Avoid Search Engine Blacklisting
By Kevin Kantola
©2004 All rights reserved
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 web site 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 web site 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 web sites
Mirror web sites are sites with identical content but different URLs. 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 web site 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 key phrases.
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 web site 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 web site'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 web site 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 web site 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 web site, 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 web site from
all of the techniques mentioned above and your web site 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
web site 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 (and 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 crawlable 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".
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