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!
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
-
Internal no follow links
I have just discovered that the WordPress theme I have been using for some time has no follow internal links on the blog. Simply put each post has an image and text link plus a 'read more'. The Read more is a no-follow which is also on my homepage. The developer is saying duplicate follow links are worse than an internal no follow. What is your opinion on this? Should I spend time removing the no follow?
Technical SEO | | Libra_Photographic0 -
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 -
Does a number of products in anchor text (link to product list page) have any influence on SEO?
For example: shower cabins (660), used in our onpage-navigation which links to a product list page.
Technical SEO | | Maxaro.nl0 -
Spam link? Links from linguee
Hi Everyone My site received a notification of unnatural links in Webmaster Tools and the site has had a penalty applied. I can see there are a lot of links from a site : linguee.com .de. nl. ect ..more than 30k of them! I am not sure where did those links come from! The suddenly appeared over the weekend. Does anyone has similar experience before and any suggestion? Thanks Ricky
Technical SEO | | SEO-SMB0 -
Do bad links to a sub-domain which redirects to our primary domain pass link juice and hurt rankings?
Sometime in the distant past there existed a blog.domain.com for domain.com. This was before we started work for domain.com. During the process of optimizing domain.com we decided to 301 blog.domain.com to www.domain.com. Recently, we discovered that blog.domain.com actually has a lot of bad links pointing towards it. By a lot I mean, 5000+. I am curious to hear people's opinions on the following: 1. Are they passing bad link juice? 2. does Google consider links to a sub-domain being passed through a 301 to be bad links to our primary domain? 3. The best approach to having these links removed?
Technical SEO | | Shredward0 -
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 -
Pintrest SEO
Has any testing been done to determine if Pintrest helps a website ranking?
Technical SEO | | StreetwiseReports0 -
Global SEO Targeting
Hi, I have a website currently on the domain example.co.uk (.com is not available) I'm looking to enter other markets such as Brazil, Russia - obviously content will need to change to suit the desired market / language. I'm looking for some information on the best practice to enter foreign markets. I was thinking maybe to create individual sites for each location eg: example.br example.ru This way I could localise each site in terms of business directories, content, language etc. Or have my example.co.uk with various languages on it Experience, suggestions are welcomed - thanks.
Technical SEO | | Socialdude0