A tech-savvy blogger caught wind of a tricky scam being used by racists to drive web traffic away from the Martin Luther King Jr. website and ramp up hits for their deceptively labeled web pages.

It was the blog Click the Toad that brought the scam to light. The blog features articles geared toward businesses and individuals wishing to drive more web traffic to their websites using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques that affect where a website shows up in search engines. The racist website used SEO techniques and seemingly benign labels to hide the true nature of their content; meaning that when unsuspecting people would search for ‘Martin Luther King’ the first option they are presented with is the racist website and not King’s official site.

From Click the Toad:

“My hands are shaking with anger as I type this.  A sick, cowardly, and racist website … that trashes the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr is outranking the official Martin Luther King Jr website on Google. I will not provide a link to the racist site, as I will not directly contribute a single visit to them.  However, I will show exactly how the official Martin Luther King website (found at http://www.thekingcenter.org)  got beaten in the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) battle.  My dream to improve The King Center‘s SEO and Google Rank may not be as lofty and inspirational as Martin Luther King Jr’s, but I do have a dream.”

Click the Toad goes on to list all the things that the official site did wrong and what it needs to improve its SEO rankings. The people behind Click the Toad have offered to rebuild the official Martin Luther King Jr. website and upgrade its SEO settings free of charge.

(Photo:  Dennis Brack /Landov)