I came across this article on the NY Times about how JC Penney was recently caught engaging in tons of blackhat SEO techniques to get themselves ranked for thousands of keywords during the Christmas season.
Here’s the full article:
Though I’m sure their brand was temporarily damaged and may be a PR nightmare of sorts, I’m sure financially, they reaped sales like crazy during Christmas season.
The article reports them being ranked #1 for things from “dresses” to “grommet top curtains” to “Samsonite carry on luggage.”
I remember reading about this last month… and thinking “who really cares?”
At the end of the day, who really cares if JCP uses “blackhat” SEO techniques? (PS - it wasn’t “tons of techniques”… it was ONE technique… repeated thousands of times… and not even really “black hat” if you ask me… maybe a little “gray hat”.)
I shop at stores based on convenience and price… JCP is not on my list of retailers to shop at, and their SEO won’t change that for me.
And the fact that they used “black hat” techniques doesn’t make me think any more or less of them as a company… so their brand isn’t affected in the slightest, despite the NYT Google-butt-kissing-parade.
The way I look at it… Google’s Draconian Dictation of HOW companies should execute an SEO strategy is complete Bull. If JCP is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to dominate retail SEO, in some odd way, they DESERVE #1… after all, isn’t the company’s DESIRE and willingness to SPEND MONEY an important FACTOR in their importance? It sure is in every other aspect of REAL LIFE… so why not SEO? Because it doesn’t fit into Google’s idealistic delusion of how the world should be? That’s just silly… The top ranking sites STILL usually belong to the companies with the biggest SEO budgets… Google spanking JCP is denial of the fact that their algorithm is utter garbage and that their “organic” SERPS are for sale to the highest bidder, whether they like it or not.
Append to above… however, it did make me rethink some gray hat stuff my own company was engaging in and direct people to other initiatives. So I guess the article served its purpose in scaring people into submission via the public flogging of JCP.
[Exploiting those hovels for links is a Google no-no. The company’s guidelines warn against using tricks to improve search engine rankings, including what it refers to as “link schemes.” The penalty for getting caught is a pair of virtual concrete shoes: the company sinks in Google’s results.]
The only reason Matt Cutts popped his head up out of the sand and commented was because NY Times is a huge newspaper who asked him a question via his employer Google.
I know of plenty of others doing this sort of thing to get high rankings and it’s gone on for months and months without change.
Many SEO firms now use link schemes, blatantly using each clients site as a part of the scheme. It doesn’t seem fair, the links are absolutly not “relevant” and its all artificial, but its gone on for so long its obvious Google couldn’t care less.
Yes I have also read the story and think that thousands of big companies are already doing these kinds of net tasks for years and there is nothing new to get surprised. Companies are willing to invest in their web ranks and they already have been spending thousands of dollars in cash over their monthly based Google AdWords campaigns too.
It seems that Google does not like neither small nor big companies and sites using methods to manually affecting their ranks, they are free to use paid advertising solutions through but organically generated web results, seem to be controlled by algos.
With the adword rates peaking around the Christmas season, the temptation to use such SEO techniques must be huge. I bet SEO manpower cost is not as seasonal.
The irony of the situation may be this article will encourage retailers to ramp up their black hat practices next xmas season if they fell short this yr.
