Is this Link Black Hat SEO Cloaking or is it OK?
-
I am a relatively new SEO professional, Can someone please look at this link and tell me if this is white or black hat SEO cloaking practices? http://loghomeconstructionpro.com/ It has an overlay landing page over a html page. I had a partner promote this to me as a proprietary software when really it just looks like cloaking.
I want to do my business above board and this doesn't feel right. However, I would like some opinion on it before i pull the plus on my partner.
Thanks all for the advice and the help.
GD
-
Thanks Patrick.
Appreciate the encouragement. I will provide a service that is above board and ethical. I know that there is a lot of interpretation on things and I would rather take the high road then get stuck in the mud over a few successful, short term leads.
I am going to get back to the "other" guys and challenge them on their practice and try to encourage them to change practices. Doesn't matter what their response is, just my actions.
Thanks again. Really appreciate it.
Gary
-
Hi Highland,
Thanks. for the feedback. I do want to ask the question to learn and to grow. I have partnered with a company who has sold me on this tactic as white hat and lead gen. It is obviously neither. Pretty crazy.
I have done the Google Chrome, inspect element and removed the overlay iFrame to see what the page is serving the Google bots compared to the end overlay is to the end user.
Again, it's just a little over my head on these types of practices. I am more of a content marketing grow your brand type of professional and I bought into my partners "tactic" thinking it was safe. Before now I didn't even know what cloaking was.
Thanks for the feedback.
Gary
-
First off, let me commend you for asking questions. Too many people hand their website (and thus their brand) to someone else and then walk away. Nobody will care about your website like you do.
Second, you've got far greater problems than cloaking. Head over to SEO browser and put your URL in and click the Simple View button. Not only is it cloaking, the page the robot sees is filled with keyword stuffing. This is an actual paragraph on the page being fed to bots (emphasis mine because it's both hilarious and sad)
log home construction cost Everything I do and Log Home Construction I do on the principle of Russian borscht and log home construction cost. You can throw everything into it-beets and Log Home Construction carrots and Log Home Construction cabbage and Log Home Construction onions and Log Home Construction everything you want and log home construction cost. What's important is the result and Log Home Construction the taste of the borscht and log home construction cost. log home builder reviews There are many fine ideals which are not realisable and Log Home Construction and yet we do not refrain from teaching them and log home construction cost. log home construction cost I want to know how God created this world and log home construction cost. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon and Log Home Construction in the spectrum of this or that element and log home construction cost. I want to know His thoughts the rest are details and log home construction cost. The surest way to get rid of a bore is to lend money to him and log home construction cost. log home construction cost calculator log home construction cost Your Rutherglen Log Home Construction and log home construction cost Source
Seriously, it's like someone found the worst SEO manual from 2005 and ran with it. I've not seen SEO this bad in YEARS. Your website, as it is running, is a walking and talking example of what NOT to do with SEO. Panda was built to find sites like this and penalize them. At this point, if I were you, I'd go get a Wordpress blog, write a few content pages and point your domain at it. You literally cannot do worse than your current site.
-
Hi Andy,
Yes. I have made up my mind. It's not a practice I want to be involved with, promote or use. I am looking for other professional opinions to re-inforce my belief that this is wrong. I am moving my customer away from practices like this and I am separating myself from this partner.
It comes down to my "noob" experience with this type of work. I needed affirmation from professionals and experts who tell me that this is clearly wrong. All I had to go on was my gutt and my limited knowledge.
Thanks for chiming in and giving me your opinion. It's appreciated!
Gary
-
Hi Gary
No problem, I am happy to help where I can!
Another thing - "The apparent value that I am told it does is it gets the site indexed quickly. I am using another partner who is implementing this program for me. They assure me that it is legal and valuable." Pew.
Trust your gut, man. If you're just starting out and you're seeing stuff that doesn't feel right, that's great intuition to have and will get you far in helping your clients out. Sadly, a LOT of people in this industry take the other road and get a lot of people/companies burned in the process.
You're going to do great, just keep following your instincts and learning as much as you can!
Now go school those other guys
Good luck!
-
I'm surprised to see a site like that these days - especially with Google being so hot on best practice matters.
Imagine you are one of Google manual site inspectors - what would you think if you saw that? I am pretty sure it wouldn't be anything good.
**...when really it just looks like cloaking. **
That's exactly what it is. No good can come from trying to hide page content in this manner.
There is nothing on this page / site that would inspire trust, and if you have no trust, you have no business. Scroll down the page and there is a huge white space.
Think user experience.
It sounds to me like you might have already made your mind up on this and just want clarification, so I hope you decide to move away from this and create an exiting site that is going to help bring conversions.
-Andy
-
Thanks Tim.
To be clearer, I have another company that has sold me on the program and once I found out it was potentially cloaking then I didn't want anything to do with it. They are now assuring me that it is above board and that the pages are driving leads. I still don't think the end justifies the means.
Thanks,
-
Hi Patrick,
Thanks a ton.
I appreciate your help in telling me to follow my gut. It's definitely what I am close to doing.
The apparent value that I am told it does is it gets the site indexed quickly. I am using another partner who is implementing this program for me. They assure me that it is legal and valuable. I am not so sure and not technically savvy enough to know if they are telling me the truth.
Thanks it does make sense and I'll take that into consideration.
I appreciate the feedback Patrick.
Gary
-
Absolutely agree with Patrick, if it does not feel right and you feel uncomfortable/spammy in doing it then don't.
Always opt for a strategy that is open, clear and provides your end users with a genuine experience.
-
Hi there
One thing to note:
"I want to do my business above board and this doesn't feel right."
If it doesn't feel right, it's not right, especially in SEO. That's just something to live your life by - if it doesn't feel right, don't do it.
If it were me, I would change this. Not only does this not add any value whatsoever, but I would consider this a form of cloaking, even if it is relatively the same content. To be sure, I would use the Fetch as Google tool to make sure. But even then, lose it and create a good user experience by not having that.
I just would get rid of it, and play safe with good content on your homepage.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
DoesHurt SEO
Hey guys, I've read mixed reviews on this. Does anyone have an answer to whether or not hiding h1 text ( ) negatively effects SEO in 2018. Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | Jason-Reid0 -
Will links be counted?
We are considering a redesign of our website and one of the options we are considering is to come up with something along the lines of http://www.tesco.com/, with rotating top offers. The question I am wondering is whether or not the links (ie. the blue links on the left side of the main graphic) will be visible to the spiders, and if not, whether there is a way to code it so they are?
Technical SEO | | simonukss0 -
Feefo review links
Hi guys, so we are on feefo and noticed links coming in per review for different anchor text, this will be done on mass due to the amount of reviews we will get - this is all natural but in SEO site-wide links are typically not. How if at all do you think Google will react to this?
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Dofollow and Nofollow links
What is the difference between dofollow and nofollow links? I know that some sites/blogs only let you post nofollow links. In such a case how do I know if a comment I posted on a certain site will be a nofollow or dofollow? How about big traffic sites such as Huff Post. Do they only allow nofollow links?
Technical SEO | | greenfoxone0 -
Duplicate Content on SEO Pages
I'm trying to create a bunch of content pages, and I want to know if the shortcut I took is going to penalize me for duplicate content. Some background: we are an airport ground transportation search engine(www.mozio.com), and we constructed several airport transportation pages with the providers in a particular area listed. However, the problem is, sometimes in a certain region multiple of the same providers serve the same places. For instance, NYAS serves both JFK and LGA, and obviously SuperShuttle serves ~200 airports. So this means for every airport's page, they have the super shuttle box. All the provider info is stored in a database with tags for the airports they serve, and then we dynamically create the page. A good example follows: http://www.mozio.com/lga_airport_transportation/ http://www.mozio.com/jfk_airport_transportation/ http://www.mozio.com/ewr_airport_transportation/ All 3 of those pages have a lot in common. Now, I'm not sure, but they started out working decently, but as I added more and more pages the efficacy of them went down on the whole. Is what I've done qualify as "duplicate content", and would I be better off getting rid of some of the pages or somehow consolidating the info into a master page? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | moziodavid0 -
Paid outbound links - do they have juice?
Hi, A client is asking about a website that has a business model I don't normally work with - it's a site full of very informative articles - no harm there - and they are sponsored by companies who provide the service being discussed. Not really any harm there. But attached to the link is an outbound tracking device. The business model is pay per click. Has anyone had experience with this, specifically if larger search engines have picked up on this and filtered out those types of links to not count very much if at all? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | lilactree0 -
Internal Linking
Where is the best information on internal linking. I'm so confused and everything I read says something different. Ahhhh Thanks
Technical SEO | | meardna770 -
Bad back links
Hi Folks I seem to have approx 587 back links to my homepage from this site kitchendetailsanddesign.com since my entire site has under a 1000 back links; I wonder if I should be worried? I've tried contacting the webmaster to remove them but no luck any tips 🙂
Technical SEO | | PHDAustralia680