The first network I looked at was DigitalPoint's Coop Advertising Network (http://www.digitalpoint.com). DigitalPoint's network allows you to create either banner or text ads that will then be displayed on various websites in network with an active backlink. Websites receive a "weight" which determines how often they appear on other sites, although it wasn't exactly clear on how a site gains weight. Further reading explained that certain factors such as Alexa Rank and number of pages showing ads may contribute to weight. It was even possible to target your ads by category. I was very impressed with setup. So, I installed ad network on a few websites and, sure enough, system started to churn out backlinks.

Forget your keywords for a moment because what you should have said is “you” and “your”.

Over years web surfers have endured many unpleasant trends – flash and animation, blinking text, pop-up windows, purple text on black backgrounds and much, much more. These days, however, they’re subjected to subtle, yet still unpleasant practice of “let’s stuff as many keywords into our web page copy as we possibly can” syndrome.

Known as “keyword stuffing” this practice stems from notion that if you place a huge amount of keyword phrases on your web page you’ll miraculously be elevated to top of search engine results and sell more of your product or service. Of course, from visitors’ point of view this doesn’t work too well because repeating same phrases over and over again on page won’t persuade your visitors to do anything much except hastily leave site.

So sneakily, just to make sure repetitive, parrot-like copy doesn’t cause a complete exodus of potential customers, some web site owners and developers hide their keyword phrases so search engines can see them, but human visitors can’t.

I idea is this: place your keywords in same color as your background and make them invisible to human eye, but not to search engines. The search engines, reading text, index site as relevant for that particular keyword phrase and rank it higher in results. Problem is, not only is it unethical, it doesn’t actually work. Well not for long anyway.

Unfortunately, this practice seems to be proliferating like locusts. And while it’s impossible to spray or swat them, I can draw your attention to it in hope that, (a) you’ll refrain from using this tactic on your own web site, and (b) I’ll shame offenders into removing offending words from their site.

Leading pack in keyword-stuffing department is an unlikely pair: churches and lawyers. Yes, you heard me right, but it bears repeating: churches and lawyers. Why that is I can only imagine, but just in case you don’t believe me, I’ve put together a kind of rogue’s gallery… well two actually because finding them is a time-consuming process that involves typing same word a lot. Please note that to see keywords you’ll have to hold down “ctrl” and “A” key on your keypad. Please also note that owners of web site may be unaware this practice has been used on their site.