SEO gone bad
Nov 14th, 2007 by cpev
Now I’m as partial to the odd cheeky piece of optimisation as the next digital marketing agency-based journalist, but the lengths to which some news feeds are being stretched is hilarious. Kwik-Fit Insurance News for example, which a colleague alerted me to earlier this week.
So dogged is their determination to rank highly for ‘women’s car insurance’, among other terms, it’s been crowbarred in all over the place. Take this recent story about the woman who drove the wrong way up the M6. This is the second paragraph:
The incident occurred on Sunday night and left at least one car in a state of repair as oncoming drivers swerved to avoid the pensioner, who may or may not have had woman’s car insurance.
Or how about this story, of distinctly local interest:
Female drivers - some of whom may have women’s car insurance policies - are being invited to attend a motoring class in Ely this month.
Google is finding new ways to penalise those that buy attention rather than earning it - the latest big one being its move against link-buying, whereby sites that have paid for links to bolster their rankings have been docked a measure of authority. It’s another sign that the environment is shifting, irrevocably, in favour of those who are genuine about what they do.
For the moment, Google News includes Kwik-Fit Insurance news stories in its results, along with those from several other outlets that have got a bit jiggy with their product-heavy SEO. How long before Google decides the party’s over?
