With the millions upon millions of websites out there, the challenge that businesses face is no longer to simply have a website, but to have that website show up as high as possible in search queries.
That glaring need has led to a slew of companies and services offering search engine optimization. Most of these SEO services are completely legitimate (referred to as "white hat" services), but there are many that resort to shady and ethically questionable tactics. The latter, called "black hat" services, essentially pad traffic numbers and spam their way to higher search results.
This seedy SEO underbelly doesn't garner a ton of press, mostly because of the fact that regardless of the negative implications, it isn't technically against the law. However, poor SEO practices can have very bad consequences. For instance, there was an interesting story in The New York Times on Saturday about JC Penney falling into the black hat SEO trap.
What happened is that a third party SEO service the retailer hired spread thousands of links that all redirected back to JC Penny's site. And because link-backs are a major component of SEO, JC Penney quickly rose to the No. 1 result for practically all of their product lines, from jeans to bedding to home decor. They beat out larger retailers and online shopping giants like Amazon. In fact, if you searched for a specific brand, you were more likely to see JC Penney than the brand's own website.
Many of the sites that had the JC Penney link backs weren't relevant to JC Penny's target demographic or product market, and many weren't even active websites.
While not illegal, search engines like Google and Yahoo have zero tolerance for black hat SEO tactics like this. And when the Google Gestapo (I doubt that's the official title, but I think it works) found out, they manually readjusted JC Penney's search standings...to the 6th or 7th page.
JC Penney claims they had no idea this was all going on, and promptly fired the service once the story broke. However, the damage was done to both their online presence and the company's reputation as a whole. This situation also serves as a reminder to those looking to boost their SEO to take the time to carefully screen out the questionable services and stick to increasing their organic website traffic.
