Spamming

SEO Black Hat Techniques: What NOT to do

What is Website Spamming?

Website spamming is when webmasters try to manipulate search engine results to achieve higher rankings for their site. Google’s algorithms are developed to take this into account, and in most cases can recognise website spamming automatically and take appropriate action.

Misspellings

Some spammers take advantage of misspellings and create a website based on a common misspelling of a well-known site, so that readers arrive at a site that mirrors what they're looking for but isn't genuine. This can result in counterfeit purchases being made in error. N.B. Deliberately misspelling a well-known name and selling similar products or services is viewed as "passing off" and is counted as internet fraud.

What is blog spamming?

Blog spamming is the act of randomly posting comments that promote products or services onto blogs, wikis, comments boxes, and other publicly available online pages. Any pages which display hyperlinks that visitors can submit themselves, such as guest books or forums, may be targeted by a blog spammer. Posting links to the spammer's website temporarily increases their search engine ranking and consequent amount of traffic by giving them more backlinks.

However, blog spamming is frowned upon by the search engines and when discovered can harm your overall ranking. Several measures have been invented to deal with this problem, but many spammers have developed ways to outwit the programmes. The fight against spamming is continuous and you're better off aiming for long-term high ranking than temporary, short-term results.

What is e-mail spamming?

Spammers have developed 'spambots' that crawl the internet picking out e-mail addresses from websites, and selling them to companies that send out unsolicited bulk emails (otherwise known as junk mail).

Advertisers use spam as a way of reaching people who would not be actively searching for their product. Spamming keeps costs down because the only expense is the cost of the mailing list. As it has become a widespread practice resulting in a high volume of email, most people use a junk mail box via spam filter software (such as McAfee or Norton etc) to collect all unsolicited mail.

How do spammers obtain e-mail addresses

Some websites may sell their registration forms to other sites
Spammers harvest addresses through guessing common names or via 'spambots'
Clicking on an 'unsubscribe' link from an existing spam mail will in fact add you to more mailing lists
Having your contact email address up on any website leaves it vulnerable to being harvested by bots searching for unprotected addresses

How can e-mail spam be avoided?

Do not give out your email address to untrusted sources, especially when you subscribe to an internet service
Be attentive about whether you need to tick or untick a box to prevent your details being passed on or the company contacting you about other matters
Use a spam filter to prevent unwanted e-mails from coming into your inbox
If you need to give your e-mail address, use a free one such as Hotmail that you can get rid of at a later date when spam exceeds an acceptable level