Search Engine Optimization...
 

I was bored today and decided to read a few articles on search engine optimization.

I came across articles on cloaking and creating doorway pages.

Some articles touted it as a great way to get search engine traffic and other articles said to steer clear of it and it can do great harm.

Some said these tactics were ok in moderation, others said to stay away from these tactics completely.

Is there a middle ground? Are there times when cloaking is acceptable and will benefit you in the long term? Is there an acceptable way to create doorway pages and not get blacklisted?

Is this something that can be answered reliably?

There is no middle ground with autogenerated doorway pages, if you do it and they are recognizable as doorways then you risk getting banned if caught, it's up to you whether you want to take that risk or not.

Cloaking is more of a grey area. Although with google at least it's against the TOS, you can do it and get away with it if you fly under the radar, and most people agree that you are fine doing it as long as you are just "cleaning up" your html on your already solid content pages. If you are redirecting wholesale into a surfer trap then that is grounds for a banning once you're caught. Once again, there are no guarantees and if you aren't willing to pay the price (getting domains banned) then don't do it.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations:

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
Don't send automated queries to Google.
Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

My question about search engine cloaking: How exactly do you know when it's a search engine spider on your site. Does anyone here have a list of the IP's or domains that the spiders come from so you can serve them the cloaked pages when it comes to your site?

-Tony

"That's not to say that all doorway pages are evil. Sophisticated doorway pages (those that contain unique optimized text) are still an excellent way to rank with the search engines. And if your web site has dynamic or otherwise unspiderable content, doorway pages may be the only solution."

Any comments on that?

yea, google picks up on it real easy. It's someting that has been around for a long time and they identify it well. If you want to play with it just make sure you use throw away domains..

so it's a crapshoot basically. it may earn me a higher ranking, or it may get me banned.

however, if it earns me a higher ranking, that doesn't last forever, correct? it's possible that during the next update, i'll get banned, right?

googlebot

64.68.88.177 or 64.68.88.xxx

yea or you also risk other webmasters turning your site into google too..that happens a lot also.

i can imagine. i'm not sure what i think of that though.

hey man, combine a bunch of affiliate datafeeds into autogenerate pages...maybe grab some public domain content and put it into the mix.

I see nothing wrong with doorways as long as you're providing relevant results. I have thousands of cloaked pages in google but they all lead to a relevant site that filters the traffic correctly.

exactly

the fact is if you sell shoes and you target the keywork porn it wont do anything for anyone just piss surfers off.

Many will say doorways and other SE tools are bullshit and it doesnt work but at the same time do it themselves.

why do you even bother posting?

i would stay far far away from those methods, might get you a quick buck but will hurt you in the long run

do you have any material to promote the site in your sig?
i signed up, but i can only find one banner...