As jc penny discovered to their peril dont try to short cut seo

The SEO newswires have been abuzz lately with the news that JC Penny, a huge department store in the US has been penalised by Google for cheating and using "black hat" SEO techniques to boost rankings for many keywords. But what did they do and how did they do it? More importantly, how can you ensure you don't fall into the trap and get penalised yourself?

Before I start, I want to re-iterate an important point that appears to have been forgotten in many of the articles written about this incident and that is "Google does not penalise you for links". Web design is a different matter, but this is just about links. Remember that as we discuss what's happened.

Over Christmas last year it was discovered that JC Penny had incredibly high search results for keywords you wouldn't normally associate them with. For example "bedding" or "area rugs" and "home décor". JC Penny is a Jack of all trades, not a specialist so you'd expect this to be quite a feat given that there are many specialised stores about with a potential for a higher ranking.

Anyway, the New York Times investigated with the help of an SEO expert and discovered that the website had a very high number of links going to it (remember, we keep saying links are good) which is why they were doing well. The thing is, those links weren't relevant in many cases and were on sites that were blatantly nothing to do with the target page.

The Times gives an example of one. Go to scroll all the way down to the bottom and you'll see a link with the word 'Black Dresses' that takes you over to JC Penny.

How on earth did that link get there?

There are a number of reasons, but the main method is to either pay for them (bad, you should never pay for links) or the site was hacked (even badderer, tsk, naughty naughty). There's a chance they got them for free, maybe 'Nuclear Engineering Addict' bought a black dress for his wife and thought it would be nice to have a link. But in that case, why not have a blog entry saying so, why hide it at the bottom of the page? Exactly.
So, the Times told Google, Google investigated and suddenly JC Penny aren't top for all those searches anymore as Google investigates the links.

Have they been penalised for bad linking? Has Google 'slapped' them?

Yes and no.

First off, you can still find JC Penny for lots of searches. Type in 'JC Penny' and they're pretty much every result so they've hardly been penalised. But, they've lost all the specific keyword search results they were getting.
Now, I stick by my initial statement - you can't be penalised for linking, but what can be done and what appears to have happened with JC Penny is that the links have been discounted and now they're back down to where they would have been before all this nasty business.

They've also got an awful lot of bad publicity too.
Of course, it wouldn't be a good story if there wasn't a moral at the end of it, so here it is.

Many people want their SEO to kick in straight away without waiting. They want to start this month and be top ten next month and number one a month later and so they're sucked in to 'guarantees' people give and offers for 10,000 backlinks for a dollar.

Yes, they will work, yes, they'll probably be temporary and no, they're not worth it in the long run.

If you want your SEO to work and to stick then be prepared to put a lot of work into it and wait. Wait a long, long time because good things will come to you. If you're tempted to rush then you'll be rewarded with temporary high rankings and then a nice long period of absolute nothingness while your slower and steadier competitors reap all the rewards of a well-planned SEO campaign.