The Truth About Cloaking and Other Bad SEO Habits
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David
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December 14th, 2012
So, I'm pretty sure you won't find yourself cloaking or performing other Black Hat SEO practices without knowing what they are. This isn't so much of an avoid-doing-this post, as a this-is-what-it-is one. I want you to know how bad SEO habits work so that you can identify them ahead of time, avoid doing them (okay, so a little bit of this), and understand even more about search engines work.
Not this kind of cloaking! (Photo credit: ARendle)
What is cloaking in the first place?
Cloaking, besides seeming like something that should happen in Hogwarts, is a bad SEO habit in which a different web page is shown to viewers depending on whether or not they are a human or a search engine.
Basically, cloaking checks the IP address of the device running the search, and based on that, it will display webpage X or Y.
Why would someone cloak something?
This might seem confusing.
How would you get the good, natural traffic you want if you're lying to the bouncer of the club?Example: Let's say you want to run a site on "natural enhancement products," but you want Google to think you're blogging about "sexual health." You might show Google a page about sexual health, meaning you're already narrowing down your potential website visitors to those interested in virility and the rest. Instead of showing them useful, practical information, you're going to give them a sales page for whichever chemical cocktail you're hocking.
The directions to good SEO (Photo by Stuart Miles via FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
You show Google your Sunday School side, but you really do the naughty stuff under a different guise.
This requires having a bit more web knowledge than a basic, beginning web developer might have. It's not exactly something you'd do accidentally, but there are times you might want to use it.
Maybe you wish you had more traffic for topic X because you know that topic X readers would enjoy your topic Y content. So, you stuff keywords that about topic X into your topic Y page. Well, Google and the other search engines know what you're doing, and they won't treat you very kindly.
Remember: search engines reward good, natural content and linking behaviors. They see through your tricks and bad magic!
If you're working with a developer who wants to do one thing for the search engines and another for the actual reader, be wary. This shouldn't be happening, and bad SEO, like cloaking, can jeopardize the good relationship you've been developing with Google.
For more information on different types of bad SEO habits, please visit the sites below. Again, this is never an accident!
Want to check a website for cloaking? Here's a simple, free Cloaking Checker to find out just that!