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Black Hat Search Engine Optimization Techniques
By Terry Detty
As search engine optimization has become more popular, so has the use of unethical SEO techniques. After you’ve read this, you’ll know what techniques are underhanded and which are acceptable.
“Black Hat” Techniques
“Black Hat” techniques are unethical methods that some Web site owners use to get their site listed on search engines (and to obtain a high search engine listing). Here’s a list of three common “Black Hat” techniques you should avoid since they could get your site banned.
1. Keyword stuffing: Keyword stuffing is the overuse of keywords in a piece of content. Generally, this is repeating the same keywords over and over just to achieve a higher search engine ranking.
2. Invisible text: Quite a few cheap sites use this tactic, which involves making keywords to be the same color as the background, so readers can’t see the massive amounts of keywords, but search engine spiders can.
3. Doorway pages: These are pages that regular visitors cannot see, but search engine spiders can. They are used to trick the search engines so that the site gets a higher ranking. Not only do they go against the rules, but they also hurt the visitor’s experience. Who wants to see a site stuffed with keywords?
Do “Black Hat” techniques work?
They do, but only temporarily. Eventually the search engine spiders catch on and your site can be permanently banned from the listings. It may pay off for a few short weeks, but it permanently hurts your site and its credibility on the Internet.
Fortunately, there are many techniques you can use to get your site ranked in a top spot with the search engines. We’ll go over two such techniques right now.
Keywords
Earlier in this article, we talked about keyword stuffing, which can get your site banned. In contrast, the natural use of keywords is perfectly fine. By natural, we mean keywords that are spread throughout a document in a way that isn’t blatant.
How do you naturally use keywords in your content? The first step is to identify some keywords that are relevant to your site, then begin to write the content. Essentially, you want to incorporate the keywords you’ve picked out in a natural way throughout the content. Ideally, if your content is 600 words, you’ll want to use the main keyword between 6-18 times, which is a keyword density of 1-3% (keyword density is the number of keywords divided by the total words of a document). Anything less than that won’t be beneficial. More than a keyword density of 3% might seem like keyword stuffing, so try not to past a keyword density of 5%. Also be aware that you’re not incorporating keywords for the search engines only, you’re going to have people reading your content, so it’s important that your keywords doesn’t interfere with your message.
Linking
Linking is a common practice between Web sites. In many cases, the simplest method is a link exchange, where you and another webmaster agree to post links to each other’s site.
From there, each time a search engine spider visits a page with a link to your site on it, the spider will then visit your site.This is one quick way of improving your position in the search engines.
Conclusion
While “Black Hat” techniques temporarily do work, they never pay off in the long run. So if you want a legitimately high search engine listing, don’t use “Black Hat” techniques. Use natural methods for high search engine rankings!
Thank you from WGC Designs to the author of this great article.
About the Author
Terry Detty, 42, enjoys all aspects of Internet marketing and occasionally getting out for a breath of fresh air. He has several sites, covering Internet marketing, time and attendance and credit repair.
http://www.webreference.com/promotion/blackhat/
At some point in time, every service provider takes a look at his or her website and decides it’s time for a redesign.
And, to be perfectly honest, a website redesign can be more difficult and time-consuming than building a completely new site from the ground up. Not only is there a need to create a new design, but you will also be dealing with moving and renaming pages and other files, which puts traffic and page rank at risk.
That’s why it’s extremely important to have a solid plan in place before the redesign process takes place.
Start by analyzing what you have.
The first thing we need to do is review each and every file at the current site. Depending on the age and size of the current site, this step can often take several weeks.
We catalog each piece of content at the site, which includes pages, articles, posts, comments, images, videos, audios, free reports, digital downloads, forms, scripts, products, autoresponders, newsletters, plug-ins, etc. We simply list every asset at the site.
Next, decide what you’ll do with it all.
Now that the list of assets has been created, it’s time to come up with a plan for what stays and what goes. Look at every item and decide if it will be added to the new site? Will it be moved to a different directory? Will the URL change? Will the asset be renamed? Do any of the pages require new Meta tags?
Pay special attention to your scripts and forms, do they refer to a certain asset that you wanted to discard? Does a form point to a certain thank you page? Make a notation of what will stay and what will go.
Thirdly, list all of your exceptions.
Before completely eliminating an item, you’ll want to investigate your off-site assets. Are any of your active PPC campaigns referring to a particular landing page? Are your linking partners linking to a page that will get renamed?
Take a look at your traffic analytics to determine which off-site sources are driving traffic and exactly where they’re sending that traffic. You might want to keep these pages as-is, disallow them in your robots text file to avoid any duplicate content issues, and contact your traffic sources about the change. Keep the items live until you are 100% sure there is no traffic being directed to them.
Give WGC Designs a call to create a plan for your website today.
About the Author: Karen Scharf is an Indianapolis marketing consultant who works with small business owners and entrepreneurs. She offers several whitepapers, free reports and checklists, including her free Can-Spam checklist and free email pre-flight checklist to ensure your emails get delivered, get opened and get read. Download your copies at http://www.ModernImage.com.
What do we do Now?
-by Peter Francese
Since October of 2007, the value of an index fund based on the Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen 40 percent. But a great many stock funds are down at least 50 percent from a year ago, and hardly anyone is suggesting that this is the bottom.
By comparison from October of 2007 to this past October, the median sale price of a New Hampshire residence (not including condominiums) has fallen just 13 percent. All homeowners can rightly be distressed about the drop in home prices in our state, but over the past year it’s pretty clear which was the better investment.
Considering the sharp drop in retail sales and the general economic situation, it’s likely to be some months before consumer confidence climbs up from its all-time low point. The president of Best Buy recently said, “In my 42 years of retailing, we’ve never seen such difficult times for the consumer. People are making dramatic changes in how much they spend, and we’re not immune from those forces.”
The fact that, despite their problems, Best Buy is so much better off than their chief competitor, Circuit City, which has filed for bankruptcy, offers some insight for REALTORS®. The biggest difference between those firms is that Best Buy invested a great deal more in their website, and they invested more heavily to understand how customers for electronic goods were changing.
There is no doubt that this is an extraordinarily difficult time for New Hampshire REALTORS®. But it is my belief that when the economy recovers, the most successful ones will be those who invested in upgrading their website and increasing their knowledge of today’s home buyers.
Results from the monthly survey which we ask you to complete will provide more information about home buyers (October survey results are described below).
But improving your website really requires some technical assistance. Here are three suggestions for the next time you upgrade your site:
- 1. Make the print bigger. More of the people visiting your site are older and have trouble reading small print.
- 2. Use as many virtual tours or video tours of homes as you budget permits. More site visitors will expect to see some type of video presentation rather than just small still photos.
- 3. Describe in more detail a home’s benefits in terms that matter to prospective buyers. More buyers, for example, want to know if it has broadband access, how close it is to town or if it’s handicap accessible and/or energy efficient.
