{"id":3097,"date":"2025-02-19T13:20:49","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T18:20:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/seoblog\/?p=3097"},"modified":"2025-02-19T13:20:52","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T18:20:52","slug":"j-c-penneys-black-hat-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/seoblog\/2025\/02\/19\/j-c-penneys-black-hat-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"J.C. Penney’s Black Hat SEO"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Interested in seeing if any big name companies have participated in black hat SEO, I searched for case studies. One in particular was appearing frequently: J.C. Penney. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is the story:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the 2010 holiday season, J.C. Penney was conspicuously at the top of Google\u2019s organic search rankings for nearly every product imaginable. Their online marketing team had done such a good job that they were even beating other companies in searches for their own brand: A search for \u201cSamsonite carry on luggage\u201d found J.C. Penney at the top, rather than Samsonite\u2019s own site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we heard in class, one of the best ways to improve a site\u2019s online prominence is to\u00a0get other websites to link to it. But J.C. Penney had taken this too far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was discovered that 2,015 other websites linked to the portion of J.C. Penney\u2019s website dedicated to dresses. The vast majority of these links came from websites that had nothing else. Further investigation found that the owners of these sites were being paid to host these links.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following exposure by the New York Times<\/a>, Google cracked down on the scheme. Within the span of hours, J.C. Penney\u2019s online ranking for some keywords fell from number one to well past the fifth page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

J.C. Penney\u2019s response to the penalty was to let go of its online marketing firm and claim ignorance of their practices. But this all could have been avoided by using white hat SEO practices. I find it fascinating that even such a large company as J.C. Penney would attempt to use these kind of tricks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interested in seeing if any big name companies have participated in black hat SEO, I searched for case studies. One in particular was appearing frequently: J.C. Penney. Here is the story: Throughout the 2010 holiday season, J.C. Penney was conspicuously at the top of Google\u2019s organic search rankings for nearly every product imaginable. Their online […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nJ.C. 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