The weirdest thing about staying ‘under the radar’ is the natural conflict between trying to stay unnoticed (not attract unwanted scrutiny for techniques), while also trying to attract as much notice as possible (high ranking for important search phrases).

A successful SEO campaign that is under the radar is almost always a contradiction of terms.

The answer to that contradiction is best illustrated by an analogy I think. Think of a great actor/actress. You should never see them working. You should never be aware that they are acting. Instead, it should seem entirely natural, that they are just being. The only way to know how great a truly great actor is, is to see them in many wildly different roles, seeming entirely natural in each.

That’s the basic approach to staying under the radar.

One of the major tricks that helps is to make the high rankings look almost accidental. The other, and by far the easier, is to make the high ranking such an obvious good result that again, people don’t question why it ranks well.

For those of you who for some chance don’t know - Ammon Johns (aka Black_Knight) is one of the most highly respected SEO’s in the industry. When Ammon talks, we should all listen - and listen closely.

What is ‘under the radar’ is anything we don’t attract attention to. That can be white hat as much as black hat activity, such as simply not advertising who you work for, and not tying the reputation of your clients to anything but their own site.

So you can’t get penalized for an ‘over the radar *tactic*’. A tactic is either acceptable or it isn’t. But an unacceptable tactic that is detected gets removed, while an unacceptable tactic that is really ‘under the radar’ can only be detected by actually seeing it, and may last forever if it is truly sneaky.

“Google is already extremely strict on how it regards site quality so is probably good at filtering anything it dislikes that I do automatively.”

to:

Google is already extremely strict on how it regards site quality so is probably good at automatically filtering anything it dislikes that I do.

Just in case I gave the impression that I’m clever enough to do scrapers. I’m not.

Relatively speaking, my own SEO presence on Google is pretty small - I’m not in any of the really competitive verticals, and I don’t try and push Google on guidelines. I’m simply not clever enough. So I’m not particularly “over the radar”.

I know I’ve been “above the radar”, though, and that Matt has looked at my work. Impression given is that he’s content to let the algos deal with my sites. Google is already extremely strict on how it regards site quality so is probably good at filtering anything it dislikes that I do automatively.

Always a fear that one day any search engine will devalue my sites manually, though - which is why I’m trying to branch my business model away from pure SEO and into areas where I can apply technical expertise, without having to live constantly under a Sword of Damocles on the SEO side.

Jim Boykin gives his thoughts on What is Under/Over the Radar in SEO. At the end he asks for predictions for 2006.

Black hat techniques will aways have a purpose. Look for that market to become trickier and more difficult. Search Engines will be mov…