FAQ's on sites: The black hat way. (DIRTY trick, no penalties as far as I know ;)

[orvn]

EDIT: It has been brought to my attention that this involves user-agent cloaking and is VERY B1ackHat. I have come up with a whitehat way to do it, essentially skipping anything dangerous.
All text that is red is from my old, unedited post, ignore this.
All green text is a safe, alternate route.

Well, let's call it grey hat. You're not really hurting the users in any way, but you might be tricking Google slightly.

I completely forgot about this technique- remembered it when I read friend's post on FAQ's and their usefulness.

About a year ago I was working for a software development firm- this is where I was introduced to SEO (I was extremely new to the game- hell- I'm still quite new).
I had an assignment to come up with a unique SEO trick. I did it and was rather happy with myself. More importantly, it seemed to have beneficial effects at the time.

I'm wondering whether it would work again.

The process: I have a small site and attempt to increase my presence by black hatting the number of pages I have.

[1] Write a detailed FAQ.

[2]

(a) Create a PHP page for each question (in my case I had 18 questions = 18 pages).
(b) Name each page descriptively = "what-is-black-hat-seo.php"
(c) Post analytics, wordtracker, etc. code onto each page.
(d) Generate unique METAs for each page (mainly keywords)
(e) Be selective of the user agent.
IF useragent= Firefox, Chome, Opera, Safari, Explorer, THEN redirect to FAQ.php.
(e) Just add a "back to top of FAQ" link under each question's php page. Of course this isn't as ideal as user agent cloaking, but it turns out that's dangerous!

[3]

(a) Create an FAQ page with expandable/collapsable DIV's for each section.
(b) Use PHP INCLUDES to put all your question pages into the FAQ page.

[4] Pick the prettiest keywords and cross-link abundantly (not too much now), between the pages.

[5] Link build: create inbound backlinks to these new pages. You'll find that these pages encompass a broader variety of topics than your site- since they're FAQ pages.

Clarification: Step 2(e) means we're tricking bots (e.g. Google) into not being redirected, and thinking each page is separate. Any common browser (aka real person) will simply be redirected the the FAQ page upon clicking one of your [seemingly many] pages on SERPs
Instead of tricking Google bot, we're just adding a link that takes any user that goes to one of the question pages via an SERP back to the FAQ page. The whole strategy is still well worth it, IMO.

So now, instead of indexing one FAQ page, Google indexes 19 pages, each themed and optimized differently.

This trick seemed to work last year- at the very least I had a plethora of new pages for Google to rank. The duplicate content risk was minimal, as the FAQ page was the only one that had any of the same content. I was not penalized at the time.

I've since lost access to this website, as I no longer work for the company I spoke of.
What do you guys think? Worthy of another go?

[Zeb]

I'm not sure what to say to this. I don't even think that black hat is allowed to be discussed here in WF.

[dustinthetoucan]

I dunno if that's quite blackhat... But I'm not sure...

[Slin]

Sounds like just smart web design to me

No spam or anything like that. (Not saying spam is a bad thing )

Cool trick though, thanks, always wondered why some sites set it up that way.

[mark587905]

Great ide. Ill test on one of my sites.

[scott g]

Originally Posted by Zeb

I'm not sure what to say to this. I don't even think that black hat is allowed to be discussed here in WF.

and how is this black hat...? Sounds like smart SEO considering you'll be answering the questions people type into G. Answer the questions, relating to your site, that Google predicts you are searching for...

CHEERS!

[orvn]

Originally Posted by Zeb

I'm not sure what to say to this. I don't even think that black hat is allowed to be discussed here in WF.

That would explain the black hat to blue fart censor.
It's really not that bad. It isn't malicious, but it does trick Google a tiny bit.

True black hat SEO would be me telling you of a mass SPAM technique that is good at averting junk mail. Or how to take down your competitor by exploiting a server vulnerability.

This is greyhat @ best, right? :P
'A dirty little grey hat seo hack', that's what I should have entitled this thread.

Originally Posted by Slin

Sounds like just smart web design to me
No spam or anything like that. (Not saying spam is a bad thing )

Lol, there's definitely loose terms here too, some people call what I call SPAM 'email marketing'.

Ironically people with less secure email accounts tend to be less technically savvy and more susceptible to SPAM - so real black hat stuff does tend to work. Not that I'd know anything about that.. hehe

[jhonsean]

Looks like its new method for me and it work without penalized i think its a new strategy for SEO.

[orvn]

Originally Posted by mihu

Good idea, but I think to do regular site optimization is to use some conventional methods, it is safer

Originally Posted by jhonsean

Looks like its new method for me and it work without penalized i think its a new strategy for SEO.

While it is probably a little safer, I doubt Google would penalize for anything like this. It just doesn't seem reasonable.

Even if the Google bot has something in its algorithm to disguise itself as a different (more common) user agent, I don't see any reason why it would think a redirect to another part of the same site is bad. I could have moved a page, or made a page targeted at specific browsers (iPhone or IE6 friendly are common examples).

Back when I tried this, there was no penalty of any sort that I noticed and it wasn't too long ago. Nevertheless, I'll try it again sometime soon and report my findings. (:

[sbsb]

Its called cloaking, and **if** google picks it up its a great way to end up in the sand box.

Showing users one thing and search engines another is a big no-no.

[orvn]

Originally Posted by sbsb

Its called cloaking, and **if** google picks it up its a great way to end up in the sand box.

Showing users one thing and search engines another is a big no-no.

OMG, you're so right.
This is totally user-agent cloaking.

What is Cloaking in SEO - Types of Cloaking Methods


****
I HAVE A SOLUTION!
Okayokayokay, bare with me for a moment here.

Instead of tricking the search engine in step 2(e) include a "back to top of FAQ" button/link on each question page.

This way when a user visits the search result, there is a link back to the rest of the FAQ.
Of course it isn't as ideal. But there's no risk this time.

I also considered a timed delay redirect (say 20 seconds).

[yukon]

Redirecting/Cloaking isn't always bad.

Like with the new GTV that's out, they give an example how to do it (302 bottom of the page).

Besides If everything is server side php, how are they going to know?

[orvn]

What if the Google bot tries switching its own user agent as part of its algo?