invisible tables using CSS
This is an extremely new technique of cheating the search bots. Though this process is similar to using invisible text, search bots find it difficult to sniff the fish out in this case. This is because most search bots do not read CSS sheets and even if they do, they cannot make head or tail of it. Though, with the advancement in search technology it would not be long before search engines are able to find spammers who use this technique.

Over submitting to search engines
Many webmasters tend to submit their site to thousands of search engines again and again using software programs. Some even go through the pain of submitting each and every URL of their website to search engines on a regular basis. This kind of search spam is not encouraged by any search engine as it does not serve any purpose. Some search engines may even penalize websites that create problems of over submission.

So in-case someone suggests you to follow any of these spam techniques to increase your search rankings, answer them with a blunt NO.

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