Do Facebook and Twitter Endorse Black Hat SEO?
Black Hat SEO has become a hot topic in the last year within mainstream society. Stories about Overstock.com, J.C. Penney and others have further muddied the public's perception of search engine optimization as a respectable profession and legitimate way for companies to earn new business. And as social media continues to influence search results more and more, there are now two big players in social media who may be openly encouraging black hat SEO tactics. Specifically, it now appears that Facebook and Twitter may be endorsing black hat social SEO.
What is Black Hat SEO?
SEOs know that the most important factor in our profession has traditionally been the number of quality links from other pages on the web that point to our websites. Google sees links as votes, and rewards the most popular pages with the coveted spots in the top of the search results.
Black Hat SEOs have tactics that typically involve creating links (or votes) artificially as a way to trick Google's algorithms. Buying links is like buying votes in an election. It's easy to see how they would be considered artificial.
But other types of artificial links are less intuitive. Overstock.com didn't actually buy any links, but rather gave universities' students big product discounts that the colleges could post on their websites in the form of links to the Overstock product pages. Overstock gave college kids 30% discounts in return for nearly doubling their average monthly web traffic from around 10 million to 20 million visitors per month. Ultimately there was a quid pro quo, discounts for links, and Google stepped in and penalized Overstock (and others).
(Click on image to visit Quantcast.com, a web traffic measurement company)
So Then What is Black Hat Social SEO?
Search engines confirmed they are using signals from social media in the search algorithms. The number of Likes and tweets containing links to a particular page are making a big difference in the search results. It stands to reason that Likes and tweets are being looked at by search engines more and more just like links in terms of importance. And yet the tactics behind acquiring Likes, tweets and links are quite different.
Search engines discourage getting links in any way that is deemed fake, paid or spammy. On the other hand, Facebook currently permits compensation in exchange for a Like of a page. From their Promotions Guidelines:
"You must not condition registration or entry upon the user taking any action using any Facebook features or functionality other than liking a Page, checking in to a Place, or connecting to your app."
In other words, you can't ask people to do some things, but compensate people all you'd like for Likes.
And Twitter's guidelines aren't much different. While they discourage repeated tweets, it's perfectly acceptable to ask someone to link to a page and include a hashtag in return for entry into a contest.
Do Facebook and Twitter Endorse Black Hat SEO?
This is where it gets tricky. Facebook and Twitter have developed their own user communities and customs over the courses of their respective histories. Facebook has obviously found something that works for them, as their users number well past 750 million. And Twitter's no slouch either at around 150 million users. They've got a good thing going on, so why should they have to change?
On the other hand, shouldn't there be the same level of authenticity on the social web as what Google attempts to drive within the search results? Astroturfing is disapproved of as a way to get fake attention in social media. Should it be just as taboo to get paid attention through contest Likes and tweets?
What do you think? Should social media sites continue to condone compensation for tweets, Likes and other social engagement, or should Google's concept of an authentic vote drive a change in Facebook and Twitter's black hat SEO-friendly contest rules? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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Reader Comments (5)
Hey Josh,
Do you know if SS has a widget for most popular posts? I looked on their help site and it doesn't look like they do, but thought I'd check with the master! If not, do you have any creative (and simple to implement) solutions?
Thanks!
I don't believe there's a dynamic widget you can use, but you can certainly create one manually. Use a tool like Google Analytics to determine your most popular posts for whatever time period you're interested in.
Once you have your articles, create a Links widget and plug in the titles and URLs to the widget. There may be a number of different ways to accomplish this task.
Nice post. For me personally, I am more inclined to 'like' a page if I know I will get something out of it such as a discount on a product/ service.It did what they set out to achieve - to get me to engage with the company by dangling a carrot in front of my face, and I'll keep going back to see what else they have to offer. Inn my mind just doesn't 'feel' like black hat tactics.
I hear you GR. It doesn't seem wrong at first, but the more you start think about it, the more you start to question it. I try to replace the word "Like" or "Tweet" with "Link" and see if the sentence reads the same. When you do that, what you wrote starts to sound a little black hat. That's what I continue to struggle with.
Many self proclaimed SEO experts continue to jump on that ever so cliche bandwagon, admonishing everyone willing to listen that “cloaking will get you banned” and, more importantly, tantamount to corporate suicide.
Do these self appointed Police deputies for Google really understand their absurd claim when they brandish with so much authority, “you will be banned” or are they simply repeating hype and myths which they have read elsewhere, without the slightest real world experience?
There is an obvious misconception, if not total lack of understanding as to how cloaking is implemented, which is echoed throughout the Google fearing SEO community by clueless SEOs.
So, what do they claim will actually get “banned”? Your core web site? Your cloaked domains? Or, as is clearly the case, do these doomsayers even know the difference between the two?
The confusion stems from not understanding the difference between a core web site and a cloaked web site.
Let’s clear up this widepread misconception right now.
Can your core web site get banned by Google for cloaking? If that was true, then your competitor would hire us to build thousands of cloaked domains and point them to your primary web site so that it would be banned from the Google SERPs! Think of the damage that would be done if that was at all true. Not a very likely scenario, is it?
Can Google penalize or “ban” your site because of the traffic that your Affiliates or other blackhat Internet Marketer sends your way? If that was true, you would well expect the world’s top 1000 web properties to disappear from Google’s indices, and where would that leave them, loss of advertising revenue aside?
Cloaked domains have nothing to do with your core web site. In fact, we build cloaked domains for clients on an entirely separate server which is completely independent from the client web site or server. This ensures total arms length association between your core web site and your traffic generating campaign.
This will avoid silly mistakes like that which caused BMW to be caught out by Google in 2006. BTW, notwithstanding the ongoing hype and who-ha since then, the fact remains that BMW was removed from the SERPs by Google for a total of only 36 hours. Duhh!
We construct cloaked domains on our high security servers, maintain daily SEO strategies and drive organic traffic to a client web site, squeeze page or other lead generation page.
These cloaked domains are simply a relevant shadow mirror of your core domain using highly optimized content pages. Optimized to give search engine spiders what they want to see.
So can you really have your “cloaked” domains (remember, cloaked domains are different from your core domain) banned for cloaking? The answer is yes – if, for example, the search engines’ staff have manually checked and compared your spider content with what you are actually serving your human visitors. In a worst case scenario a human editor may come along to check the matter out.
On the other hand, it is highly unlikely that this would happen unless some silly campaign build mistake has taken place. If a cloaking campaign is implemented professionally and with sound marketing techniques, your chances of being caught out are minimal.
In any case, we neatly avoid cloaked domain penalization by working with what we call “Shadow Domains™ ”, i.e. domains dedicated to giving the search engines appropriate spider fodder while redirecting human visitors at system level, without delay, to the main domain proper.
That way, should your cloaked domain really ever be penalized for cloaking – again, an extremely rare occurrence, all you will normally lose is that particular Shadow (cloaked) Domain. But then, all we do is register a new one for you and start from scratch. Simple as that. No big loss!
Clueless SEOs will have you believe that your core web site is what will be banned, but then that’s because these self proclaimed experts have never implemented a cloaking campaign, let alone come close to understanding the current advancements in cloaking technology, but instead beat to the drum of fear, uncertainty and doubt created by Google in the SEO jungle.