Two great articles on the same day about spamming search engines and bannings.

JasonD, a Threadwatch members, post a well written article about a publicly traded company operating outside of the Google Guidelines for webmasters and spamming the Search Engines. He makes a great statement which seems like common sense. Yet, how often do you hear webmasters “whine” about being banned in forums?

Many webmasters the world over undertake tactics that the engines would prefer they didn’t yet they still see an increase in their rankings because of it. Almost all of these webmasters understand that if they “live by the sword, then they die by it” and the site could be detected at any point in time and banned by the search engines forever

Todd Malicoat (aka Stuntdubl a moderator at Webmasterworld) makes a similar statement in a great post covering his thoughts on hand banning, penalization and filters by Search Engines. (Disclosure: Todd and I work for the same company)

Follow the webmaster guidelines from Google and Yahoo. They are incredibly ambiguous most of the time, and there will always be examples of folks that rank well and DON’T follow them. If you don’t follow them, be prepared for the repercussions that may eventually occur.

People need to understand if you want to “play” and try to outsmart the Search Engines you must be prepared to risk it all. This works for people with throw-away domains.

Own or market a website that is expected to be around and “profitable� for years to come? Play it safe and do not chase the algorithm so closely. It may take longer to get to the Top 10 for your industry, but once you are their rankings will be much more stable.

Resources:
Google Webmaster Guidelines
Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines