Is there anything better than a nice breakfast of crispy hot spam? Oh…what’s that you say? Pretty much anything? Well, guess what buttercup…Google feels the same way, but people keep trying to serve up spam all the same. One technique is hammered and gets you penalized, and the army of spammers (the ones who give SEO a bad name to begin with) just move on like locusts, looking for the next technique to earn them a few bucks before Google catches on, leaving a landscape of destroyed sites in their wake. Let’s take a look at the newest SEO spam technique, what is is, and why you shouldn’t use it.
It’s called the perpetual update trick, and this is how it works.
It’s been known for awhile now that Google values fresh content. It’s also been known that Google doesn’t advocate making a new page for an addition to an old story, they’d rather you add a time/date-stamp to the old story and post your update right there. Neither of these facts are speculation, they come right from the mouth of babes Matt Cutts.
Can you see where the spam is getting fried yet?
Armed with this knowledge, websites have begun to use the perpetual update trick to keep their websites at the top of SERPs. Basically, they take old stories and update them with zero-value content. Often times, nothing is even added, they just put on the time/date-stamp and reshuffle the content a tiny bit so it appears different. Then, when they republish these articles, they get the “new content” bump from Google and Bing, and they get pushed out to RSS feed readers all over again.
WHY THIS IS BAD
People are already beginning to preach this as a white hat technique. You should be aware that this is absolutely not the case. Reheating old content with no additional value is spam, pure and simple. When Google catches on, and I’m sure they already have…
And, honestly, it’s not just about Google. It’s embarrassing to even have to say this, but it needs to be said: think of your audience! Do they want to be served reheated spam? You know they don’t, so don’t try and achieve rankings at the expense of your fans. All the rankings in the world won’t help if everyone hates your guts.