Hi all, I'm doing some optimization for a client and am researching the competition for the search term "senior care management". Ranked #1 in Google is this site: http://www.seniorcaremgt.com/ I noticed a slight delay, then the site redirects to http://www.seniorcaremgt.com/index.php I began to investigate, this is the source code: <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1"> <title>Senior Care Management</title> <meta name="generator" content="GoLive CyberStudio 3"> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1;URL=index.php"> <meta name="keywords" content="Senior citizens, senior care, elders, elder care, care managements, geriatric, home health care, home health aides, companions, guardianship, guardian, conservator, social work, assessments, care plan, older adults, caregivers, alzheimerÕs, dementia, home care"> <meta name="description" content="If you are concerned about a family member or Senior Citizen who has experienced a decline in mental or physical functioning, Senior Care Management can help. Senior Care Management will sit with you and your family member to determine what assistance is required, and will make arrangements for the appropriate community or residential services. Senior Care Management provides home health aides/companions, nursing visits, bill paying, accompaniment to doctorÕs appointments and monitoring and supervision to ensure quality services and a safe environment. Senior Care Management will also serve as a court appointed guardian or conservator."> <style type="text/css"> <!-- .style1 {color: #FFFFFF} --> </style> </head> <body bgcolor="white" text="black" link="#00009c" vlink="#9c0000"> <p class="style1">If you are concerned about a family member or Senior Citizen who has experienced a decline in mental or physical functioning, Senior Care Management can help. Senior Care Management will sit with you and your family member to determine what assistance is required, and will make arrangements for the appropriate community or residential services. Senior Care Management provides home health aides/companions, nursing visits, bill paying, accompaniment to doctor&Otilde;s appointments and monitoring and supervision to ensure quality services and a safe environment. Senior Care Management will also serve as a court appointed guardian or conservator. </p> <p class="style1">Senior citizens, senior care, elders, elder care, care managements, geriatric, home health care, home health aides, companions, guardianship, guardian, conservator, social work, assessments, care plan, older adults, caregivers, alzheimer&Otilde;s, dementia, home care</p> </body> </html> HTML: Is this what is considered cloaking? If you look at the cache, it shows the regular page which is index.php. Let me know your thoughts... -Allan
Not sure why someone would use a redirect to the same page. Usually this is done to forward one domain to another.
Well if you also notice that the text on the page matches the background... along with some keywords as well...
Yeah, this is called keyword padding. Should be illegal in the book-o-google, but looks like they haven't picked up on it
If your talking about the Lagre keywords in the center of the page the blends into the background??? Thats Flash, so an SE won't pick that up anyway..
Ok, I see what your saying. So basically, they fill the redirect page with keywords and meaty content, then redirect the viewer to the accual index page that is not so content rich.. Wow, sounds shaddy...
See I was wondering why no one else understood why I had a problem with this site.... So does that work? Meaning does this keyword and meaty content matching the background, then redirecting to the main page work? The cache shows the normal page...
From my understanding of SEO's that may work.. Maybe like a sitemap.. It uses all the text on the main page to draw the attention of the SE then the SE follows the link on that first page to the main index page.. Took some thought but I don't think it will last for long..
Well you can see for yourself that it works, is it ethical? Not exactly.. If you are thinking about building up SEO one a website for a client, I would not recommend copying this method. If you want your client's website to do well long term, stick with clean SEO - the #1 position website using blackhat methods could drop from Google at any moment. All it takes is Google to tweak one update and say hello to page number 117. This is cloaking if the cache page is showing the main landing page that visitors see. Cloaking = Blackhat Blackhat = Short-term Results Short-term Results = Bad Just build up quality (targeted) content, build links and wait