At concern here is the adoption of bad practices like buying links, buying followers, joining link networks, purchasing spam email lists, stealing email addresses, spamming, comment spamming and hiring shady firms to magically make you #1 on Google. Often start-ups and small businesses are particularly at risk for adopting such practices as such organization may not have in-depth experience with marketing or team members who are aware of the consequences of such practices.
Widgets can be an area of concern for link spam penalties, Google strongly recommends using nofollow attributes inside the widget link code, as a best practice. Many website owners have employed widgets that contain spam links. This can result in Google taking action against the website and penalizing their search ranking.
Bribing bloggers for links has been a focal point for Google's anti-spam team. Blackhat SEO companies often take this approach, and in one recent instance, Gawker, in a story titled Shady Marketing Firms Are Still Quietly Bribing Bloggers, reported the entire exchange between a spam firm and the author, Hamilton Nolan. Matt Cutts, head of Google's anti-spam effort, threatened to take down hundreds of shady shady firms that bribe bloggers for links and citations.
Using automated bots to drive marketing initiatives just doesn't work. Some marketers use bots to steal emails, copy content and populate blogs. A recent report called Quarterly Bot Traffic Market Advisory from Solve Media claimed that 51% of web traffic was “suspicious” in Q3 of 2013. Bot traffic is on the rise. Gaining content and emails by using bots provides the lowest quality results that can only serve to get your domain or server blacklisted or your website punished by search engines.
Link networks and purchasing links is a perfect way to get your website blacklisted on Google and other search engines. Google is in hot pursuit of shady link networks and link buying shops that claim to help your website become "#1" in Google. Don't buy it. Google has a sophisticated tool for detecting purchased links. Recently Google targeted the private network, Angelo Link, and penalized all those involved. Some of Google’s other targets included Ghost Rank 2.0, SAPE Links, BuildMyRank.com and Text Link Ads to name a few.
Email spam is not a good method for building a business or growing sales. Spam accounts for approximately 90% of email today. Many start-ups try email spam thinking it is easy. It may be easy, but it hurts brand reputation and can result in brand and domain blacklisting on the web. Don't associate your brand with spam. It hurts your reputation longterm.