Spamming your SEO activities or using illicit SEO tactics is always a temptation. Almost every time you check the rankings for priority keywords you will see spammy entries in the rankings. A check through competitor links will often reveal hundreds of spammy links from websites with irrelevant content. The most interesting news is that even Google has succumbed to the temptation to use spammy links to boost its standing in the rankings. In this particular case it is to boost the rankings of Google Chrome.
Using links to boost rankings is the essence of SEO in competitive markets. However, it appears that an agency working for Google has been in breach of Google’s own webmaster guidelines. The agency had placed more than 400 sponsored articles and blog posts and used them to manipulate the PageRank for the Google Chrome browser.
Using sponsored articles is not a problem. It is when you utilise anchor text to boost rankings artificially. Under Google’s guidelines the sponsored links should have been no followed. This would mean that the link would generate visitor traffic but not pass PageRank to the target page. In response to the uproar in the SEO industry, Google appear to have penalised the Google Chrome page and it no longer appears for the term “browser”.
Our to SEO and SEO training is that illicit techniques should be resisted, regardless of the temptations. I have spotted a the demise of a site in B2B market that has dramatically fallen away over recent months. When the site was riding high in the rankings a client in the same market wanted me to emulate the practises of the site in question. This approach was resisted at the time. And the results speak for themselves.
