A Lesson in "Undetectable" Spam

I like to think that the search marketing industry has progressed far enough that there aren't very many SEO shops out there still trying to hawk their "undetectable" spam ware as a marketing strategy. That said, every now and then something pops up as a service offering that people claim will help you rank better while promising that the search engines will never ever EVER find out. Uh huh. I don't buy it. Neither does Matt Cutts.

Let's get this out there in the open.

Search engine engineers are not stupid. Sometimes, they're even rocket scientists. While it's perfectly believable that companies can come up with ways of doing things that are not currently detected by the search engines, the reality remains that the algorithm will ALWAYS catch up.

On this topic, Matt writes...

Suffice it to say, if “undetectable to search engines” is listed as one of the major selling points of a particular link scheme, it probably violates our quality guidelines and the guidelines of other major search engines.

He goes on to tell a tale of a business owner and an SEO shop that tried to do just that. It's good for a laugh, but it also makes an important point.

Algorithm chasing is a tiring game. It's the race that never ends.

What you need to ask yourself is this. Do you want to run your business, or do you want to run a never ending race? If you want to run your business then stop looking for shortcuts and start focusing on using your common sense and some good marketing sense to build your business. End of story.