Problogger Diary

1. The No-Nos.
In the previous posts, you’ve seen what it takes to be a blogger, what to write about, how to make the moolah, and so on. The idea of making money from the comfort of your desktop is an enticing
idea indeed, but it is this idea that drives many a blogger into promoting one’s blog by unethical means. Rapid changes in search engine optimisation, or, in simple terms, the advent of smarter
technology, would mean only one thing—the death of your blog. Greed kills. To be less dramatic, they’ll catch you sooner or later! Promoting a blog or seeking revenue from it is no sin, but it is
the extent to which this is done that decides a blog’s ethical aspect. We’re assuming you’ve understood that making money from a blog demands a lot of page views and means there should
be ads on the page.

2. Black Hat Blogging.
There exist greedy folks who place too many ads and links on their page, and promote their blog by making use of certain underhanded SEO techniques. These, and more, are blanketed under the
term “Black Hat Blogging.”

Since we’re all Google addicts here, let’s get a closer insight into its search engine and how it works. Firstly, Google uses an algorithm called PageRank, which does what it’s supposed to do-rank some pages over others, which appear earlier in the search results. (Technically, it’s not just the original PageRank algorithm now, but we’ll just say “PageRank” for simplicity’s sake.) PageRank analyses links available for the search engine and assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set. PageRank was developed at Stanford University by Larry Page (hence the
name PageRank) and Sergey Brin as part of a research project about a new kind of search engine.


Search engine optimisers widely agree that the things that influence a page’s rankings include:

? Keywords in the Title tag.

? Keywords in links pointing to the page.

? Keywords appearing in visible text.

? Link popularity (PageRank for Google) of the page. “Black hat” SEO are methods to try to improve rankings that are disapproved of by the search engines and/or involve deception. This can range from text that is “hidden,” as for example, text coloured similar to the background, or by redirecting users
from a page that is optimised for search engines to one that is more human-friendly. As a general rule, a method that sends a user to a page that is different from the page the search engine
ranked is black hat.

Search engines can and do penalise sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines’ algorithms, or by a manual review of a site.
An infamous example is the February 2006 Google removal of both the BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany sites for use of deceptive practices. However, both companies quickly apologised, fixed
the offending pages, and were restored to Google’s list.

3. Spamdexing.
Another such method is known as spamdexing, or search engine spamming. This is the practice of creating Web pages that will be indexed by search engines in order to increase the chance of a site
or page being placed close to the beginning of search engine results, or to influence the category to which the page is assigned.

“Google bombing” is another form of search engine result manipulation, which involves placing hyperlinks that directly affect the rank of other sites. Some blogs are created for monetising the
site using advertising programs such as Google AdSense. Such “Made for AdSense” (MFA) blogs have no redeeming value except to get visitors to the site for the sole purpose of clicking on advertise-
ments. MFA sites are considered to be spamming search engines and providing surfers with less-than-satisfactory search results. These types of sites are being eliminated in various search engines, and sometimes show up as supplemental results instead of being displayed in the main results.

4. The Legalities.
Blogging has brought with it a range of legal liabilities—employers have fired employees who maintain personal blogs that discuss their employers. The major areas of concern are the issues of proprietary or confidential information, and defamation. Several cases have been brought before the national courts against bloggers, and the courts have returned with mixed verdicts.

In Britain, a college lecturer contributed to a blog in which she referred to a politician (who had also expressed his views in the same blog) using various uncomplimentary names, including referring to him as a “Nazi.” The politician found out the real name of the lecturer (she wrote under a pseudonym) via the ISP, and successfully sued her for £10,000 (Rs 9 lakh) in damages and £7,200 (Rs 6.5 lakh) in costs.

In India, blogger Gaurav Sabnis resigned from IBM after his posts exposing the false claims of a management school, IIPM, led to the IIPM management threatening to burn their IBM laptops as
a sign of protest against him.

Black hat methods might seem easy to implement in the beginning, but one should remember that by going against the rules, they are only pitting themselves against the largest, smartest and
fastest workforces on the planet—the search engines! Yes, it is about writing smart code, but eventually, the complexity and the work hours it demands would easily outweigh the net revenue earned.

Posted by Problogger Diary at Monday, March 30, 2009