The following article was displayed in Revolution Magazine on the 09 May 2005. It is a good interpretation of how search engines see any coding practices that are recognised as outside of there ranking criteria.
Agencies seek higher returns - 09-05-2005

BMW should really stick to engineering cars, rather than web pages. Yesterday, the automotive firm was booted into touch by the internet’s motherlode - aka Google - after trying to artificially inflate its rankings.

Why did this happen? Will Google’s quality control enforcers come knocking on your door?

Website owners need not panic. BMW got it badly wrong, that’s all. But there are some lessons to learn from its misguided search engine strategy.

The problem? BMW had a "doorway" page, essentially a page that appears just before the BMW homepage. In the eyes of Google, doorway pages are evil, unnecessary and generally used to artificially inflate search rankings. As a rule, this tends to be true.

In BMW’s case, it only showed the doorway page to the search engine robots. If you or I visited the BMW website it would instantly redirect to the main BMW homepage. Clever, right? Actually no: by trying to bait the search robots it has been found out. Not so clever.

But even more rotten than the doorway page was the amount of blatant keyword spamming for terms like "BMW Neuwagen", which translates as "new BMW". The BMW doorway page was littered with them. Bad form. This sort of thing still works to some degree on MSN, but Google looks at keyword/keyphrase density and anything over the top will be red-flagged.

Where did BMW go wrong? Well, any reputable search engine marketing agency will tell you that doorway pages and keyword spamming are unethical and should be avoided. And perhaps that’s the issue: the search marketing industry is still riddled with so-called "experts" peddling shoddy advice. There are plenty of great agencies out there, but clients need to be clued up before going through the process of agency selection.

What constitutes shoddy advice? Well, part of the trouble is the speed of change, as search engines must continually tweak their algorithms (the formulae used to sift the internet's content) to deliver the most relevant results. Good practice for Google in 2002, for example, might be considered bad - or useless - practice today. Agencies and experts must be bang up to date.

If you do outsource your search marketing requirements then you need to choose an ethical agency that knows the difference between right and wrong. Agencies and consultants charge an average day rate of about £650 in the UK, or you can optimise your own website in-house.

The first rule in selecting a search agency is to avoid anybody who says they’ll "secure a No1 Google listing, guaranteed, or your money back". That just opens the door to bad practice (especially when a fee is riding on it). Temporary measures are not the solution.

The second rule is to point and laugh at anybody that talks about search engine optimisation (SEO) as some kind of "black art". It isn’t remotely voodoo, but is about hard work, about putting the basics in place, and about avoiding unethical activity. No hidden tricks.

So what then, are the fundamental rights and wrongs of search marketing? First, determine your keyword goals. What search terms do you want to rank well on? BMW wanted to be highly visible for "New BMW", but how could it have optimised its website ethically?

SEO consists of on-page factors (headline text, internal link text) and off-page factors (incoming links). Many experts suggest that it is the off-page factors - the links from other websites - that make all the difference on Google.

The on-page factors are the ones totally under your control. There is an awful lot to be said for creating unique content, with keywords in the body text, the headline text and the page heading text. Use related words too, as search engines are thought to recognise synonyms.

Internal links work well, especially when surrounded with contextual content and placed within the body of a paragraph. Links displayed in list form don’t seem to carry the same weight, but footer links can be a great help.

Creating good quality content has other advantages, as quality naturally attracts links from other websites (the main off-page ranking factor).

When we talk about links it isn’t so much the quantity, but the quality. Link quality means writing a link a certain way, using keywords as link text rather than the less-descriptive "click here". Distributing press releases online is one way to have control over your own off-page links and content.

Link quality is also about the quality - the authority - of the website linking to you. Incoming links can make all the difference in competitive markets, but only where link quality is good.

Links are important, but what use is a link to the BMW website now that it has vanished from Google? Moral: get your own house in order before seeking links. And think long-term. Invest in content to futureproof your website.

So, what do you need to avoid on pain of (search engine) death? Let’s start with doorway pages, which we can all agree are rubbish. Keyword stuffing web pages is also bad practice (the same goes for meta tags).

Be careful not to link to bad neighbourhoods, or to receive links from them. Do not use any kind of hidden link, such as white text on a white background (so users cannot see the link, but search robots can).

There are some technical considerations too. Validate your code, as accurate, error-free code is what search robots want to see. Accessibility is also likely to be a big factor in search rankings over the coming years, so make sure your website is W3C (WorldWideWeb Consortium) compliant.

Search engine optimisation is a long-term strategic option for companies that don’t want to keep paying for clicks (e-consultancy research shows that 83 per cent of search marketing spend in the UK is channelled into pay-per-click search, like Google adwords).

Remember that search engine optimisation isn’t so much a sprint but a marathon. And don’t be taking any short cuts along the way.