When it comes to off site SEO, there are three methods you can use to develop links to your website in order for it to rank well. These are:
- White hat techniques which Google and other search engines love and they involve no underhanded tactics.
- Grey hat techniques which aren’t as favoured and (when flaunted) can potentially get your website into trouble.
- Black hat techniques which are a major no-no. Under no circumstances should these tactics be utilised, as the consequences of getting caught can be fatal for your website.
We have previously written for .net magazine about the types of tactics that comprise black hat techniques and the importance of not employing them. A prime example of which is J.C. Penney, an American department store the equivalent of Debenhams here in the UK. Though the tactics employed by J.C. Penney’s SEO agency were undoubtedly underhanded (so it seems), the way in which they came to light has also been the subject of some debate…
On the 12th of February this year, the New York Times published an article entitled ‘The Dirty Little Secrets of Search’, giving details of the unrelated backlinks that were generated to the J.C. Penney website. Examples that they use in the article include site-wide footer links and generously littered links on unrelated and seemingly low quality websites (some of which had next to no content at all). The question was raised at the time about how the NYT might have come across this information; as speculation concerning how the store’s competitors stood to benefit from such revelations of wrong-doing persisted.
So what effect did this have on J.C. Penney and their search engine positions?
They went from position 1 for keywords such as ‘Samsonite Carry-on Luggage’ and ‘Living Room Furniture’ to 71 and 68 respectively within a space of two hours.
And what effect will this have on J.C. Penney’s online sales from organic search traffic?
Well that’s the multimillion-dollar question; so bear with me while we work out a monetary figure.
Take for example the keyword ‘Dresses’ - it receives approximately 301,000 exact searches each month. From research carried out, the website in position 1 receives around 35% of the clicks (just short of double the number of clicks the website in position 2 receives). So being in position 1 for the keyword ‘Dresses’ would mean J.C. Penney had received around 105,350 clicks each month. Using the first 100 results on their website for the search ‘dresses’, the average price per item is $55.49 (approximately £33.79) and other research has shown that a reasonable conversion rate would be 5%.
So if 5% of the 105,350 searches for dresses converted into a sale, at an average cost of £33.79, that means that J.C. Penney was set to make around £177,988.825 a month, just from the keyword ‘Dresses’ alone. So the financial implication of being dropped in Google was massive when looking at this type of figures. Imagine what it would be like if their conversion rate was nearer 10 - 15%, then take into account the number of broad searches and the figure would be much higher.
However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom for the department store. Google can be sympathetic to a company’s needs and appreciate that (at times) it isn’t their fault. Within a number of weeks (if not months) J.C. Penney were back ranking in the search engines, not because their ban was lifted, but because Google works with companies that have been penalised to show them the error of their ways.
J.C. Penney are just one example of a well-known company that has fallen foul of Google’s rules by adopting black hat techniques in the past decade.
Back in 2006, BMW were penalised for breaching Google’s guidelines, but openly admitted to what they had done (which was using doorway pages to increase the number of visitors to a website). At the time, Google was still using Page Rank as its primary metric to compare websites and it instantly returned BMW to Page Rank Zero (“PR0”).
At the beginning of 2008, Go Compare was blacklisted for “irregular inbound links” and then again in April 2009 (presumably for the same offence). Unfortunately this didn’t stick and they were able to develop their brand further (which means that we still have to tolerate those awful television commercials). A few months later, in July 2008, moneysupermarket.com were also penalised by Google for making use of black hat techniques. It is largely due to their lack of SEO foresight that these comparison sites have since had to resort to such expensive (and aggravating) TV ad-campaigns.
These are all high profile examples of black hat SEO and the negative impact that it can have on a company. The J.C. Penney example in particular emphasises that the short term windfalls of employing such underhanded tactics are not contributory to the long term success of a company.
Resources:
NY Times
Search Engine Journal
Chitika
eConsultancy
Wikipedia
Hitwise
This Is Money
BBC
