SEO Horror Story #9
Back in 2001 I emigrated from the UK to Australia and found work at a search marketing agency (name withheld to protect the, umm innocent). These were the days when the line was not clearly drawn in the sand for webmasters, so *ahem* innovative practices were alarmingly successful. Our client list included some of Australia’s largest sites and we impressed them with our results.
We created doorway pages, obtained links from a variety of sources and experimented with sneaky redirects – however, the most effective tactic for generating new business was to add a 1×1 transparent gif to the footer of EVERY client doorway page (hosted on their domain of course) with an alt of “search engine optimisation” and a link to our agency’s home page. Fellow employees were encouraged (by the CEO no less) to add these hidden links to their own networks. Within a month we were #1 in Google for ’search engine optimisation’ and business was booming. As you’d expect, this made us a huge target and a while later I was on a conference call with the (then unknown) Matt Cutts who insisted we remove these naughty links by the end of the month. We promised to do so, and complied by the given deadline. Unfortunately a disgruntled ex-employee refused to remove these links from his personal affiliate network and to this very day – 8 years later – that domain is still blacklisted.
Thankfully times have changed, but lessons were learned – if you’re going to spam your way to the top, avoid a keyword phrase that your SEO competitors are lusting after!
*sigh* if only I’d kept Matt’s phone number…
