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Many extra smart webmasters serve different
content to the search engines and users. This practice is called cloaking
and is not only frowned upon but penalized by search engines like Google and
the website can be removed from Google’s index. In plain words this is
cheating.
Cloaking can take several forms:
-
The URL
provided to the search engine is different from that provided to the user
-
Serving HTML
text to search engines while Flash content to users
-
Serving
content which can be read by search engines but cannot be read by users
Very often a site is designed with a lot of
visual content consisting of Flash images, and other gif images. Some of it
may not be visible to users as well. Provide alt tag to all this visual
content. Don’t go in for cloaking and provide different information to the
search engines. It could result in your site being removed from the index of
search engine. Taking recovery action would be much harder then.
JavaScript
The use or rather misuse of JavaScript has
acquired large proportions. One of the most popular forms has been the
insertion of an embedded link within the JavaScript. Google and other search
engines spiders are unable to follow embedded links while users are
redirected. So while the search engine goes on to he original page the user
wanders of elsewhere. Detection of this is sure to earn the penalty of being
removed from the engine index.
Use of JavaScript by itself is not the problem,
it is the misuse of it which is the problem. Also there are some browsers
which are unable to accept JavaScript so the best solution would be to keep
your redirect links outside the JavaScript.
Doorway pages are another problem. These are
pages optimized for certain keywords and generally take the user to some
pre-assigned destination. Often they are placed across different domains and
redirect the user elsewhere. This also is frowned upon by search engines
and the site can be penalized by being removed from the index.
Remember all is not lost if your site is
removed from the search engine index. You have to contact them once you set
right your website and ask for it to be re-indexed once more. |