|
The best way
to avoid being blacklisted by the search engines is to avoid
using some questionable techniques that were once popular
to gain high rankings. Even if your website is not blacklisted
by using some of the techniques below, it may be penalized
(buried in the rankings) so your traffic will suffer all
the same. When a search engine blacklists a website it will
throw your listing off their site and block your site from
coming aboard again. This can be done by blocking the domain
name, the IP address or both.
Here are a few
techniques to avoid, so that your site will not be blacklisted:
Mirror Websites
Mirror websites
are sites with identical content but different URL's. This
was once a method used to gain high rankings in the search
engines, but since search engines are smarter now, this
will only get you penalized or blacklisted.
Doorway (gateway)
Pages
Doorway pages
are pages with little real content for your visitors that
are optimized to rank highly within the search engines.
These pages are designed so that visitors will move deeper
into the website where the real content lies. Navigation
to the doorway pages are usually hidden from the visitors
(but not the SE robots) on the homepage.
Invisible
Text and Graphics
Using invisible
text (text the same or a very similar color to the background)
was once used to spam a homepage and some inside pages with
non-stop keywords and keyphrases. Also links to doorway
pages and hidden site maps can be done with invisible text
(or invisible graphics). Some designers will create a graphic
link with a 1 pixel by 1 pixel raster image and link this
to a hidden inner page such as a hidden site map.
Submitting
Pages Too Often
Submitting the
same pages to the search engines within a 24 hour period
can get you penalized and may delay your website from being
listed in the rankings. Some search engines believe that
pages submitted sooner than every 30 days is too much. The
30 day rule is a good rule to follow when submitting to
multiple search engines.
Using Irrelevant
Keywords
Using irrelevant
keywords in a website's metatags and / or body copy in order
to achieve high rankings will most certainly backfire. Search
engines now want to see parity between these two areas and
if your site is thought to be spamming with irrelevant keywords,
you site will be penalized or blacklisted.
Automated
Submissions to the Major Search Engines
Using an automated
service or software to submit your website to the search
engines can be extremely counterproductive. Most of the
major search engines and directories accept manual submissions
but do not like to be spammed with the automated ones.
Cloaking
Cloaking is
the practice of deceiving both the search engine and the
visitor by serving up different pages for each. The visitor
sees a nicely designed and formatted page and the search
engine robot scans a page of highly optimized text. Any
practice that is deceptive should be avoided and the downfall
of cloaking is that, if caught, the website can be banned
permanently.
Using a Cheap or Free Web Host
Using a cheap
or free web host can hurt in the search engine rankings.
Frequent downtime, pages taken down for exceeding the bandwidth
deter robots from indexing your site. If a robot cannot
access your site often enough, your site will be dropped
from the search engines. Hosting is cheap, so if you are
serious about your website get your own domain name and
host not one like geocities.com/yoursite.
Sharing an
IP Address
Sharing an IP
Address even from a legitimate web host can get your site
in trouble. If you have cleaned up your website from all
of the techniques mentioned above and your website still
does not get relisted by the search engines in a couple
of months, check with your host to see if you are sharing
an IP address with other sites. If so, you may consider
moving your website to a new host who will give you your
own IP address or at least one that is not shared with another
company who has had their IP address (an yours) banned by
the search engines.
FAST's Director
of Business Development and Marketing, Stephen Baker, has
stated that globally there are approximately 30 million
crawl-able servers and approximately two-thirds have been
banned by the FAST network for spamming. If these numbers
are correct, your site may be blacklisted or penalize for
"guilt by association."
|
