SEO Don’t: Cloaking

by Alexis Siemon (08/4/2008)

This week, a story came to my attention that I don’t hear too often. It seems there’s some buzz around the real estate industry that a fairly well-known website is participating in cloaking.

If this news is true, it could mean two things: They did it on purpose, in which case Papa Google will swiftly ban the real estate site from its index. Or they did it unknowingly, meaning they have a very naive SEO specialist working for them and will still have to answer to Papa Google.

So what, exactly, is cloaking - and why does it irritate Google so much?

Cloaking is the practice of serving a different version of your website to the search engines than you do to the end user. When the practice first started, there was a much larger gap between what looked good to the end user and what looked good to the search engines. So cloaking seemed like the perfect solution - not to mention, mighty tempting. But it was quickly, and rightly, deemed a black hat and spammy practice. Google specifies in its webmaster guidelines that if they suspect you of cloaking, they will remove your site from their index.

To hear that a prominent website could be cloaking is surprising. An experienced SEO specialist knows that it is a deceptive, outlawed, and, frankly, lazy technique. There are so many legitimate ways you can optimize your site for both search engine and visitor usability these days. I hope for this real estate site’s sake that the allegations are false. But if they’re true, they should start shopping for a new SEO guy.

[Ed. Note: Staying on Google's good side can mean more traffic, more customers... and more money in your pocket. Of course, building a successful business involves a few other details. Learn how you can get insider advice from expert business builders right here.]

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Comments

  1. Brian Basinger
    October 4th, 2008| 7:04 am

    Let’s say I have an affiliate site and I go to GoDaddy and buy a domain relevant to that site and then I market that domain. When people click on that new domain, the domain “forwards” to my Clickbank affilate site. Is that cloaking?
    Thanks Alexis from Brian in Alabama.

  2. Alexis
    October 6th, 2008| 1:21 pm

    Hi Brian,

    What you describe would not be considered cloaking. It sounds like you are simply forwarding one domain to another, which is fine. It is only cloaking if the users sees different content on your site than the search engines see. Thereby literally hiding the content you show the search engines from your visitors eyes.

    Hope this helps.

    Alexis

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