22.11.07
Matt
SEO-verkill
I spotted this paragraph whilst doing a bit of research today. Now, I’m all for a bit of SEO but this is taking it a little bit too far. This kind of thing doesn’t surprise me on some less high-profile sites, but this was taken from the web site of one of the UK’s leading insurance companies.
“******** offers car insurance; you can buy car insurance online at www.********.com. Our car insurance can protect your maximum no claim bonus for the life of your policy (subject to your circumstances and continued eligibility).Your comprehensive online car insurance quote from us will include a lifetime guarantee on paint and bodywork repairs and a free courtesy car whilst yours is being repaired by a recommended repairer. Buy your car insurance online from ********. Opt for a ‘cheap’ car insurance quote, and the cover may not be so good. Cheap car insurance, particularly cheap online car insurance, often features higher excesses and more limited benefits. Before you buy cheap car insurance online, get a ******** quote. Our online car insurance offers great cover, and further discounts when you buy car insurance online. You may even find that our car insurance costs less than so called ‘cheap’ car insurance. Get your car insurance UK quote, here.”
Admittedly this isn’t the focus of the home page (its placed right at the foot, set in a fairly small font size) but I’m sure you’d find it hard to disagree that this isn’t a user-friendly paragraph and that it’s existence is for the purposes of SEO alone. It obviously started life as an innocuous “about us” paragraph, but has been genetically modified by enthusiastic “optimisation” (black hat/grey hat?). This seems like a strange practice for a well-known company. However, this is the highly competitive world of “cheap car insurance”.
As a user, I’m not a fan for this extreme SEO action. If I wasn’t a SEO-aware person I would think that this company is in dire need of a copywriter. But as a SEO-aware person I know full well why they’ve done it (especially in their highly-competitive arena). I’m just not sure they couldn’t get the same or better results with a more natural approach.
23.11.07
Ben
SEO spam?
As I understand it, they may well find themselves penalised by search engines for that sort of behaviour.
I like your tag ‘grey hat’ (just Googled it, had never hear of that before!) but if, as you say, it’s placed at the foot of the page in a small font size then I would say it’s an outrageous attempt at keyword stuffing.