Search Engine Optimization Tips Blog

It started as a half page story on a UK financial site, under the header, “Only in America”. It told a tale of a 13 year old boy from a Texas town who used his father’s credit line to hole up with buddies in a motel and play X-Box with call girls he ordered from room service.

Less than a two weeks later, it had been picked up by the Daily Telegraph, Fox News, and various other media sources, and broadcast across both sides of the water.

I’m from Texas. I was shocked, fascinated (OK, I’m gullible!) and mildly appalled. Later, I was mostly offended when I found out it had been an elaborate hoax to artificially increase Page Rank.

Lyndon Antcliff, an online marketer, devised the story as a way to generate over 1500 inbound links for his customer, Money.co.uk. The story is still posted, though a disclaimer at the tail end now reads: This story is a parody and is not intended to be taken seriously.

Yeah, now they tell me. Meanwhile, the story has gotten nearly 2,500 votes at Digg.com. I wonder, how could I make this work for me? Lets see…

I have this fictional pet clothing site (I know, I know, again with the doggie coats) so how could I implement this tactic? I know! I’ll doctor up a photo of a dog so it looks like he has two extra legs, and say I was contacted by the owners to custom design a special outfit just for him.

I’ll add a quote by a “veterinary expert” and throw in some incomprehensible jargon about the particular genetic anomaly that caused the dog to grow extra legs - wait, I’ll go one better and say the owners live near a former radiation fallout area! Extra shock value.

This will get me a ton of media exposure, I will be Dugg by the thousands, and a bazillion people will link to me. This will increase my Page Rank and I will shoot to page one of the SERPs. The biggest advertisers will seek me out and I will become a millionaire.

I don’t think so.

This obvious manipulation of SEO tactics was tentatively denounced by Matt Cutts, Google’s anti-spam expert, who stated that this would probably fall under the “other misleading practices” section of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Lyndon Antcliff, meanwhile, removed an article he had posted that gave insight into his tactics - tactics which many would categorize as unethical. Lyndon stated he removed the site because it gave away too many of his secrets, he was being bombarded with comments, and didn’t have time to deal with it. He asserts that he doesn’t worry about ethics when it comes to ‘linkbait’, preferring a “If it works, do it” approach.

That’s not to say all linkbait is bad. Cutts himself has been known to comment on different ways to snag attention for your site. But a blatant hoax isn’t the way to do it.

Not only does spreading false information lower your image, it also decreases the amount of trust people will have in future information originating from your site. In the long run, you want people to take you seriously for what you have to offer, not assume you are just the best storyteller around.

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