Black Hat SEO Leads Big Retailer into Big Trouble with Google in 2011
Upright clients know that we are committed, not only to providing effective search engine marketing, but also to using only “white hat” ethical SEO practices. A recent story in The New York Times reminds marketers why ethical processes are so important, and reports on how a large, well-known retailer got burned by “black hat” SEO.
According to a recent NYT investigative report, JCPenney.com enjoyed the number one organic (non-paid) Google search result spot for a wide range of search terms, throughout the holiday season. To find out how JC Penney was able to achieve such extraordinarily high Google rankings for a variety of terms, the NYT reporter enlisted the help of an online line search expert. The result was the discovery of a link building strategy that was in clear violation of Google guidelines.
Thousands of purchased links to JCPenney.com were discovered from a plethora of unrelated websites. Google tends to favor websites with many relevant and appropriate inbound links, rewarding such sites with higher rankings. The idea is that if a site has so many related sites linking to it, it must have good information. Practitioners of “black hat” SEO often try to trick Google by amassing large numbers of random purchased links, many of which appear on sites that have nothing to do with the original site. Though this may work for a limited time, ultimately it will have negative consequences.
The problem with the strategy is that Google does pay attention to the legitimacy of a website’s links. When it catches on it the fact that it is being duped, hell hath no fury like a search engine spammed. Matt Cutts and the Google Webspam team bring swift retribution upon offenders in the form of lower ranking or even banishment from organic search results. When Google learned of J.C. Penney’s unethical link building, the punishment was plummeting rankings. According to the NYT, as soon as Google began taking its “manual action” against the company, the results were severe, at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Penney was No. 1 in searches for “living room furniture.” By 9 p.m., it had sunk to No. 68.
J.C. Penney officials claim they did not know that “black hat” practices were being used, and have fired their SEO firm.
Their story is just one example of a company paying the price for bad SEO practices. Many of the offenders, as J.C. Penney claimed, were not even aware that these methods were being used. At Upright, we abide by an SEO Code of Ethics, and keep abreast of the industry’s best practices. As Upright Link Building Specialist, Colleen Frye explains, “It’s necessary to listen to webinars and attend conferences to keep up with the changing trends of link building. 2009 was far different from 2010’s link building approach and we expect it to continue to change in the years to come.”
Regarding schemes like the one J.C. Penney was involved in, Colleen says, “We have been familiar with paid links scams for a while now, and we definitely know who and what to watch out for. It’s also very important to use platforms that provide ethical links. Upright is always working on analyzing the information going to and from client sites, with our proprietary tracking system and also using Google Analytics.”
To learn more about how the J.C. Penney “black hat” tactics were discovered, read this blog post by Doug Pierce, the expert who helped with the NYT story.