"Avoid tricks," Google says, "intended to improve search engine rankings." Of course, they don't mean it, or else we'd all be out of a job. When we explain what we do to people, we tend to use words like "tactics," "methods," and "strategies." The Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo is currently taking place in London. Search Engine Tricks wouldn't sound so legitimate, would it? In fact, it sounds kind of fun, but a trip to the SET show mightn't go down very well with accounting departments.

There's an element of linkbait to most of what you compose online, and all of that can be viewed as a trick to improve search engine rankings.

But what of the methods - I drank the Kool Aid - that we actively use to promote linkbait for the benefit of search rankings? The things you do to a piece of linkbait with search engine results pages in mind aren't usually for the benefit of humans, and this goes completely against Google's next stipulation that you should ask yourself, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

There are a number of things I'd not do if search engines didn't exist, but I may well still create linkbait. I'd be doing it for different purposes, and I wouldn't include legitimate features such as carefully followed and carefully nofollowed links. I'd not waste thirty-five seconds of my life writing a good meta description that no one would ever see. I'd not care where my keywords were placed and I'd probably not even notice if I didn't include any keywords at all on various pages.

An individual piece of linkbait's manipulative qualities can be directly related to its relevance to the site on which it is hosted. I am not including viral marketing campaigns here, but solely attempts to acquire massive numbers of links from one piece of interesting content. In the end, off-topic linkbait's results are much the same as paid link campaigns: a commercial domain goes from zero to hero without having improved its services one bit. However, in linkbait's case, the manipulation and trickery is even worse, because many of the people who give a domain links don't know that they're bolstering its strength and ultimately helping it rank for whatever wares it pushes. The only reason why Google must ignore this is because the linking takes place by choice, using the editorial discretion of the linkers. There is no coercion and no monetary exchange.

Search engines could and most likely do work out which sites have benefited from linkbait: the increase in links would look very similar to that of a badly hidden paid campaign. I realise it's a bit odd for me, a linkbait evangelist if there ever was one, to explain how Google could rationalise punishing or at least discounting linkbait efforts. However, it seems to me that there are a number of aspects of linkbait that aren't ethical in the imaginary world where this page reigns supreme.

It didn't seem that Google ever had much to say about linkbait, aside from that it was an acceptable practice. Quality content was quality content. While a site wouldn't immediately rank first for "cheap airfares" when their linkbait was about presidential candidates' lookalikes, the PageRank a site gained from its bait was fair game. If we are to imagine that Google will crack down on the relevancy of your linkbait in allowing it to gather PageRank, how should they determine relevancy? I am not referring to which search terms your linkbait will help your site rank for, but only the basic domain strength that a large number of links can build. Should this be strictly filtered?

It is also apparently fair game to link to anything from linkbait. Internal or external, followed or otherwise, it was up to you. However, could you make the case that linking out from linkbait to external sites is a manipulation of the PageRank you acquired through a potentially manipulative practice? Isn't PageRank meant to be an indication not only of popularity but of supposed authority? Why should linkbait - the one night stand of web content - be able to pass on authority?

In reference to widget and badge-bait, Google recently stated:

"Widgets that are distributed with a link back to the site that created the widget are fine. However, going a step further and selling links to third parties is against our quality guidelines."

The case that this mystery Googler was commenting about didn't actually involve the "selling (of) links to third parties," which makes me fear that search engines may begin cracking down on what you're allowed to do with your linkbait in general. The legitimacy of the widget / badge case isn't what I want to address here, but rather, the fact that Google recognises linkbait as a highly profitable linkbuilding strategy. And we know what they like to do to our highly profitable linkbuilding strategies.

The things we do (or the things we've see done!) with linkbait begin to feel a bit shaky when you take a look at them from a search engine's perspective. 301 redirecting mini sites to commercial domains is generally accepted as a good idea. People just don't like linking to corporate websites, no matter how good the content. Creating the content elsewhere, letting it reach its critical mass in terms of inbound links, and throwing it over to a company site has become a relatively standard practice.

Cameron Olthuis wrote about this just yesterday at Search Engine Land. There has always been an ethical question surrounding this, but its implementation has never been penalised. Hosting this content externally could be said to "help" users in that they'll perhaps take more notice of it and "enjoy" it more than if it were surrounded by corporate branding, or even a corporate URL. However, once you start making clever with the 301s, you can't really show how that's helping anything apart from your link profile. In this case, you keep the content the same. When you change the content, you've moved on to the bait and switch.

There's really no excuse for this one. You amass a lot of links to a page (with some sweet anchor text, if you're clever and lucky) and then either change the content to a something from which you'd like to pull in business, or you redirect the page to a commercial one. It's Search Engine Temptation Island. You know you shouldn't, but it's hard not to, especially when no one ever gets penalised for doing so. Will search engines end up penalising sites that switch content?

Total stretch, isn't it? I know that I've wandered pretty far off into the hypothetical with this one. There is no way you would ever be penalised for creating great content. The thing that amuses my imagination is the potential rules guidelines search engines could come up with regarding what you should be able to do with your newly acquired strength and visibility.