How do Baidu and Google search engines determine SEO cheating?

This article is not to teach you how to cheat by using SEO cheating methods, but mainly to share the search engine's criteria for judging SEO cheating. In this way, you can pay more attention to it during the SEO process.

Before I officially share, let me tell you a true story.

If you are still engaged in SEO, have you found in many SEO communication groups that people often say: It is difficult to get external links, so find a mass mailing tool; if you cannot exchange friendly links, just buy them directly.

Yes or no? In fact, these are already considered SEO cheating methods. If you do this, then you may already be the focus of search engines.

OK, you might say, ignorance is bliss. Or you might say, I don’t know what that is called cheating. I heard from XXX that you can get ranked by buying links, increasing traffic, and setting up a site group.

How do Baidu/Google search engines determine SEO cheating?

In fact, the following judgment criteria of Baidu and Google are not officially stated. They were issued by Dianshi Forum more than ten years ago (SEO senior ZAC teacher is one of the co-founders), as shown in the figure. Are you benefiting from it now? It is still useful. Here are some examples.

If you want to see the official statement, it’s very simple. Just look at the algorithms updated by the official in recent years and you will know. For example, the Jinfeng algorithm that attacks aggregation pages. At the end of the article, there are related recommendations for Baidu and Google algorithms.

1. Baidu's judgment criteria and examples for SEO cheating

1. Deliberately add keywords that are irrelevant to the content of the web page anywhere in the source code of the web page

For example: Many people will add keywords that are irrelevant to the positioning of their website to the web pages they want to rank. How to check it? Check the source code of the web page (ctrl+u), and then use search (ctrl+f) to find it. I use my own blog as an example, this is correct.

2. Deliberately repeat certain keywords in large quantities anywhere in the source code of the web page

Even if the keywords are relevant to the content of the webpage, intentional duplication is considered cheating.

Explanation example: This article is mainly aimed at combating the first stage of SEO where keywords are king , and ranking is mainly achieved by piling up the same keywords in web page titles, keywords, and descriptions. Even in 2020, there are still people cheating in this way~

3. Add hidden text to the web page that is readable by search engines but invisible to users

Whether it is using text with the same background color, super small font size text, text hidden layer, or abusing image ALT, etc., it is cheating.

I don’t see this type of thing very often now, but I saw it quite often in 2011 and 2012 when I was changing links. For example, the text of the friendly link can be the same color as the background, the font size can be extra small, the friendly link can be hidden, etc.

4. Deliberately creating a large number of links pointing to a certain URL

This mainly refers to the second stage of SEO when external links are king. Many people build some so-called secondary sites and then divert traffic to the main site. This also includes purchased and mass-sent spam links as mentioned earlier. In fact, search engines can recognize these.

Spam links refer to leaving your own links anywhere else where you can leave messages, such as forums, blogs, message boards, social media sites, and websites with comment functions. They are most common in Baidu Tieba. Buy some mass messaging software to send mass messages.

The word "intentionally" above. What kind of links will the search engine not consider as cheating and will not punish you? The answer is two words: naturally. You may ask, isn't it intentional to find the same people to exchange links? no. Because in addition to intentional, there is also the word "large amount". If you change it yourself, do you have the time and experience to change a large amount?

Why is buying links bad? One reason is that many newcomers who buy links cannot tell whether the URL link is good or bad, for example, it may contain some pornographic, gambling, drug-related, black and gray words that are banned by search engines. Second, several years ago, the platform dedicated to buying and selling links was already monitored by Baidu.

If you say, I found a good website and I used public relations (PR) and spent a small amount of money to get it, is that okay? sure. I'm not going to kill you with one blow.

5. For the same URL, allow search engines and users to access web pages with different contents (including using redirection and other behaviors).

Hidden pages are specially optimized pages that are displayed to search engines when they crawl website pages. Some web pages use programs or scripts to detect whether the visitor is a search engine or an ordinary user. If it is a search engine, the web page will return an optimized version of the web page. If the visitor is an ordinary person, another version will be returned.

6. Cheating is defined as targeting the website, not the web page

Even if only one page on a website cheats, the website is considered to have cheating behavior.

7. Websites that have links pointing to cheating websites will be jointly liable and will also be considered cheating.

However, the website pointed to by the link on the cheating website is not considered cheating.

Regarding this point, why many websites are downgraded and look for others to exchange links, but others are unwilling to do so because they are afraid of being implicated. Most of the demoted websites are caused by cheating, and only a small number of them are either not updated or have server problems.

So when you are doing SEO optimization, you must be more careful.

In fact, in addition to the above seven points, there are many more that can be judged. For example, many of the website’s external links suddenly disappeared. Many people don’t develop the habit of checking their website’s external links every week. If some of them are removed or some websites are cheating, it will have an impact.

Seeing this, I believe you will ask a question: So, there are so many quick ranking websites on the market now, why didn’t Baidu detect it? Isn’t quick ranking considered cheating?

I just want to say here that I recommend you to do formal optimization and create good content. Quick ranking is not always good. I have encountered many quick ranking websites, or some quick ranking platforms are no longer working. There are some that can, and they are also changing with the changes in Baidu.

However, whether it is Baidu's algorithm or the currently popular quick ranking technology, there are people behind it, so it can be considered a confrontation.

2. Google’s judgment criteria and examples for SEO cheating

1. Use hidden text or hidden links

The hidden text or links here are invisible to ordinary users and are only for search engines to see. It usually contains a large number of keywords with the intention of increasing the keyword density and relevance of the text.

Hidden links are usually pages on your own website that link to you. This is commonly seen in hacking into other websites and adding hidden links pointing to one's own website.

2. Hiding the real content or deceptive redirection

Many people like to use 301 redirects. I remember that XXX in the circle used 301 to quickly improve his ranking and shared it with us. However, normal 301 such as URL standardization can be used. If it is deceptive, it is recommended not to use it. Otherwise, if it is detected, no one will be able to help you.

3. Send automated queries to Google

Google officially says, don't send automated queries to Google. To put it simply, it is similar to the packet sending technology used in Baidu Quick Ranking.

The so-called packet sending, in simple terms, is to take advantage of the search engine's vulnerabilities to send data requests and then transmit the corresponding data. Of course, this set of data can also be regarded as click data, but this set of data is transmitted in the form of data packets...

4. Loading web pages with irrelevant terms

To put it simply, it is actually adding irrelevant keywords to the web page as mentioned above in Baidu. Because the purpose of using some so-called popular and irrelevant keywords is just to obtain traffic from that keyword.

5. Creating multiple web pages, subdomains, or domains with a lot of duplicate content

If a website contains a lot of duplicate content, search engines will reduce its indexing and consider the content provided by the website to be of low value. This will reduce the website's credibility in search engines, and the same is true for Baidu.

6. Creating web pages that install viruses (e.g., Trojan horses) or other harmful software

This needs no explanation. For example, if this webpage itself is harmful to the user's computer, Google will definitely judge it as cheating, and then downgrade it, or even delete it from the search engine results.

7. Using "doorway pages" created specifically for search engines, or "cookie cutter" methods such as affiliate programs that have little or no original content

Cheaters usually target different keywords and create a large number of low-quality pages that are not even meaningful and are just filled with keywords. Most of these words are long-tail keywords, hoping that these pages can bring a certain amount of traffic and ranking.

In short, if you want to do it in the long run, it is recommended to do formal SEO. Of course, if everyone else is queuing quickly and you are not, you will be at a disadvantage at the moment. I don't encourage it, but I don't oppose it either. It's your choice.

Author: Bai Yangseo

Source: Baiyangseo