Consider Search Engine Optimization before launching a new website. It will save you time and money as well as boosting your chances of success.
Some facts for you: Nearly 73% of new visitors to a website come through a search engine. The difference in the amount of traffic between position #1 and position #10 the search results is 1,400%. In fact the difference between #1 and #2 is still 350%
More traffic.
I spend my life looking at nice websites that will never get found because either the owners or the web agency do not understand SEO. Buying some SEO services from an SEO company would have made all the difference because search engine optimisation can make or break a site as a commercial entity.
If you remember nothing else, then please remember this. The biggest search engine is Google and they do not use human editors to decide what your website is about. Unless you make it blindingly obvious with your page titles and text etc what you do for a living then forget it. So if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and enjoys a crust of bread like a duck, guess what? It’s probably a duck! Remember the duck when building your website and you will not go far wrong.
So here you go; a few basic SEO guidelines for easy search engine indexing.
Don’t worry too much if you don’t understand the terms or don’t want to do the work yourself. There are many companies out there who can design you a SEO friendly website for not much more money than a regular site. Just make sure that they understand SEO please before giving them your money.
• Before starting out you need to decide which phrases are used when people search for your type of product or service. These words are called keywords and it is these that dictate how the pages on the site are described and also what text is used on the pages. There is a useful free keyword tool at Google to get you started.
• Design your site in html and minimise the use of java script and flash. The more complex you make the code, the more difficult it becomes for the search engines to read your content and allocate the appropriate Google PR to your web page.
• Make sure that your Meta tags are coded correctly and include the correct SEO keyword phrases that you want to be found for. If your Meta tags are search engine optimised and compelling, you massively improve your chances of a higher search engine ranking.
• Apply the proper tags to your page; ‘h’ tags are a great way to call attention to your content and promote your keywords. Try to use each tag at least once, but remember that you want your text to read well and appear normal.
• Add an html sitemap and an xml sitemap. Including a sitemap on your site makes it easy for search engines to access all of your website pages and index your site accordingly.
• Include a links page where you point visitors at other websites they might find interesting. Google in particular is keen for websites to offer a fantastic visitor experience and linking out is partly the proof of this. My own website links out to sites such as Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo! And MSN. None are in competition with me but all can add value to my visitor.
• Easy for some and difficult for others is the adding of fresh content to a website. Search engines rely on new content as much as we rely on oxygen to live. Now I absolutely realise that if your business has a single product that seldom changes then, unlike SEO there is not a mountain to write about. But why not consider case studies, customer comments, press releases or company news? All are perfectly acceptable as fresh content and the very fact you are trying does carry weight with the search engines
Starting with the strong foundation of a site that meets basic SEO standards will stand you in good stead for moving forward and for your website to be more than a glossy but often unread brochure on the web.
Showing posts with label web marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label web marketing. Show all posts
Friday, 7 November 2008
Black Hat SEO Tactics
Black Hat SEO
These Tactics Are Considered Black Hat SEO For A Reason.
These Are Not Legitimate Tactics And While Some May Work In The Short Term.
They WILL Get Your Website Penalised And/Or Banned Eventually.
Constantly webmasters attempt to "trick" the search engines into ranking sites and pages based on illegitimate means. Whether this is through the use of doorway pages, hidden text, interlinking, keyword spamming or other means they are meant to only trick a search engine into placing a website high in the rankings. Because of this, sites using black-hat SEO tactics tend to drop from these positions as fast as they climb (if they do climb at all).
The following tactics are not listed to help you "trick" the search engines but rather to warn you against these tactics should you hear they are used by other SEO's (this is not to say that all other search engine optimisation experts use these tactics, just that some do and you should be warned against them).
Due to the sheer number of tricks and scripts used against search engines they could not possibly all be listed here. Below you will find only some of the most common black-hat tactics. Many SEO's and webmasters have simply modified the below tactics in hopes that the new technique will work. Truthfully they may, but not forever and probably not for long.
Black-Hat SEO Tactics:
Keyword Stuffing
This is probably one of the most commonly abused forms of search engine spam. Essentially this is when a webmaster or SEO places a large number of instances of the targeted keyword phrase in hopes that the search engine will read this as relevant. In order to offset the fact that this text generally reads horribly it will often be placed at the bottom of a page and in a very small font size. An additional tactic that is often associated with this practice is hidden text which is commented on below.
Hidden Text
Hidden text is text that is set at the same colour as the background or very close to it. While the major search engines can easily detect text set to the same colour as a background some webmasters will try to get around it by creating an image file the same colour as the text and setting the image file as the background. While undetectable at this time to the search engines this is blatant spam and websites using this tactic are usually quickly reported by competitors and the site blacklisted.
Cloaking
In short, cloaking is a method of presenting different information to the search engines than a human visitor would see. There are too many methods of cloaking to possibly list here and some of them are still undetectable by the search engines. That said, which methods still work and how long they will is rarely set-in-stone and like hidden text, when one of your competitors figures out what is being done (and don't think they aren't watching you if you're holding one of the top search engine positions) they can and will report your site and it will get banned.
Doorway Pages
Doorway pages are pages added to a website solely to target a specific keyword phrase or phrases and provide little in the way of value to a visitor. Generally the content on these pages provide no information and the page is only there to promote a phrase in hopes that once a visitor lands there, that they will go to the homepage and continue on from there. Often to save time these pages are generated by software and added to a site automatically. This is a very dangerous practice. Not only are many of the methods of injecting doorway pages banned by the search engines but a quick report to the search engine of this practice and your website will simply disappear along with all the legitimate ranks you have attained with your genuine content pages.
Redirects
Redirecting, when used as a black-hat tactic, is most commonly brought in as a compliment to doorway pages. Because doorway pages generally have little or no substantial content, redirects are sometime applied to automatically move a visitor to a page with actual content such as the homepage of the site. As quickly as the search engines find ways of detecting such redirects, the spammers are uncovering ways around detection. That said, the search engines figure them out eventually and your site will be penalised. That or you'll be reported by a competitor or a disgruntled searcher.
Duplicate Sites
A throwback tactic that rarely works these days. When affiliate programs became popular many webmasters would simply create a copy of the site they were promoting, tweak it a bit, and put it online in hopes that it would outrank the site it was promoting and capture their sales. As the search engines would ideally like to see unique content across all of their results this tactic was quickly banned and the search engines have methods for detecting and removing duplicate sites from their index. If the site is changed just enough to avoid automatic detection with hidden text or the such, you can once again be reported to the search engines and be banned that way.
Interlinking
As incoming links became more important for search engine positioning the practice of building multiple websites and linking them together to build the overall link popularity of them all became a common practice. This tactic is more difficult to detect than others when done "correctly" (we cannot give the method for "correct" interlinking here as it's still undetectable at the time of this writing and we don't want to provide a means to spam engines). This tactic is difficult to detect from a user standpoint unless you end up with multiple sites in the top positions on the search engines in which case it is likely that you will be reported.
Please feel free to visit my seo services website for seo services, free tools and lots of advice.
These Tactics Are Considered Black Hat SEO For A Reason.
These Are Not Legitimate Tactics And While Some May Work In The Short Term.
They WILL Get Your Website Penalised And/Or Banned Eventually.
Constantly webmasters attempt to "trick" the search engines into ranking sites and pages based on illegitimate means. Whether this is through the use of doorway pages, hidden text, interlinking, keyword spamming or other means they are meant to only trick a search engine into placing a website high in the rankings. Because of this, sites using black-hat SEO tactics tend to drop from these positions as fast as they climb (if they do climb at all).
The following tactics are not listed to help you "trick" the search engines but rather to warn you against these tactics should you hear they are used by other SEO's (this is not to say that all other search engine optimisation experts use these tactics, just that some do and you should be warned against them).
Due to the sheer number of tricks and scripts used against search engines they could not possibly all be listed here. Below you will find only some of the most common black-hat tactics. Many SEO's and webmasters have simply modified the below tactics in hopes that the new technique will work. Truthfully they may, but not forever and probably not for long.
Black-Hat SEO Tactics:
Keyword Stuffing
This is probably one of the most commonly abused forms of search engine spam. Essentially this is when a webmaster or SEO places a large number of instances of the targeted keyword phrase in hopes that the search engine will read this as relevant. In order to offset the fact that this text generally reads horribly it will often be placed at the bottom of a page and in a very small font size. An additional tactic that is often associated with this practice is hidden text which is commented on below.
Hidden Text
Hidden text is text that is set at the same colour as the background or very close to it. While the major search engines can easily detect text set to the same colour as a background some webmasters will try to get around it by creating an image file the same colour as the text and setting the image file as the background. While undetectable at this time to the search engines this is blatant spam and websites using this tactic are usually quickly reported by competitors and the site blacklisted.
Cloaking
In short, cloaking is a method of presenting different information to the search engines than a human visitor would see. There are too many methods of cloaking to possibly list here and some of them are still undetectable by the search engines. That said, which methods still work and how long they will is rarely set-in-stone and like hidden text, when one of your competitors figures out what is being done (and don't think they aren't watching you if you're holding one of the top search engine positions) they can and will report your site and it will get banned.
Doorway Pages
Doorway pages are pages added to a website solely to target a specific keyword phrase or phrases and provide little in the way of value to a visitor. Generally the content on these pages provide no information and the page is only there to promote a phrase in hopes that once a visitor lands there, that they will go to the homepage and continue on from there. Often to save time these pages are generated by software and added to a site automatically. This is a very dangerous practice. Not only are many of the methods of injecting doorway pages banned by the search engines but a quick report to the search engine of this practice and your website will simply disappear along with all the legitimate ranks you have attained with your genuine content pages.
Redirects
Redirecting, when used as a black-hat tactic, is most commonly brought in as a compliment to doorway pages. Because doorway pages generally have little or no substantial content, redirects are sometime applied to automatically move a visitor to a page with actual content such as the homepage of the site. As quickly as the search engines find ways of detecting such redirects, the spammers are uncovering ways around detection. That said, the search engines figure them out eventually and your site will be penalised. That or you'll be reported by a competitor or a disgruntled searcher.
Duplicate Sites
A throwback tactic that rarely works these days. When affiliate programs became popular many webmasters would simply create a copy of the site they were promoting, tweak it a bit, and put it online in hopes that it would outrank the site it was promoting and capture their sales. As the search engines would ideally like to see unique content across all of their results this tactic was quickly banned and the search engines have methods for detecting and removing duplicate sites from their index. If the site is changed just enough to avoid automatic detection with hidden text or the such, you can once again be reported to the search engines and be banned that way.
Interlinking
As incoming links became more important for search engine positioning the practice of building multiple websites and linking them together to build the overall link popularity of them all became a common practice. This tactic is more difficult to detect than others when done "correctly" (we cannot give the method for "correct" interlinking here as it's still undetectable at the time of this writing and we don't want to provide a means to spam engines). This tactic is difficult to detect from a user standpoint unless you end up with multiple sites in the top positions on the search engines in which case it is likely that you will be reported.
Please feel free to visit my seo services website for seo services, free tools and lots of advice.
Blog Marketing
Blog Marketing
Blog marketing can be an excellent tool in search engine optimisation because search engines consider a blog to be both an authority and a good content site..
Blog marketing is the term used to describe internet marketing via weblogs (Blogs). These blogs differ from corporate websites because they feature daily or weekly posts, often around a single topic. Typically, corporations use blogs to create a dialog with customers and explain features of their products and services. Because search engines look to blogs as both authority sites and great resources for fresh content, they can be excellent tools in search engine optimisation.
Many organisations use blogs with their user community. This allows them to share and preview product features, functions, and benefits before the products are released. Blogs are an excellent way to gather feedback and to make sure products meet the needs of users. Blogs have become the next generation marketing tool to corporate websites which merely post collateral and do not provide any interactive feedback. Blogs are also supplementary to a User Group. User Groups happen annually for example while blogs provide users constant daily and weekly feedback.
Blogs are Basic websites which are updated Regularly. They act as a Private news interface for any Company / Website. With regular updates being handled by the company executive team, product marketing, and product strategy teams. The need for fresh content on the web makes the Blogs a preferred destination for Resources. Blogs have been focused as a primary platform for Marketing since the early 2006. "Blogs are web sites that allow you instantly publish content about a certain topic or theme."
Blogging then is defined as the act of publishing content with blog. But...publishing content with a blog and publishing with a regular web site are like night and day both in how they work and in what they are used for.
So what is the difference then between a web site and a blog?
A regular web site is designed to publish content for all manner of reasons. Regular web sites are static and infrequently updated. Regular web sites are great at content delivery but they can also be impersonal in how they publish content and inform their audience.
Blogs are instant publishing tools that allow you easily update your content often. Blogs are said to be dynamic content delivery systems and even content management systems. Blogs are published as two-way conversations that are more personal than web sites and are humanized by the voice of the very human blog publisher who is generally the one actually publishing content and responding feedback from readers.Links from blogs can be a good source of quality back-links and also targeted traffic dependent on the nature of your website.
Blog marketing can be an excellent tool in search engine optimisation because search engines consider a blog to be both an authority and a good content site..
Blog marketing is the term used to describe internet marketing via weblogs (Blogs). These blogs differ from corporate websites because they feature daily or weekly posts, often around a single topic. Typically, corporations use blogs to create a dialog with customers and explain features of their products and services. Because search engines look to blogs as both authority sites and great resources for fresh content, they can be excellent tools in search engine optimisation.
Many organisations use blogs with their user community. This allows them to share and preview product features, functions, and benefits before the products are released. Blogs are an excellent way to gather feedback and to make sure products meet the needs of users. Blogs have become the next generation marketing tool to corporate websites which merely post collateral and do not provide any interactive feedback. Blogs are also supplementary to a User Group. User Groups happen annually for example while blogs provide users constant daily and weekly feedback.
Blogs are Basic websites which are updated Regularly. They act as a Private news interface for any Company / Website. With regular updates being handled by the company executive team, product marketing, and product strategy teams. The need for fresh content on the web makes the Blogs a preferred destination for Resources. Blogs have been focused as a primary platform for Marketing since the early 2006. "Blogs are web sites that allow you instantly publish content about a certain topic or theme."
Blogging then is defined as the act of publishing content with blog. But...publishing content with a blog and publishing with a regular web site are like night and day both in how they work and in what they are used for.
So what is the difference then between a web site and a blog?
A regular web site is designed to publish content for all manner of reasons. Regular web sites are static and infrequently updated. Regular web sites are great at content delivery but they can also be impersonal in how they publish content and inform their audience.
Blogs are instant publishing tools that allow you easily update your content often. Blogs are said to be dynamic content delivery systems and even content management systems. Blogs are published as two-way conversations that are more personal than web sites and are humanized by the voice of the very human blog publisher who is generally the one actually publishing content and responding feedback from readers.Links from blogs can be a good source of quality back-links and also targeted traffic dependent on the nature of your website.
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