Overstock.com SEO – Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Reports Overstock (Overstock.com, OSTK) Penalized By Google for SEO Tactics, Paid .Edu Links
Posted February 24, 2011 by DIYSEO Team (9 comments)
This post is meant to be helpful for all levels of SEO expertise.
Google is actively cracking down on paid links. They started with JC Penney, and now a report from the Wall Street Journal details a penalty for the Overstock.com SEO efforts, particularly for acquiring .edu links in a manipulative manner.
From the article:
Google Inc. is penalizing Overstock.com Inc. in its search results after the retailer ran afoul of Google policies that prohibit companies from artificially boosting their ranking in the Internet giant’s search engine.
Overstock’s pages had recently ranked near the top of results for dozens of common searches, including “vacuum cleaners” and “laptop computers.” But links to Overstock on Tuesday dropped to the fifth or sixth pages of Google results for many of those categories, greatly reducing the chances that a user would click on its links.
The incident, according to Overstock, stemmed in part from its practice of encouraging websites of colleges and universities to post links to Overstock pages so that students and faculty could receive discounts on the shopping site. Overstock said it discontinued the program on Feb. 10, before hearing from Google, but said some university webmasters have been slow to remove the links.
So what does the Overstock.com SEO debacle mean for you and your SEO efforts? We think there are three key takeaways here:
- Big companies are not only investing heavily in SEO, they’re also so hungry for top rankings they’re willing to take big risks and use aggressive tactics: there must be big money here!
- Google is making an example of very large brands who are ranking via manipulative practices, and main stream publications like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal are taking notice – this shines a lot of light on risky SEO practices like buying links
- Before they got caught, these tactics were actually working quite well (both JC Penney and Overstock were ranking for a lot of very high traffic keywords)
And what this means for your business is:
- SEO is a huge opportunity – these large etailers have done their homework and aren’t this anxious to rank for no reason: you should be focused on SEO!
- Be careful which tactics you implement and whose advice you listen to: your business is valuable, and you don’t want to jeopardize such a potentially valuable traffic stream.
- You should find ways to replicate the results of these companies without taking on so much risk. Rather than buying links or manipulating .edu sites you should do things like get the SEO basics right and build links that are on trusted sites but also don’t leave you open to a Google penalty.
So get to work, but be careful!
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Categories: SEO News & Trends
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Black Hat SEO Will Cost You « SEO by Swaby – Utah SEO, SEM & Social Media at 4:29 pm
[...] as blatant as JC Penney’s. Rather than buying links from the dregs of the online world, they offered a discount to people who would link to them. These were namely tech savvy college students who blogged from [...]
DIYSEO – Paid Links & Directories: What is Google’s Paid Links Policy on a Directory Link? at 7:41 am
[...] DIYSEO users in the members-only forum, and in light of the recent controversy with JC Penney and Overstock.com’s SEO issues a common concern for members has been whether they are, in fact, buying links [...]
DIYSEO – How Much Should SEO Cost? What Does SEO Cost on Average Per Month? at 2:17 am
[...] you’re targeting, and what you’re looking to accomplish. We noted recently that for Overstock.com SEO was quite expensive and they turned to competitive (and pricey) tactics. This is because they were [...]
Oogst at 7:54 am
Good article. A good SEO strategy in place and start the SEO journey. That is the not only to become number one, more importantly stay number one.
LahoreSeo at 7:07 pm
Great Piece of Information. I never knew that. Thanks for the share.
LahoreSEO
LahoreSeo at 8:52 pm
I never knew about this before. Thanks such a beautiful post.
LahoreSEO