10 Signs of SEO Scams, Fraud Tactics and Subplots

There’s a saying I often hear when I was growing up: Nobody will try to fool anyone if no one allows himself to be fooled. This piece of thought can be applied in search engine optimization, where a combination of personalities clash: demanding clients, pretending vendors, and more.

Here’s my take on businesses who should get rid of companies or individuals who try to get the business

1. We can rank your site in 72 hours!
Subplot: Within top 100 using your company name as search query.

This sounds too good to be true. While this is clearly a deception, this ranking pledge is very possible. Sadly, you’ll realize he did not make any commitment of first page ranking. We can rank your site in 72 hours, maybe within top 200 results for some unpopular keywords?

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How to File For Reinclusion of Site?

One thing Google can do when it finds websites violating its Webmaster Guidelines is that it could penalize these sites by removing them from its search index database. This results in disappearance of pages from search engine results. This penalty can be checked by using the site:nameofwebsite.com tool on Google Search; if none shows up on search results, the site in question has been penalized for one reason or another.

Obviously, we want Google to recognize back our pages and allow them to show up on search results.

Google offers reinclusion of the penalized site only if the questionable practices by its webmaster has been corrected and the webmaster acknowledges that the issue has been resolved.

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How to Report Spam to Google

Sometimes we still see spam pages on search engine results. That’s possible because millions of new pages are created on a daily basis and large portion of these contents are questionable / spammy in nature. While new contents don’t usually appear on search results immediately, certain types of content that has date relevance such as news or blog posts appear minutes after they are published.

Search engines and spammers constantly play the game of hide and seek, cat and mouse affair. Sometimes the mouse can get away, and in the case of spammers, their pages show up on search results. Even if Google is huge, it can’t handle the whole thing (identifying and catching) on its own. Which is why Google is asking for help from users. Hidden text or any deceptive methods are frowned upon by Google:

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Oasis Airlines Birthday Website Anomaly

I think one of the reasons why Hong Kong is still behind in adopting search engine marketing is because of the apparent lack of confidence on the part of website owners. It could be because the SEO campaigns they are running aren’t yielding enough success to drive them to the next level. Why should companies spend on a new platform if it isn’t trusted enough as much as outdoor media and other traditional media?

Once upon a time, an airline was born. Its name is Oasis Hong Kong, the world’s first low-fare, long-haul airline. In other words, within the pack of no frills airlines, this is the only one that boasts of seven-hour flights or longer. Recently, it launched its birthday website www.happybirthdayoasis.com.

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MyAyala.com Caught Keyword Spamming

I have a colleague who used to work a company with so called “black hat” SEO practices in the Philippines. While he is aware that the practice was doomed to fail, his previous business dealings in that company was never in peril at the time.

I was a little more conservative, dropping the methods I think that are never thought would be helpful to site visitors. If you were reading a lot of threads on SEO over the Internet you will be amazed to see different tricks are advised with an equal number of naysayers refuting such tricks.

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