Bad SEO - Sock Puppet Marketing
In a recent video, Matt Cutts talks about ‘Sock Puppet Marketing’, and how this is bad practice for SEO. For the uninitiated ‘Sock Puppet Marketing’ is where somebody creates multiple profiles in forums, social media sites etc to fake conversations about products or services. This is bad because you are basically lying about the product, Matt Cutts points out that if the product or service isn’t good (or bad) enough to create natural, viral hype then you shouldn’t be faking it.
Watch the Video, apart from anything else, Matt Cutt’s voices are excellent and made me chuckle!
On the serious side, by partaking in sock puppet marketing, you will begin to devalue the natural links that can be created in this way, by honest people who genuinely love a product enough to tweet, answer questions on forums or blog comment about it in a positive way. It is, in my opinion a terrible shame (though inevitable) that these links are devalued. The fact that Mr Cutts has thought this a considerable enough problem for him to create a video dedicated to the subject makes me think that Google at least, has already begun to devalue this kind of link.
I would suggest that it would be a largely pointless exercise to start this kind of campaign. The links you create will be obsolete an a short time, so why bother? Surely, as Matt Cutts says, creating useful and informative content for your users would be a much more valuable use of your time. Though, maybe not as fun as creating multiple personalities for yourself!
October 23rd, 2009
Trying to “game” the search engines has always been a short term solution to a long term problem.
The usual course of events is:
1) Someone “figures” out a way to “game” the system.
2) Either they begin sharing this technique as a “secret system” OR others begin imitating them.
3) Search Engines begin to see a pattern.
4) Search Engines “correct” their algorithm and add severe penalty for engaging in practice.
However, unlike black hat practices of the past, this practice is literally charting a course of no return. For example, it was a popular black hat SEO practice 10 years ago to place a list of keywords in white font on a white background so only the search engines could see it.
The search engines got wise and began penalizing sites for doing this. At that time - you could REMOVE said content from your site and be “restored” to grace.
However, you can’t control content that’s not on your site. So when Google figures out a way to “trace” this activity - you’re as powerless to “fix” it as a business is to “fix” the honest reviews.
You said it - “create valuable and useful content for your site.” It’s always been the path to online success!!!
October 28th, 2009
Hi Kathy,
Thanks for your comment, as always you hit the nail on the head here!