SEO / SEM Blog by Search Circus

SEO bots can be both helpful and hurtful in the work of search engine marketing. Photo courtesy of Bouncehouse Marketing.

In the world of SEO marketing there are various (ro)bots used to perform tasks like crawl Websites, check search rankings, automate social media and more. In some cases these bots are good tools that help gain faster access to information. However, some bots are used to steal content, toy with PPC ad campaigns and more. These bots can end up costing the business owners lots of money. Here are 6 SEO marketing bots and what you need to know about them.

Website Scrapers: These bots find and download text or images from a Web site. They can save marketing administrators time; however, scraping is usually associated with taking someone else’s content and using it as your own, a big no-no.

Website Crawlers: These bots are sent by search engines to index content from your Web site. This is what helps rank your Web site in the search engine. Once this bot crawls your site you’ll be able to get a higher search engine page ranking. However, in order to make sure your site is search-engine friendly, you need to learn how this bot works, which can be difficult.

Twitter Bots: These bots automatically follow, un-follow, retweet and more. They can help you gain followers quickly and without effort. However, if your followers realize they are following a bot, they’ll most likely unfollow and your company’s reputation can be tarnished. Also if you use bots too often and Twitter catches on, you could be banned from the Web site.

Facebook Bots: These bots can friend people, message, post on walls and more. They can build your friend/fan base quickly as well as update your status, however, excessive use can get you banned from Facebook.

PPC Bots: These dangerous bots can click on your competitor’s PPC ad, influence bounce rates and skew with Adwords accounts. PPC bots are unethical and using them will put you and your site at risk for the Google blacklist, which is somewhere you don’t want to be.

Comment Spam Bots: These bots post spam comments on blogs and forums in order to build links. Using comment spam bots is another way to get your site banned from Google and other search engines.

Although some SEO bots can be good, like search engine bots, many are used for spamming and other unethical marketing techniques that can end up getting your site banned from the top search engines, which is definitely bad for business.