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The Definition of Spam
Spam can bring down your website faster than a speeding bullet, but what is spam? Originally, spam referred to unwanted emails. We all hate the tons of email we receive day after day trying to get us to buy that or click this. I can't go a day without someone trying to steal my personal information so they can get into my bank account. Does everyone else get the fake paypal emails? They look just like paypal emails, but usually if you look at the links they have ip numbers instead of paypal.com in the address. Obviously, letters from Nigeria, fake paypal emails, and the host of other either crooked or just plain annoying emails can clearly be defined as spam. Of course, email newsletters that have been subscribed to are wanted and would not be spam. I love getting my daily webmaster newsletters. They are great for helping me stay on top of what is going on in the website development world. Another type of spam, that believe it or not webmasters still employ, is hidden text. This is obviously a bad idea. Google's guidelines clearly state "Avoid hidden text or hidden links". Now to be fair sometimes it's hard to keep all hidden links off of your site if you are using Microsoft FrontPage or other similar editors. The newer 2003 version of FrontPage incorporates the split screen, which makes getting rid of hidden text much easier. The older versions tend to leave hidden links behind in the HTML code after you delete the text. I have recently found tons of hidden text links everywhere on my sites. So, if you have this problem I can feel your pain. Everything that is a bad SEO practice isn't necessarily spam. Just because Google changes it's algorithm tomorrow doesn't mean all practices banned were actually spam. Sometimes, I feel that many webmasters let search engines dictate what they call spam. For example, linking to your own site from another one of your sites. Is that spam? Some might say you are attempting to alter search engine results and thus you are a spammer. I do have the right to advertise my sites or other sites on my own website, after all. Currently, from other webmaster articles and from what I've seen personally, if your link text is the same everywhere then Google will not allow you those keywords. This has put an end to the Google bomb, but it's unfortunate side effect is the penalization of webmasters adding a link to their own sites from another site. For example, say I have a site about TV DVDs and another one featuring a entertainment blog. It's very simple to enter a link one time into a text file using an ssi include or other similar method that might say "Entertainment Blog" linking back to my blog site. This example populates all my sites at once and thus now I've given everybody interested in my DVD site a little ad to my blog site. Google might penalize the blog site, and so you lose hits from Google. Thankfully, so far Yahoo hasn't taken this step. I guess we could blame the guys who started the Google bombing, but I for one disagree with Google on their method. My only choice in linking back to myself now is to forget adding a standard link in the menu, and put a link back to the blog site one page at a time with different link text and perhaps linking to different pages within the blog site. Now pop-ups to me go into the category of spam. Anything that is not asked for by the visitor, like a pop-up or email should definitely be classified as spam. Of course, there aren't any penalties for pop-ups from search engines. Google apparently is targeting affiliate sites now as well. On one hand, I don't blame Google for not wanting exact duplicates in their search results, but their basic rules should still apply. Taking out a site just because it has affiliate links is really not a fair practice. Someone who takes months and perhaps even years of their time to create, maintain, and promote a site, deserves to make money just as much as the big dogs, as long as they are not using deceptive practices. Which brings me back to the main point. What is the definition of spam? Certainly, trying to earn a honest dollar on the net by offering affiliate links shouldn't be considered spam. But sites trying to promote one set of keywords and offer something else on their page should be considered spammers. It's the unwanted promotion tactics and deceptive practices that are now and will always be true spam. Is it spam to offer a rearrangement of Amazon's products? No, not if your title tag says books, and I find books on your page. Webmaster of the new Webmaster Tips featuring website articles, web hosts, domain registrars, free scripts, and more.
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That way if one of the addresses gets picked up by the spammers you can just drop and block that one address (and perhaps the list it was subscribed to) and continue in your low or no-SPAM world. So how do we do this? What we're going to do is use one "real" email account (ideally with a hard to guess name) and then a set of forwarded email addresses, all of which are different, but all point back to the real email address. Typically your ISP (Internet Service Provider) provides a small number of email-boxes for you (normally called "POP3" mailboxes). Choose one of these to be your "real" email address and point your email client to it (follow the instruction in your email client such as Outlook Express and ISP to do this). Then we need to register a domain name which will allow us to have lots of forwarded email addresses. 123-Reg.com are an example of a company that provides an inexpensive high-quality service to do this, so we'll use them as an example. Create an account, it's free to do this, and give them your real email address. Then you should register a domain name with them; obviously you need to think of a domain name which you would like as part of your "public face." Choosing a name you like can take a little thought, but don't take too long, domain names are being registered at the rate of one every two seconds, so get in to secure yours as soon as you can! The cost is very low, with .uk domains at around UK�3 / US$5 per year and .com/.net around UK�9 / US$15 per year (note, you should register for at least two years). Using the email forwarding option from the 123-reg.com control panel, set the catch-all address as your real email address. Then any emails sent to any name at your domain will be forwarded on to you automatically. Here's a worked example for Brenda Wyatt. Brenda's ISP supplied POP3 email address is [email protected] She creates an account at 123-reg.com and registers the domain "WyattMail.net" She sets up email forwarding via the 123-reg control panel to forward all emails received to @wyattmail.net to [email protected]. Now when Brenda signs up to a forum or email list she gives an email address which is individual to that list. Let's say she registers with Amazon, she could register as '[email protected]'. They will send emails to that address which will be forwarded to her [email protected] email address and she can read them as she wishes. The nice thing about this system is that Brenda hasn't had to go anywhere else to register the email address '[email protected]', 123-reg just sees the wyattemail.net part and sends it on for her. So what happens if she finds one of her email addresses is being targeted by spammers? Let's assume this happens to her "[email protected]" email address. 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