Search engines will suspect a 'Black Hat' ..when they assume somebody has made a website as if overnight and then has made a strategy to get as many links as fast as possible with the intention to possibly sell some bogus product or service..and then disappear off the Internet.
Those types of con sites were happening a lot more than 6 years ago so Google created a strategy against that.
Google wants to see domain names and websites at least 1 year old before they begin aquiring mass links and activity. This supposedly allows them to believe that your site is more believable in its aquiring activity and links. So they do put first year sites in something many call the Sandbox.
Its possible that if you aquire 5,000 links in first year that your site could be reviewed or banned.
But that's where the stipulation comes in.. if you do SEO (search engine optimization) you would've realized that some websites pop up, and then maybe they get real world news coverage, maybe they have done a video or a product ..something that gets them on the national news.
Those sites suddenly get mass links, and mass traffic. The search engines haven't explained how they filter those yet..but those sites dont usually get banned. If anything, its better to assume that the search engines have publicized a standard that seems very strict , perhaps to keep all websites on their toes. The line between BlackHat and WhiteHat has become blurred in many ways. Usually though if your site takes part in site hijacking, link farmings, and blog teams..thats considered BlackHat. Many peoples dont even realize what true BlackHat would look like , if they're not exceptionally computer savy. That is what can make things skewed.
For an easy example , consider many of those SEO companies. You pay them and they evaluate your site , its keyword density, and then they'll do whatever their 'secret' is to help move your site up in the search engines and Internet exposure.
Many would assume = "oh OK, thats nice" You might pay them a lot of money assuming they're doing something real deep in computer world , but you'd assume it legal. But consider another factor the search engines are just now starting to confront as their next BlackHat targets in the battle to tr yto make search engines relevant. The fact that many of those 'SEO companies' ..are just large networks of peoples, some of them from foreign countries like India where they work real cheap.
Here's what those guys do..
Imagine their SEO company has 1,000 peoples..they dont work in any building, they're scattered out around the world perhaps..but they all 'work for' a company. They all have accounts at every popular social blogger site, forum, etc. Have you noticed that many sites now will rate 'best of' by how many votes the public gives? Look at Dig.com and YouTube.com as a few. Now imagine those 1,000 people with accounts on all the popular sites.
They all vote for your site, but they talk about it in a way that appears as if there's no connection between the peoples. Your site may get moved to front page for being the most popular that day or week. Your site is then sitting on a page that has a extremely high PageRank and not to mention millions of people go through those sites everyday ,and they're definitely going to see your site featured on the front page. There's your traffic and spike in sudden popularity. You look at your stats..and wow, you've jumped fro ma few visitors a day to tens of thousands. That SEO company must REALLY know what they're doing you might say? If you want to keep the traffic and the popularity..you must continue to hire their services..but guess what? That's considered extreme BlackHat..if they were to get busted..your site gets banned and all the sites they're hovering.
The search engine companies are still trying to create paths into the Internet to try to create a credible systems for scoring / measuring websites. If they can't do that they obviously wouldn't have jobs or investors anymore ..so they're tyrin to like heck to do it. In the mean time there are tens of millions of webmasters, SEO's , and SEO 'companies' ..that are out there everyday probing the systems and trying to crack search engines ..for the same reasons..its big money to them. If you can take a website for a high end million dollar company and get it placed into the first page of search engines they'll pay a lot of money for it. The next time you're surfing around the Internet, try to see it through 'SEO' perspective.. ask yourself who is really on those popular sites for legitimate purposes, and which are perhaps just large teams of people getting as much exposure for sites they're being paid to promote? If you have been into forums on the Internet you've probably noticed that when you make a post , you'll get a ton of single sentence, responses ..many of them not even in full sentence form. It's because those peoples have a link under their name as their forum 'signature' and it creates a link back to their site on every forum page they post to.
So peoples that just want to play fair and get their sites listed high.. be aware that 'highly competitive keywords' are being crawled over like ants by all those companies and SEOs etc..because thats where the big money is at for them right now. If you have to use those types of keywords, make sure you make articles , tons of them.. get people writing one or more a day at least filled with unique ways of naming your keywords. This creates 'long tail phrases' . Imagine if widgets was your keyword for what youre tyring to sell and if you could barely stay on the 3rd page of Google let alone the first page.. in your articles ifyou had written about "Widgets in California" "Widgets in Nevada" etc .. along with "Color Widgets" and "Custom Widgets" etc.
what happens is, you become more of an authority of those long tail key phrases. When people type "Widgets" into Google..those other sites pop up, but theres still search traffic for people that type specifically = "Widgets in California" etc.
That's what search engines want anyway, they want to break down the mass bulk into specific targeted areas ..that will keep peoples basically hogging up the keywords and deterring others from the Internet. Then they will use their adwords so that you can pay for ads in your target zone , while also trying to make your site relevant and an 'authority' ..by adding tons and tons of content. The search engines would obviously like to see it where all SEO teams are replaced by content writers. Then you'll hire people to write about your company, products etc ..instead of trying to hype your site on popularity websites. Ever wonder why companies make those free sites like MySpace and YouTube and Dig etc ? Those sites end up getting PageRanks of 8 and 9's .. millions of people linked and interlinked to them, and the sites become Popularity wells. They're perhaps the search engines biggest threat right now. Since those sites want the high PR rankings and they make their sites so that public gets to vote. Those vote systems can be exploited, the sites wouldnt really care so long as they have high PR. That PR gets first pages in Google and other search engines. It'll be interesting to see as search engines perhaps start canceling those sites credibility factors. The Internet is the wild west but its slowly being domesticated as the search engines keep sending in more and more Sheriffs into virtual town. Problem is though, the bandits and outlaws keep finding ways to hijack them gold trains so far.. In the mean time if you're a townsfolk that dont want to get involved in all that but yet you want your site store to show up in existence of search engines... do the articles, long tail phrases, get listed in directories lots of them after your site is over 1 yr old .. do pay per click Adwords on Google, Yahoo, and MSN...and add new articles every week. 10 per week at least. and make sure to put them all in your sitemap.xml
The battles in the wild west wage on.. ever notice when you search for a new site name..you see most of them names are taken..but when you go to that site..its just as if a parked domain with lots of crap links? .. Those are sites that SEO and other companies bought up..they're either holding them so we cant get them..OR , they're letting them age...to get past that 1 yr point. (the older your site is..the more credibility its given by search engines.)
So what youre seeing ..is basically an SEO wine rack.. with all them domain names being aged and prepared for some actual big site.. at some point.
Unless the Google Sheriffs can stop it ..all them wine racks going to be gettin bootlegged like running moonshine by the outlaws.
One of our companies main keywords would be something like "brochures" ..we cant get our wagon through that territory without getting hijacked by bandits or stopped every 2 seconds by the Sheriff outposts.. but if you search "color large envelopes" and all kinds of long tail phrases , we get the wagon through to #1 placement. Its not as high of traffic as brochures would be.. but when you add up a whole lots of them long tail phrases.. it gets some of the townsfolk through to find our store sittin out there on the wild west Internet prarie
So good luck.. and dont say Dakota! lol
