In their ongoing struggles to claw their way to the top, webmaster after webmaster keeps coming up with new ways to subvert the ranking systems of search engines, thereby gaining the instant and eternal ire of the small army of programmers who run them.

When, not if, this army catches wind of your newest transgression, you better believe they'll start working on new computer programs designed to seek and negate what they consider your unfair advantage. Users of search engines, and your competitors, would probably applaud their actions.

The results? Your good search engine results vanish. Bad results vanish, too, because your site has literally disappeared from search engines. This is when it dawns on you: "They got me." Undoing the damage can mean getting a new domain name and a new host; or starting over from scratch. I've seen agents plunder years worth of growing search engine success in this manner.

Usually, most sites that vanish from search engines aren't using newfangled subversive techniques. They're unknowingly using methods that search engines have already figured out how to deal with. Here's a short list of the most common. Other tricks are often derivatives of these.

Spam doorway pages

On the web, spam means unwanted online gunk, such as unsolicited emails. Doorway pages are pages that aren't really part of your site. They were created just for search engines. Put them together and you get Spam Doorway Pages, which are devoid of real content, packed instead with repetitive keyword gibberish. Though you might find them listed in search engines, you'll never lay eyes on them, as their subversive trick amounts to an instant "redirect," which transparently sends you to real web pages. For your viewing pleasure, here's a real spam doorway page, stripped of redirects so you can actually see what these things look like. Search engines hate spam doorway pages. You can see why.

Keyword stuffing

Stuff 12 keywords in the title, another 15 in the first paragraph, a couple dozen in the captions... It's another obvious trick that search engines got hip to in the stone age of the web. It's not too hard to figure out that "real estate, real estate, real estate, real estate, real estate" isn't for human consumption! This also has the nice added effect of making your pages unintelligible to humans, which leads to the next tired and true, sure-fire, get you banned trick...

Invisible text

This is one of the original and most simplistic tricks used by webmasters: Cram key words on a web page but make them the same color as the background so it doesn't confuse visitors. Of course, since search engines review sites with computer programs, not eyeballs, they read all those otherwise invisible keywords. This trick was detected and dealt with years ago by most search engines. Still, people keep learning the hard way that stuff like this ends up making your site just as invisible as the text you are trying to hide. A twist on this is making text too tiny to see. A little different, but the results are the same.

Duplicate pages or sites

Take your same site or pages from your site, and make a bunch of copies, installing them under a different directory or domain name. It's the same content, but with a different web address. Search engines look for mirrored content! Use this technique, and instead of doubling your search engine success, you could end up with half of nothing.

Content doesn't match

This amounts to telling them one thing, but giving them something else altogether: "Looking for homes for sale in Boston? Click Here!" But the page they actually get is for mortgages, or rental properties, or "invesment opportunities." Webmasters often try to pull off this slight of hand with Meta Tags, particularly the key word Meta Tag. Even though search engines don't pay much attention to most Meta Tag information - read Search Engine Myth #1: Meta Tags Are Important - they do check to see if you are trying to deceive them by stuffing key words in there that don't pertain to the actual content of your pages. You should know that they look for this incongruous content - and intent - in your site altogether, not just in Meta Tags!

Is search engine optimization obsolete?

Even if you did come up with the silver bullet trick that slayed all search engines, it would never last. Webmasters would start adding your trick to their pages within about 10 seconds of seeing your site hammer everyone else in search engine results. Back to the drawing board. And nowadays, most of these "on the page" techniques play second fiddle to things that no individual webmaster can effect, such as various measures of popularity, traffic patterns, and so on.

What can you do? Is search engine optimization obsolete? No, it's just one part of the puzzle of successfully marketing a web site. In terms of optimization itself, you have to decide if you want to play the "trick the search engine game" and rise and fall on the success or failure of your latest trick, or be in it for the long haul.

Published: December 24, 2001

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Lawrence Schoeffler is Vice President and General Manager of the Advanced Access and Best Image Marketing Group, a division of Dominion Enterprises, and the founder of NUMBER1EXPERT. Advanced Access is the industry leader in website design, hosting and marketing, with 30,000 real estate agent clients, exclusive endorsements by over 10 State Realtor Associations and growing, and the Preferred Provider for over 40% of the National Association of Realtors' members. See their award-winning websites and marketing solutions. NUMBER1EXPERT is the industry's premium Internet marketing service -- offered exclusively by Best Image to Top Selling Agents. Agents must earn NUMBER1EXPERT credentials to gain access to this suite of acclaimed marketing solutions including enhanced, priority, featured, special and/or members-only advertising across the web. Find out more about NUMBER1EXPERTS - some of the top agents in America - with free Profiles of Internet Masters videos and webinars. Email Lawrence at .