title tag stuffed, no description tag but high rankings

I am an SEO for several real estate related websites. Working for a Canadian client I have been evaluating the competition for them and have noticed there are a number of Black hat SEO techniques (hidden text, keyword stuffing, doorway pages with no content) that are being employed by sites in this industry and seemingly rewarded with rankings and traffic from Google.

I have come across one particular site that does NOT use a meta description tag at all. They have a 5 line site title tag stuffed to the gills with keywords. The site ranks on the first page for virtually every combination of the keywords appearing in their site title.

Just wondering has anyone done any research / testing on whether running with a keyword stuffed title and no description is a viable technique for rankings or should I be digging deeper to find the cause of this particular site's rankings?

I don't want to mimic this site's behaviour just want to add the information to my knowledgebase.

 

How old is this site? How many backlinks does this site have? In my experience most of these sites were created back in 2000 or later and have well established links.

This is a major issue within the real estate industry. Google cant see that the real estate industry is worse than the porn industry use to be. Once Google takes a harder look at real estate, a lot of these easy to detect techniques will be a thing of the past.

I might be wrong and maybe sounding like a noob, but I have always said that if a Seo/Webmaster wants to fine tune their Seo techniques try it on a real estate site for a major market, you will learn a lot.

 

Las Vegas Homes has it down. Finding out the age of the site, as well as the link quality coming in to the site is going to be the factors, more then likely.

I have a lot of real estate clients as well. Its competitive area, so domain age and link age/quality are key ingredients to top rankings.

 

Domain was registered in 2004. Here is an exerpt from their title tag:

For Sale By Owner Real Estate Home Listings in Canada, by owner USA, FSBO Canada, Homes For Sale By Owner Canada, Homes For Sale Canada, FSBO Homes, Private Sales, FSBO Property Sales, BC FSBO, Private Sales Canada, Commission Free Real Estate, Calgary Homes for sale, Canada Homes For Sale By Owner, private property sales Canada, Calgary homes for Rent, Ontario fsbo, Canada Homes for Sale Rent, FSBO Edmonton, For sale by owner Edmonton, private listing, private real estate, no-commission, selling private property, buying private property, Ontario by owner, homes for sale by owner fort Saskatchewan, sask homes, sask fsbo, Saskatchewan for sale by owner, Sell a Home in Canada, For Sale By Owner USA, Sell a Home Canada, FSBO Ontario, FSBO BC, Homes For Sale By Owner Canada, Private List Canada, Private Sale, FSBO Canada, Nova Scotia NS, New Brunswick NB, Prince Edward Island FSBO, PEI FSBO, PE, Newfoundland NF NL, Ontario ONT ON, Quebec QC, Manitoba MB, Saskatchewan SK, Alberta AB, British Columbia BC

The sad fact is that they rank for most of these terms and combinations on Google. Is Google telling me to do this as well to compete?????

 

Whats the site ?

 

Pretty sure you can report a spam listing to Google and they will likely have someone review it.

 

Have a read of Matt Cutts' blog about making a report for keyword stuffing.

@sayles, google the keywords as a whole with "" around them and you'll get a few interesting results... 15 in total, plus some omitted results. Check the caches too, as the keywords have been removed on some pages.

 

I cant believe they have that many phrases on their title tag..LMAO. I always thought as well Google didnt go past 175 characters for title tags. This might be interesting to take a look at.

Another question that comes to mind, what does Google show for the site descriptions?

Thats not that old of a domain, are there any domains below it that have a registration date older than that? How many backlinks does this site have? What kind of onpage factors is this site showing?

As mdvaldosta said this is spam and could be reported. The problem is getting someone at Google to pay attention to it.. I would also suggest maybe going on posting on Matt Cutts blog and simply ask a question about this type of tactic and not make it sound like sour grapes.

 

Google is showing parts of the site title for descriptions. I don't want to post the site here as that is unfair play IMO but I will PM it to anyone who is interested for educational purposes.

I have filed a SPAM complaint but it has fallen on deaf ears or the "the domain is older and established so we will let it get away with questionable techniques" crap is keeping them from being affected.

I had read the Cutts post but thanks for posting it.

This kind of crud is pretty rampant in the real estate biz... high dollars are too much of an allure for some webmasters to resist their urges I guess.

What I found the most interesting is they DID NOT have a description tag... couldn't figure out why they didn't stuff the heck out of that too if this stuff is working for them.

Anyone have any thoughts on why a long keyword stuffed title but no meta description???

 

Backlinks:
Google: 86
Yahoo: 968
Domain Registered: 2004/08/24

Links from Yahoo Directory 0
Links from DMOZ Directory 1
Links from EDU domains 1
Links from GOV domains 0

Deep link % 9 %

 

Can you PM me the site please?

 

PM'ed URL and a second one with hidden text ranking well. Hidden text at both the top and bottom of the screen. Anyone wishing to see this one ask for a PM.

Both sites have excellent rankings.

 

Man thats pretty bad. G shouldn't except them from being de-indexed. I share your concerns!

 

thanks for sharing my pain. I can show you a third with thousands of doorway pages showing up as well. The old trick of setting up 1000's of city pages with the same text except the city name is changed... really just sales pitches since there are no real estate listings on these pages.

Google, are these pages really useful to searchers????

Google, PM me if you would like the 3 examples I have outlined above.

 

Whats the url of the site?? Please PM it to me too.. TNX!!

 

Can u please PM me URL too! Im real curious to see how they managed to fool Google

 

how do you check the caches of pages, and what does that tell you?

 

When searching google for each result you'll see a link for cache (unless it's fresh in the index, I think). if you look at the cache then you'll see how the page used to look. At the top, you'll also see which date the cache is from.

 

I have issued PM's to all who PM'ed me. I would prefer if people would PM me directly as I am not checking the thread everyday...

Thanks again for the interest...

 

Are there guidelines from Google on how big the title should be ?

MSN definetelly prefers small titles.
<TITLE>word1 word2</TITLE> would help you rank very high with an MSN search for "word1 word2". Better than if you had <TITLE>word1 word2 word3 word4 ...</TITLE> (just for the record)