Posts Tagged ‘seach engine optimization’
6 SEO tactics to avoid
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008
Any business with a website wants theirs to pop up when people search for their product. Wanting this to happen is one thing, while achieving it is very much another. Success usually comes from diligent and patient SEO efforts but some web owners get a little antsy and decide they want results NOW.
This is not a good idea. If you want immediate results it’s likely you’ll have to ‘trick’ the search engines into thinking your website is the best (which it very well may be) but let me let you in on a little secret….search engines don’t take to kindly to being fooled. The result can be banishment from the search engine which will effectively crush your online dreams.
So here are 6 tactics that search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN regard as ’shady’ and will penalize you for using (courtesy MarketingProfs.com ).
1. Link Farms - There’s general consensus that one of the strongest influences on search rankings is the number and quality of inbound links to a Web page. A link farm is a group of Web sites created for the primary purpose of creating a high number of links to a given Web site. These links are not "real" (in terms of signaling the quality of the site they link to), and so they are trying distort search engine results.
2. Automated Content/Duplication - Search engines like content. They particularly like frequently updated content. Unfortunately, creating unique content takes time and energy. To try to trigger search engine spiders to index more pages from a Web site, and do so more frequently, some may try to auto-generate content or scrape Web content from other sites and republish it.
This technique often goes hand in hand with link farms (because if you’re creating thousands of sites, you need some content to put on them in order to get the search engines to index them and for the links to matter).
Google has gotten very good at determining what is "natural" content vs. content that is computer-generated gibberish with no value. As for duplicating content on other Web sites without permission, this is often in violation of copyright laws, and it’s unethical.
3. Keyword Stuffing - This involves over-populating certain portions of a Web page with repeated occurrences of a given keyword in the hopes of influencing search engine results. Search engines caught on to this trick many years ago, yet it remains popular for some reason.
4. Cloaking - This practice involves delivering different Web site content to the search engine spiders than is delivered to human users. The usual motivation for this is to send the search engine crawlers content for ranking on a certain term—but to send different content to real users. It’s pretty easy for the search engines to detect this. If you’re suspected of using cloaking, it’s easy for someone (like a Google employee) to simply visit your Web site as a human and check whether you’re cloaking. This technique, when discovered, is one of the most reliable ways to get a site banned.
5. Hidden Text - This technique "hides" text on the Web page that search spiders will index (for ranking purposes), but is invisible to a human. The simplest example is some variation of white text on a white background.
Based on how sophisticated you want to get, it could be based on something as simple as tags in the HTML, CSS stylings or Javascript that changes the page dynamically. Regardless of how sophisticated the approach, it is still going to be detected at some point.
6. Doorway/Gateway Pages - This practice is similar to the cloaking technique. Instead of dynamically delivering different content to spiders, a doorway page involves getting a given page (the "doorway page") to rank well in the search engines, but then redirecting human users to a different page. Clearly, this is not in the interests of end-users as they don’t get the content they would have expected.
For more information on the right way to build links please read "Link Building Tips for Beginners "
Tags: E-Commerce and E-Business, link building tips, Rebecca Button, seach engine optimization, SEO, tips
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7 Quick and Easy Ways to Promote Your Company’s Blog
Friday, January 11th, 2008
By now, most web savvy business owners know the importance of blogging. Writing a blog is easy, however getting people to find (and read) your blogs, well that’s the hard part. It may take some work, but getting your blog to work for you - in terms of traffic, readership and ranking - can pay off big time. Here are some of the easiest ways to promote your company’s blog:
Give your blog page a custom look - As tempting as it is to go with one of the Wordpress templates, don’t. Show some originality and let others know that your blog is worth reading and is different than the sea of others that all look the same.
Put out press releases - No, not about how great your blog is but about breaking news stories in your industry. Of course, your blog will be mentioned in the press release (along with a link), but by no means make it the centerpiece. Keep putting out these press releases as long as you have new and interesting stories to write about.
Answer your blog’s comments - First, be sure to have the comment feature turned ON for each of your blog entries. If you have a popular blog it may not be possible to answer all of the comments, but you can at least try to answer a few from each of your blog entries.
Provide good, consistent blog content - A blog is only worth promoting if 1) the content is good and interesting and 2) the blog entries are written on a regular basis. Plus, good content gets picked up by search engines and is more likely to be forwarded on to others.
Join blog networks - Become a member of Blogburst and you might just get your blog picked up by a national media outlet like USA Today or Reuters! Others like 9rules and b5media are great networking tools and offer plenty of link generating opportunities.
Be a regular participant in forums - Posting interesting and helpful comments to a forum within your industry is a great way to meet other like-minded individuals. Show your expertise and provide a link to your blog in every post.
Post your blog on social networks - Sites like Facebook, MySpace and MyBlogLog allow you to post your own blog for others to see. You can just use the feed from your original blog, but now you are posting it on more than just one outlet! You can also meet and add “friends”, add pictures, comments etc.
With little time and effort your blog can be on its way to more readers, more traffic, more links and a higher ranking! The key, of course, is having a quality blog to begin with because no amount of promotion will turn a lame blog into the new “must read”. But, if you’re sure your blog-writing ability
Tags: blogging, blogs, Carrie Hinkel, company blog, E-Commerce and E-Business, Marketing, Marketing Your Business, online marketing, seach engine optimization, SEO
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