SMEs warned to grill SEO managers after Google penalises JCPenney for using black hat techniques

American department store giant JCPenney severed ties with its SEO company after the firm engaged in a “black hat” SEO strategy that involved paying hundreds of sites to link back to JCPenney.com, according to a new report.

Local SEO experts say the incident should force Australian SMEs to check that their SEO managers are not engaging in black hat techniques banned by Google which could see them stripped of page one search rankings.

Chris Thomas, chief executive of SEO firm Reseo, says the incident serves as an explicit warning for businesses that they should not engage in such behaviour.

“You really do need to be asking your SEO managers these questions,” Thomas says. “Stay on top of your SEO agency and insist they abide by these guidelines.”

As reported by The New York Times, the practice of creating paid links placed JCPenney at the top of search pages for several categories such as dresses and shoes.

But the pages that were linking back to JCPenney had nothing to do with these topics at all. Some included a site called “nuclear.engineeringaddict.com”, and another was “bulgariapropertyportal.com”.

The problem is that those links were not created organically. JCPenney’s outsourced firm paid other sites to put those links up, thereby artificially inflating JCPenney’s search engine rankings. 

Google prefers its links to be organic in order to provide the more “relevant” result – JCPenney was only relevant because it paid to be.

JCPenney found out what was happening and subsequently fired the firm, SearchDex. But with Google’s policy being so strict it suffered serious consequences.

Software engineer Matt Cutts told the New York Times that what JCPenney was doing “violated our guidelines”.

Soon after, Google started penalising JCPenney’s website using an internal system of points. The publication reports that while the department store ranked first for the phrase “Samsonite carry-on luggage”, within hours it was tucked away on the fourth or fifth page of results.

As of this morning JCPenney was not on the front page of Google for that particular phrase.

The entire incident highlights how powerful banned techniques known as “black hat” can be and the severity of the consequences if a business is caught engaging in such practices.

Jim Stewart, chief executive of Stewart Media, says businesses need to be explicitly clear about what they expect from their SEO firms and says business owners need to become savvy enough with this type of business so they can identify if banned tactics are being used.

“There are a raft of questions you need to ask your SEO firm. Do you have backlinks? Do you need more? And how do you get them? And the most important is are we doing what could be considered black hat?” he says.

Black hat is the term used to identify SEO practices that are banned by Google. The practice is rampant among sites practically begging to get to the top of search rankings.

Last year, SmartCompany investigated the black hat scene in Australia and found that local businesses are engaging in such tactics.

But Stewart says the only reason a business would engage in trading links is because their site isn’t relevant in the first place.

 “A lot of businesses don’t need them. I look at the JCPenney site and the problem they have is they are so image heavy there isn’t a lot of room to move there. My advice is that they need more text there to make it more relevant for the Google bots,” he says.

“Whenever a site has heaps of images, the bots get confused and don’t know how to rank it. It means you go down to the bottom of every category.”

Stewart says Australian businesses need to make sites relevant to search engines – and they shouldn’t just rely on paid links to get them to the top.

“If you’re using an SEO company make sure they aren’t using comment spam, backlinks or any other type of black hat. You will be found out,” Stewart says.

“Be relevant to the search. Catalogue your site properly and structure it so that you get to the top.”

Thomas says it is ‘amazing’ the incident ever occurred and says it is encouraging that Google is willing to take action against sites that take part in such behaviour.

“Google has been very clear about this and I think they’re trying to set an example here. Hopefully they will scare people off for a bit,” he says.

“You really need to stay on top of your SEO, Google has shown they will act.”