We sometimes have some fun at the expense of some of the tactics in the Search industry that never seem to die. In a recent training session, our AJ Allen was struck by how some of the techniques we avoid seemed to match up to some of the more nefarious characters from comic books and graphic novels. While we are rather “risk-averse” when it comes to suggesting tactics like these (i.e., we don’t), the point of this post is fun, not a statement or referendum on hat shades. Thanks to AJ for matching these up and for the inspiration (and half the copy) for this post.

Cloakers (“Two-Face”): 

Two-Face shows two very distinct sides of his facial "content".

Cloakers show one set of content to engines and another set to users. The stuff they show engines is typically “over optimized” and keyword-stuffed and targets the algorithm, not the user. The stuff they show users is more designed to get the clickthrough or sale. This tactic is typically done because their “real” content would not rank well enough to get significant traffic. Cloaking can be done in several ways, including detecting bots vs. users by their IP address or user-agents, showing one content set to users with JavaScript enabled and another set to non-JS browsers, and so on.

Similarly, one of Batman’s greatest foes, Two-Face was once a friend and a district attorney for Gotham City.  Now having a split personality disorder and a real bad temper, Harvey Two-Face clearly represents the cloaking tactic.

Redirectors (“Mysterio”):

Mysterio always ends with jazz hands.

A subset of cloakers, Redirectors get pages to rank well, but when a human visits, they are quickly redirected (often with a meta refresh) to a page with a prominent call to action.  The Ultimate master of redirection, Mysterio’s life of crime is based on his illusions and drive for revenge.  One of Spider-Man’s classic villains, Mysterio “redirects” his adversary’s attention to accomplish his dastardly deeds.

Engines do a far better job of reading code today than they did a decade ago. It’s rare today to see a spammy page rank well then redirect users immediately. To detect such things, however, it’s handy to run the Web Developer extension in Firefox. This tool allows you to turn JavaScript off and on easily and to choose to not follow meta redirects.

Comment Spammers (“The Joker”):

It's our collective opinion that Heath Ledger owns it.

The content spammer drops links to his or her clients’ sites in blogs, forums, or social networks, even though most of those links are useless, not algorithmically beneficial, and entirely out of place in the current thread. Typically, this is the result of an SEO contract that contractually requires a “quota” of new links every month.

The Joker needs no introduction, as he embodies spammers as the ultimate agent of chaos and clutter.  Everything doesn’t seem to be in place when the Joker is in town, just as spammers like to degrade the user-experience on sites with their irrelevant content.

Keyword Stuffers (“Catwoman”):

Newmar or Kitt? Newmar.

Keyword stuffers try to optimize a page by repeating targeted phrases over and over, in all locations (URL, body copy, alt tags, title, meta keywords, meta desc). Even worse are the ones who still stuff tiny copy onto a page (typically below the fold) or “hide” text by showing it as the same color as the background.

This type of practice still happens fairly often, but thanks to improving algorithms, we see such sites appear less and less on prominent results pages. As a specific tactic, it went out of vogue about 2005 or so, even though its efficacy started to degrade before that.  The most devious and stealthy rogue of all time, Catwoman is a cat burglar who secretly moves about at night, looking for her next piece of treasure.  Always causing Batman a lot of trouble (sometimes due to her lure of “wonderful results,” IYKWIM), she is strikingly similar to secretly placing text in the background looking for your next push in PageRank.

Doorway Pagers (“Apocalypse”):

Apocalypse, all ripped and palming the world.

Doorway pagers create content that appeals to engines, gets the click, then due to lack of navigational depth, gives the user little choice but to click into the main site.

Similarly, enslaving all living beings has always been the goal of Apocalypse, the mutant villain of the X-Men.  If he was a web developer, he would use this tactic as it leaves the user no choice but to enter the main site after getting the clicks he desires.

Special evil points go to coders who play with HTML to effectively “disable” the browser’s “Back” button, which is the natural thing that users will try to click when they’re on a page full of yuck.

What other tactics remind you of specific characters? Drop us a line in the comments.

Erik joined Intrapromote full-time in 2002 after starting as a contractor in 1999. Yeah, he’s been here a while. Currently, as President, he divides his time between overseeing the SEO department and managing organic SEO campaigns. He’s also one of Intrapromote’s Chief Big Idea Guys. Prior to working at Intrapromote, Erik worked in publishing as a development editor in the programming imprints of IDG Books and Prentice-Hall Computer Publishing so if anyone needs a keyboard shortcut, they ask Erik.

Among Erik’s professional bragging rights include the fact that he led the team that was awarded Honda’s prestigious “Premier Partner” vendor award for SEO Services. He also contributed on the recently published Search Engine Optimization Secrets with Danny Dover.

Erik rivals Aaron Sorkin in his candid wit (although he will completely disagree with that statement) and has been a tremendous asset to Intrapromote since day one. He is incredibly intelligent and when you read any of his posts, you’ll be able to sit back and say “Wow, I’ve just been Dafforned.”

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