Here’s a question for you: What are the most important words on your web site? Do I hear you shout, “ keywords of course.” Well if you did, you’d be wrong. Forget your keywords for a moment because what you should have said is “you” and “your”.
Over
the years web surfers have endured many unpleasant trends – flash and
animation, blinking text, pop-up windows, purple text on black
backgrounds and much, much more. These days, however, they’re subjected
to the subtle, yet still unpleasant practice of “let’s stuff as many
keywords into our web page copy as we possibly can” syndrome.
Known
as “keyword stuffing” this practice stems from the notion that if you
place a huge amount of keyword phrases on your web page you’ll
miraculously be elevated to the top of the search engine results and
sell more of your product or service. Of course, from the visitors’
point of view this doesn’t work too well because repeating the same
phrases over and over again on the page won’t persuade your visitors to
do anything much except hastily leave the site.
So sneakily,
just to make sure the repetitive, parrot-like copy doesn’t cause a
complete exodus of potential customers, some web site owners and
developers hide their keyword phrases so the search engines can see
them, but human visitors can’t.
I idea is this: place your
keywords in the same color as your background and make them invisible
to the human eye, but not to the search engines. The search engines,
reading the text, index the site as relevant for that particular
keyword phrase and rank it higher in the results. Problem is, not only
is it unethical, it doesn’t actually work. Well not for long anyway.
Unfortunately,
this practice seems to be proliferating like locusts. And while it’s
impossible to spray or swat them, I can draw your attention to it in
the hope that, (a) you’ll refrain from using this tactic on your own
web site, and (b) I’ll shame the offenders into removing the offending
words from their site.
Leading the pack in the
keyword-stuffing department is an unlikely pair: churches and lawyers.
Yes, you heard me right, but it bears repeating: churches and lawyers.
Why that is I can only imagine, but just in case you don’t believe me,
I’ve put together a kind of rogue’s gallery… well two actually because
finding them is a time-consuming process that involves typing the same
word a lot. Please note that to see the keywords you’ll have to hold
down the “ctrl” and “A” key on your keypad. Please also note that the
owners of the web site may be unaware this practice has been used on
their site.
1.The US-Attorney & The Law Office:
http://www.the-office.com/lawofc/. Keyword = lawyer. Hold down ctrl and
A and scroll right down to the bottom of the page.
2.The First
Baptist Church: http://www.lakeshorebaptist.net/hycws/. Keyword =
church. There they are right down at the bottom of the page next to you
know who.
Just a tad sneaky, don’t you think?
While I
understand very well that web site owners want to elevate their site to
the top of the natural search results, I sometimes wonder if they ever
think about how their site got to that top position? And, if they ever
think that if they create their site with their visitor’s tastes, needs
and desires in mind, they’ll achieve more success in the long run?
Perhaps not.
But what they should think about is this: if the
search engines discover this trickery they’re at liberty to remove the
site from their index. And no amount of begging, pleading or bribery
will get the site reinstated until the search engines say so. It’s got
to be much safer to stick with straightforward, persuasive,
you-oriented, visible copy, written for your visitors, and not just for
the search engines.
Just in case you’re tempted, or you think your web developer might be, here’s a snippet from Google’s guidelines.
Quality Guidelines - Basic principles:
•Make
pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users, or
present different content to search engines than you display to users.
•Avoid
tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb
is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a
website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does
this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
•Don't
participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or
PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad
neighborhoods" on the web as your own ranking may be affected adversely
by those links.
•Don't use unauthorized computer programs to
submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing
resources and violate our terms of service. Google does not recommend
the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or
programmatic queries to Google.
Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations:
•Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
•Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
•Don't send automated queries to Google.
•Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
•Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
•Avoid
"doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie
cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no
original content.
Follow them. Your business will profit in the long run.
Learn more about online copywriting...
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