What if you do break the rules? What's the worst that can happen?
For minor infractions, the search engines will penalize your pages
in their rankings, or possibly even drop a particular page from
their listings. Only if it's pretty obvious that you're trying to
spam them will they bar an entire site. You may never know for sure
if this has happened. Just because they fail to list your site after
a reasonable amount of time, or drop you from their listings, it
doesn't necessarily mean they have anything against your site.
These things happen often, and are usually the result of overwork
or inefficiency. If you really suspect that you've ticked them off,
send a polite note to the site administrator, admitting what you
did wrong, and pointing out that it was done through ignorance,
not evil intent. Promise to sin no more, and politely ask, beseech
or beg them to restore your listing.
The search engines are there to serve Web users, and they certainly
aren't interested in barring sites from their listings for honest
mistakes. Don't let the fear of offending them stop you from
aggressively marketing your site. But don't be tempted to indulge
in any of the fraudulent techniques we've just discussed. Take it
from a Web marketing professional who's been in the game since 1994
breaking the rules will hurt your traffic in the long run, not help.
Furthermore, deceptive marketing practices harm everyone who uses
the Web. The Internet is quickly becoming a major resource for
society, like a public utility, and it's likely that at some point
in the future, attempting to spam the search engines will be
considered a serious crime, like insurance fraud, complete with
hefty fines and jail time for offenders.
Here's a handy overview of what's acceptable and what's not, that
you can print out and carry in your wallet.
Perfectly Acceptable:
Submitting a page to a directory in several appropriate categories
(Except those that specifically say not to do so, such as Yahoo).
Submitting different pages from the same site IF they contain
really different content.
Using lots of appropriate keywords in body text, headings, TITLE
and META tags.
Using auto-submitters to submit to search engines.
Resubmitting at reasonable intervals.
- Maybe Acceptable in Moderation:
- Different domain names pointing to the same page.
- Doorway pages.
- META REFRESH tags (for splash pages).
- Not Recommended:
- Excessive keywords.
- Using auto-submitters to submit to directories.
- Likely to get you barred:
- Inappropriate keywords in tags.
- Frequent resubmissions (see each search site's guidelines as to how
often is too often).
- Guaranteed to get you barred:
- Hidden keywords.
- Server-side redirects (for any reason).
- Any type of redirect designed to procure a listing based on
something other than actual page content.
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