Sneaky ?

[mpprh]

Hi

An established web creator suggested this to me :

If you have a website that consistently comes No1 for your chosen keywords (often official tourist or listing sites ?) adopt an "if you can't beat them, join them" approach.

He said why not try to attract their visitors by including them :

in your meta tags
in your text (not too visible)
in logo type ad (far bottom left) with text behind

The theory is that when people search on, say XXXXXXXX tourism (or whatever) , your site comes up just below them.

Worth trying ?

Peter

[paolo]

Very interesting...sneaky too. And many sites are not that good at their Title tags to describe themselves, which is what a search engine typically shows in a list of results. So if you come second and have a more gripping Title, that could really pay off.

[Paul Carmel]

I like this My site has a white background, If I was to add all the names of my relative competitors including the tourist office to my home page and then make the font white ( I have tried a test and it does disappear) Would the engines penalise me for this?

[mpprh]

Hi

Google says :

Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations:

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
Don't send automated queries to Google.
Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.


Some of the search engine blogs talk about hidden text. The consensus is that robots can detect it, and it is seen as trickery that should be avoided. Plenty of sites do it though !

Peter

[janskov]

I would not hide text on my page.
The latest major Google update was able to detect it and many websites disappeared over-night because of this.

[ashtondav]

Hide text and google will ban and never re-admit until you do much lengthy grovelling. And then 'sandbox' you for a few months. It is considered very bad behaviour.

The original idea, however, sounds good.

cheers

tudor

[craigkillick]

If I was to add all the names of my relative competitors including the tourist office to my home page and then make the font white ( I have tried a test and it does disappear) Would the engines penalise me for this?

Absolutely. its a dangerous game playing with the search engines. I know that this is a big no-no.
The only answer is relevant, specific content.

[Garri]

If I was to add all the names of my relative competitors including the tourist office to my home page and then make the font white ( I have tried a test and it does disappear)

Embrace your competitors and turn them into customers

[Cassis]

Just picked up on this thread - the following website

rivetiere.club.fr/index.htm

does well on some key words for obvious reasons, if you look at the top of the first page. Google does not seem to have penalised it as it has been top of the searches for 'chambres sarthe' for weeks!

Phil

[ashtondav]

Hmmmm

However devious (and it is devious and unattractive) it's not the same colour as the background. Poor old Google, being a thick rule driven computer rather than a human being, therefore puts it on page 1 and gives it a PR of 2, nicely illustrating the stupidity of this search engine. I am getting sick and tired of making legitimate searches and google presenting me with gobbledegoook results based on this type of idiocy!

[Garri]

I am getting sick and tired of making legitimate searches and google presenting me with gobbledegoook results based on this type of idiocy!

I'm with you on that one but it's still numbero uno - ichiban! <sigh>

I'm finding more joy using services such as del.icio.us and Technorati for hunting down good content. And have started to make good use of RSS - specific content coming to me, not the other way around!

Also, I spent a good few hours at the weekend loading and tagging all my bookmarks in del.icio.us (a very decent and honest little service which was bought by Yahoo I believe but still maintains it's independence, seemingly). I'm sure Yahoo will go and spoil it, as they are starting to do with Flickr.