Without a shadow of doubt, Google is a fan of white hat SEO tactics. For the past few years, Google has continually shown its dedication to the strict implementation of appropriate SEO tactics. And the word appropriate here stands for SEO schemes that follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Eventually, the violators and law breakers came out in the open early last year. Whose identities were being punished for not following the prescribed white hat approach? The names of violators exposed were shockingly big and popular.
Google Reprimands JCPenny.com For Unlawful Link Scheme
J.C. Penney, the popular department store with over a thousand stores in US, was found guilty of using black hat SEO strategy. Alleged to have utilised paid links to drive the advertising efforts for its website, the store giant’s website, JCPenney.com, was slapped by Google with a 90 day penalty.
Doug Pierce from Blue Fountain Media, like other experts, cited that the use of black hat SEO has been more damaging than helpful for the store’s business. Further interrogations from the press allowed J.C. Penney to give out clarifications regarding the event. The company denied any involvement in the link scheme and pointed fingers at its shady SEO partner firm for doing the dirty deed.
Google Penalizes Forbes.com For Selling Links
Previously reprimanded early in 2007, the famed online magazine Forbes.com headlined the list of offenders in 2011 for the second time. The magazine site obtained a spanking from Google because of engaging in the shady practice of black hat SEO. According to the reports, the magazine website, which became a notorious violator of Webmaster Guidelines, sold text links all over the Web. Google’s notice stressed the fact that the web pages of the website used unnatural links to manipulate PageRank.
The issue might be far off from the present day, but the importance of the story remains: white hat is the ideal road to successful rankings. Absolutely, the underlying message of these penalisations is that there is no better way to rank high in Google than by implementing white hat SEO strategies.
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