In Search of Optimization

Someone posted a comment in one of my previous blog posts and the URL he included in his comment gave me the urge to write this post. It’s not that he spammed my blog. Rather, he posted a URL which shows Bad SEO in action.

So, what is Bad SEO? It’s pretty hard to explain in words so I thought, why not create a mini-case study and post it here. Thus, I present to you the “SEOLUV Bad SEO Mini-Case Study”. I call it mini because I will only be showing you three examples of bad SEO as performed by self-professed SEO Mr. Michael Rogers. I say self-professed because he really doesn’t know SEO. In fact, he asks me tons of stuff about SEO and talks tons of nonsense too.

Anyway, here are the 3 points that I wish to present.

1. Do not Spam other people’s Blogs

Michael Rogers also known as seoluv shows us a good example of blog spamming when he spammed the blog of Matt Cutts himself. Here’s a screenshot of said blog spam.

This blog spam can be seen HERE.

So, why is this spam? One is that he posts 3 successive comments. In the first post, he somehow accuses that someone manipulates the search engine results page. Next, he posts as seoluv and posts nonsense. Then third, he posts a Michael Rogers again and posts more nonsense which according to him is in reply to Matt’s request for some reading suggestions.

The first two posts link to seoluv.com and the third post links to his blogspot address. Good thing is that modern day blogs include the ‘rel=”nofollow”‘ attribute which means that his links won’t be followed by most search engine spiders.

2. Do not spam forums

A quick search of the phrase seoluv forum in google lead me to this gov.ph’s forum thread. Here’s a screenshot of seoluv spamming the gov.ph’s forum.

Ok, in this screenshot, I want you to take a look at the posts made by williamkeleher. Both his posts have URLs on top of his posts obviously showing that he merely wants to promote his websites. His second post is even worst than the first. Not only does it have 3 URLs on top of his post. It also attempts to create a brand for ‘SEOLUV’.

Now, here’s the third and last.

3. Do not spam wikipedia!

Oh yes, Mr. Michael Rogers a.k.a. seoluv did it. He tried spamming wikipedia but failed. Wikipedia deleted his post but I was still able to grab a screenshot of google’s cache. I found out about it when I searched for ’seoluv’ in google and found his wikipedia post at #8. Below is a cropped screenshot of the google serps.

Here’s google’s cache which shows how seoluv’s wikipedia entry looked like when it was last crawled by googlebot last August 22, 2006:

Click the image to enlarge.

If you take a closer look at the above image, you will notice that what seoluv posted in wikipedia is strikingly similar to what he posted in gov.ph’s forum. Obviously, he is just spamming.

Good thing is that Wikipedia doesn’t tolerate spam and thus removed seoluv’s spam post. Here’s the current wikipedia page as of this article’s time of writing and below is a screenshot. Note that wikipedia deleted his post because it is obviously spam.

Other things to avoid

There are many more ways to do bad SEO but I think I’ve already made my point. I have to say that bad SEO techniques sometimes work and they sometimes help but they also ruin your reputation as a respectable Search Engine Optimization expert.

In conclusion…

My advise is stick to the basics and if you want to take a step further into deeper and more complex SEO strategies, make sure that you don’t step on other people’s toes. This way, you will be known among others as a true SEO expert. SEO is not just getting on the first page of the SERPS. SEO is a lifestyle and it will reflect what kind of a person you are.