The negative side of SEO keywords
December 26, 2009 by seoroad
Filed under Spamming and Black Hat
S.E.O. stands for search engine optimization, its words that a search engine will pick up to link a search to a web page.The search engines latch on to words used by some one who enters a search, the more hits on the words the higher the site will come on the list returned by the search engine. Most search engines use a program called a spider which will search for websites linked to common searches people use the sites fro, every few days the spider program looks for updates and new sites that fir under the keywords entered by the searcher. There is a technique called black hat seo where people overload their first page on their websites in order to get the maximum amount of hits,this is frowned upon and most search engines will find these sites and block them from their lists. The site programmers hide words in texts and in in backgrounds but get caught.
White hat seo involves adding the seo words in to a page but within relative limits,this allows fairness for all who are trying to plug their sites. The words you want the search engines to find should be included in the title page and a few times in the text.Five uses per hundred words is about the usual limit for keywords or key-phrases to be used,any more is over the top and may be called blackhat.There are people who try blackhat seo in order to boost their sales knowing they will caught out ,they know that they will get boosted hits on their sites until they are caught out.When caught they will simply set up new links and advertise again.
Trying to fit too many keywords or phrases into a piece will spoil what you are writing as it will make the work look cluttered and will remain repeating yourself repeatedly. It also lessens the words you can use as you will have certain words and phrases to fit in and still allow the piece to make sense. If you have a piece to write which is around five hundred words then try and break it up into five paragraphs with the seo word or phrase shown once per paragraph,much more will be hard without messing up what you are writing. Try and make the work look like a natural piece if you can while still incorporating the seo phrases,harder if the phrase are long but easier if the phrases are shorter or better still one word. For example look how often i have used the words seo and keyword in this piece without making it look to bad. Plan your work out carefully and don’t allow the thought of adding certain words or phrases stop you writing.
How To Hire A Good SEO Marketer
December 26, 2009 by seoroad
Filed under Spamming and Black Hat
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the art and science of making search engines rank your site high in the natural search results when someone types in a query. That’s the intent of SEO, however. Since SEO is still an emerging field, there is no “governing body”, and the rules sometimes change. A good SEO professional understands these changing rules, and knows how to properly apply them. A bad SEO specialist generally makes mistakes, or purposely tries to decieve the system to win “fake” high rankings.
It is not true that you have no control over what appears in the search engines. The content that you put on your site determines where you appear in the search engine results page (SERP). If your site is about “widgets”, you’re probably not going to appear in search results about “bus fares”. The most important thing you can do on the web is to represent yourself honestly. If your site is about “widgets”, and the content on your site talks about “widgets” then you’ll probably appear somewhere in the SERP for “widgets”. A good SEO professional can help you rank higher for “widgets”, among other well-researched, and relevant keywords.
What is the Difference Between a “Good” SEO Service, and a “Bad” One?
A bad (“blackhat”) SEO marketer is like a vendor walking down the street selling snake oil. You may think you’re getting a deal, but you can’t be sure of the consequences. A good SEO marketer is like a pharmacist. They have studied all the tried and true techniques to solve your problem and probably have a good idea of how to safely and effectively address your issue.
The Benefits of Hiring bad SEO:
Your site could shoot straight to the top, ranking #1 for your keywords
You could earn a few new customers quickly and make a quick buck
The cost is far less than what your friends and competitors are paying for SEO
The Costs of Hiring bad SEO:
When the search engines catch on, your site could be penalized (drastically downgraded) in the rankings, ending up worse than before
Your site could be temporarily banned from the search engine (completely unfindable – expect 6-12 months)
Your site could be permanently banned from the search engine (completely unfindable – for good)
When any of the above occurs, there will be lost productivity from having to remove all the search engine spam from your site
It could be hard to track down all the tricks the SEO marketer used to artificially boost the rankings, and therefore it could take a long time to get back into the results pages
Once penalized or banned, you will lose all the potential customers you would have gained had it been done correctly
A professional SEO consultant will probably have to be hired at additional cost to fix it and do the job right
Don’t believe it? In February 2006, BMW was given the Google Death Penalty for employing blackhat SEO practices. They presented a slick design to anyone with JavaScript, and showed everyone else (that means the search engines) a keyword-rich page. Showing one content to visitors and another to Google is a no-no. BMW Germany was banned from Google.
The Costs of Hiring Good SEO:
The initial cost will be higher
There will probably be an ongoing subscription fee
The implementation time will be longer (for the site to rank high)
There will be changes to the content of the actual site, and probably the structure, as well
The Benefits of Hiring Good SEO:
Higher rankings overall
The high rankings tend to stay there
The keywords you are ranking high for are relevant to your organization and the people who are trying to find you
It is more cost-effective in the long-term
Future pages that you add the the site will be easier and faster to rank higher
No blackout periods or customer loss because of penalty
What Is “Bad” SEO, and Why is it So Undesirable?
First, let’s examine some of the techniques available to the blackhat SEO marketer. Here are just a few:
Doorway Pages: Many pages stuffed with keywords are placed on the web, and all link back to your site
Cloaking: Showing one version of the site to visitors, and another to search engines.
Dynamic Content: Not all dynamic content is bad; in fact, most is perfectly legitimate. But having the server generate large lists of keywords that change frequently is generally a bad idea.
Scraping: Some sites visit high ranking sites, copy bits of the content that has the keyword they want, and post it on their site. This is a very good way to really annoy other websites.
Hidden Text: Keywords on a page that are the same colour as the background, or that are hidden by CSS are a bad idea
Setting up links pages that use the keyword-rich link text of other sites to gain ranking. This makes the link page appear to be more relevant for the desired keywords. This annoys not only the search engines, but also the visitors.
Keyword Stuffing: Writing almost meaningless text in the site that is basically a long list of keywords. Responsible SEO will use keywords carefully in the text, but like all things, you can overdo it. Search engines appreciate good grammar.
Overdoing RSS: Go ahead and syndicate large portions of your website. But syndicating all of your website may raise a flag. There are rumors suggesting that there might possibly be changes in the way Google indexes RSS in the future.
Bait-and-Switch: Submitting the search-engine friendly page to the search engine, then after it’s indexed, uploading the “real” page. This is a very temporary boost in your rankings.
Irrelevant Keywords: WHY would you promote the keyword “sex” on your site about “widgets”? Do you honestly think someone looking for “sex” will see your site and say, “oh wait a minute, I think I wanted a widget”? If you sell “widgets”, then promote “widgets”, so people who want to buy “widgets” can find your “widgets”.
Why do Search Engines Dislike All This?
Search engines are in the information business. Specifically, search engines provide helpful answers to questions. Sites which use these techniques dilute the relevancy and usefulness of the search engines. The search engine that allows their results to become irrelevant is useless and out of business. No-one will search that engine, no-one will click on their ads, no-one will want to buy or display their ads, and eventually no-one will want to invest in them. Search engines are protecting their investments and their future by ensuring the continuing relevancy and usefulness of their results.
How to Hire a Good SEO Professional
Let’s first look at some of the signs that indicate the possibility of a blackhat SEO marketer
If you hear anything like “we guarantee top placement”, don’t hire them. A good SEO marketer cannot guarantee you a good ranking any more than your broker can guarantee you a great return. All they can do is a good job, or not.
If the company representative talks to you about the advantages of Meta Tags, don’t hire them. Meta Tags are very obsolete in terms of search engine marketing (SEM).
Get a list of previous clients and check their current site and rankings. If their rankings are now low, or if the client sites seem to have spammy content, or little content, don’t hire them.
If first contact with the SEO company is made through an unsolicited phone call or email, be wary. Why? SEO is not an aggressive marketing technique. SEO is the art and science of providing people with what they were looking for anyway. It is fulfilling a need in response to a request about that need. In a sense, it is an entirely passive marketing technique, because it is only triggered when a person is actually seeking it. Be wary of search engine marketers that seem overly aggressive.
My personal pet peeve is the ones that call and announce that we are not at the top of the search engines but they can “help” us. Rest assured, we are listed at the top for every keyphrase we’ve ever really targeted. When they are informed that we are at the top, they start demanding to know which keywords we rank high for. Such valuable keyphrases should not be given away so cheaply. I politely hang up on these people.
These are a few signs of a good SEO marketer
A good SEO marketer will insist on content changes to the website, and perhaps the structure of the site
A good marketer will thoroughly research the keywords they are going to be targeting, making sure that the keywords or phrases are relevant to the people trying to find you
They will generally provide you with regular reports, or at least suggest a strategy for collecting reporting data
Good SEO marketers will probably charge an ongoing subscription fee. This is because the web is a growing, organic network, and web marketing is an ongoing process.
Good SEO should be able to provide client names & sites from a few years ago that you can look up online. If you are unsure, then feel free to contact the owners of the site for a reference.
Life provides us with so few quick fixes. As in all things, hard work and dedication pay off, and those looking for the “quick buck” generally get it, and not much more. If you are serious about your online business, or the ongoing “findability” of your website, it is absolutely worth investing in long term strategies for search engine success. After all, search engines are not going away any time soon.
Article Submission Strategy – Read Before your Submit Another Article!
December 24, 2009 by seoroad
Filed under Spamming and Black Hat
Article submission strategy is important when it comes to submitting articles to online article directories. I would explain why. In the past, you can just write and post an article and there is a high chance that your article can get lots of traffic. The traffic comes from the search engines and the visitors of the article directories. It was easy because there are not many online authors, so there isn’t much information to compete with you for reader’s attention. Life was so simple then. Now, the competition is so stiff that you really got to use a bit of article submission strategy and tricks to get to the top which you would learn here.
Old Way Of Article Submission
The traditional way of article submission is to look at your product, and come up with a few keywords related to your product and start to write an article containing these keywords. In a few weeks to months, your article gets ranked high in the search engines and there you go, instant traffic that comes streaming in like mad. And we all know that such traffic often also brings in an avalanche of sales and subscribers because it is targeted traffic. There are not many online authors as well and you probably are one of the few. People who search the article directories have a high chance of finding and reading your articles.
Times Have Changed, We Need To Refine Our Article Submission Strategy
Yes, this is correct. We need to think of new ways and an article submission strategy. With so many competing articles in our niche, online articles are appearing from everywhere. The difficulty in getting traffic escalates and we need to do beyond just writing and submitting articles the way we did previously. We need to target new keywords for our articles. Recently, there has been an ongoing discussion about longtail and LSI (Latent Semantic Index) keywords.
It pays to use such words in our article submission strategy. Longtail keywords are long extensions of the main keyword related to our product or service. These keywords typically have a moderately decent amount of searches and are not difficult to rank for. LSI keywords, the hottest now are really keywords that are synonyms of the more commonly used keyphrases. Examples of longtail and LSI keywords for the main keyphrase “article submission†are “best article submission strategy†and “top article posting planâ€. Notice that these words are synonyms? Google now recognizes LSI as a way to check relevancy of your content and to sieve away spam content especially among blackhat SEO webmasters who proliferate keyword spamming.
Other than using longtail and LSI keywords as part of our overall article submission strategy, our content should take LSI into account. LSI is a big word but what it simply means is the content needs to stay relevant and on topic. Using our example of keywords, basically, Latent Semantic Indexing means that we write content that is related and relevant to our main topic. Think of article submission strategy and you would probably link it to building link popularity, article writing, SEO, web traffic and so on. Our articles need to be written such that it is both on main topic and carries some other related content.
Finally, it also does pay to plan the kind of article submission strategy we adopt in submitting a freshly written article. Do we submit to one or many article directories? Both have their advantages. Submitting to one is easy but you do not get much traffic. Submitting to many article directories improves traffic tremendously but unfortunately, it would take days to do so. There are modern tools like article submission software that does an excellent and fast job of submitting articles. Another is article submission services where you subscribe monthly, quarterly or yearly.
These are the few aspects that are critical to your overall article submission strategy. Discover the fastest and most effective article submission strategy and tool from my article blog to put your article marketing traffic on turbo booster.
Last Gasp Of Black Hat SEO!
December 21, 2009 by seoroad
Filed under Spamming and Black Hat
Yes indeedy! Judgment Day is visited unto the black hat seo brethren with a mighty vengeance that was foretold from the day the first scroll of code was writ in script!
Okay, enough with the pseudo biblical babble and down to business. Just in case you are not conversant with the term black hat seo, here’s a brief explanation:
Black hat seo methods are search engine optimization techniques and strategies that fall outside the guidelines and purview of the major search engines with the intent of manipulating the position of one’s website to a far more strategic location on those search engines’ results index.
The objective of this type of seo is to game the search engines in order to attract a ton of internet traffic in as short a time frame as possible. The opposite of black hat seo is known as white hat seo. Most cream-of-the-crop black hat seo practitioners have cloaking, coding and programming skills and employ(ed) self-designed software to game the search engines.
Black hat seo techniques by their very nature are short-lived and the black hatters are well aware of this. You see these techniques involve (or at any rate used to) capitalizing on a weakness or loophole in the search engine algorithms or manufacturing such a weakness and then aggressively exploiting that flaw before the search engines caught on. In other words black hat seo has always been a race against the search engines, with the black hat webmasters ever trying to stay one step ahead!
OLD SCHOOL BLACK HAT SEO TECHNIQUES
Being a step ahead of the search engines used to be relatively simple for the sole reason that the search engine algorithms of the day really were rather basic and crude compared to the situation of today. Some of the more pervasive and better known techniques were keyword stuffing which quite often went hand in hand with the application of invisible text.
Invisible text is merely text that is the same color as the background color of the web page on which that text is located, thus being invisible to the human eye, but readily accessible to a search engine robot. People who used such techniques would stuff their website homepage (or any page whose position on the SERPs they wished to manipulate) with their most sought after keyword, in some cases inserting that keyword hundreds of times as invisible text.
Of course the search engines got smarter, caught on and quickly fixed such loopholes.
Generally, as a rule, black-hat seo webmasters never used their main sites to pursue their shady techniques because they were well aware that the penalty if caught was death; death in the sense that any website found employing such black hat seo methods, was banned and forever removed from the universe of know search! So as mentioned previously, the black hatters never adopted such shady techniques on their main websites but instead used disposable websites with multiple back-links pointing back to their main sites.
Which naturally begs the question, since the search engines were quite capable of crawling those back links, why didn’t they then penalize the destination website huh?
Good question indeed, and here is the answer; because then it would be very simple for a competitor to get rid of their competition by getting that competitors website banned by setting up such a black-hat operation with the destination URL being that of the competition and not that of the black hatter’s website!
With that comforting piece of knowledge in mind the black hat seo webmasters were able to conduct their business, traipsing a step ahead of the search engines and making a killing. Besides when the search engines caught on the black hatters didn’t have to close shop right away for that particular black hat op; there was still plenty of money to be made from gullible marketers who believed in overnight success and riches.
All the webmaster had to do was provide evidence (screenshots and testimonials) of how much money they were making from their system, and before you could say ka-ching, more money was rolling in from that defunct system through sales from people eager to duplicate the black hatter’s success.
THE BIGGEST NAMES IN BLACK HAT SEO RESIGN THEMSELVES TO WHITE HAT TECHNIQUES!
Alas for the black-hat seo brethren, soon enough the search engines had closed the one-step-ahead gap to a half-step ahead! Fast forward to today and there is no step-ahead gap! The search engines are way too smart and getting even smarter still, so much so that there really is no profit to be had anymore from darker-than-shade-of-grey seo techniques. Perhaps that explains why so many cream-of-the-crop black hatters have finally conceded to pursuing white hat seo techniques.
But remember what I said about extra-monetization of defunct seo techniques; there are plenty of gullibles out there who are willing to shell out hefty sums in hopes of fast-tracking their internet marketing campaign. And make no mistake black hat seo software usually commands a hefty price sticker on the premise that it is going to make the purchaser a bucket load of money in next to no time at all. But you and I of course know that such will not happen!
REMEMBER TO BE FOREWARNED IS TO BE FOREARMED!
So if you stumble upon some advert that makes obviously outrageous claims yet still seems seductively appealing like the following example: “Internet Marketer Gets $67 Million In Google Pay-Per-Click Ads Free” just rein in that raging beast of temptation deep inside you that can barely restrain itself and recite the following: “A Fool And His/Her Money Are Easily Parted!”
How Google Filters Spam
December 20, 2009 by seoroad
Filed under Spamming and Black Hat
Online users use Google for research purposes. Google provides pertinent information related to a search query entered by the online user. As much as possible, Google wants to provide its users with quality content alone. Because of this, it abhors low quality and spammy websites.
Google has come up with various spam filters to get rid of websites that aim to spam its ranking algorithm. What are the Google Spam Filters?
Google Sandbox
Google considers the age of a website in measuring its importance. Most new websites suffer the Google Sandbox filter. The filter aims to identify whether the website has something good to offer to online users.
Link Filter
Just because links are important in increasing a website’s rank on Google, some websites have taken beyond natural linking and resorted to link farms. Link farms won’t help your website get good rankings. As a matter of fact, they can even hurt your website’s rank badly. As much as possible, get natural links by adding quality relevant content to your website rather than participating in link farms.
Google also filters websites with suspicious number of links. Don’t think that just because you have added a thousand link to your website, your Google ranking and visibility will go up instantly. Google will have to find out how you were able to come up with such a huge number of links.
Spam Techniques Filter
Google hates spam and websites using spam techniques. Some websites attempt to spam Google’s ranking algorithm by using spammy search engine optimisation techniques like the use of invisible text, doorway pages, JavaScript redirects and other techniques. Google uses a -30 filter on these websites. What is meant by -30?
If your website is caught off guard using spammy search engine optimisation techniques, your ranking will be dropped off by 30 spots. So if you enjoy the 20th ranking before, beware because you might be dropped off to the 50th spot.
Getting Filtered
Some websites use search engine spamming techniques thinking that they can easily get around these spam filters. But it is not as easy as that. Google is doing its best to stop or prevent spamming. The penalty to spammy websites may be either be dropped ranking or no visibility on the search results. Unless you want these penalties, stop spamming the search engines.
Instead of spamming, why not just spend your precious time giving your website relevant content. If you do so, Google will not hate your website. In fact, it will love your website!
How to get a top ten ranking for your site
December 13, 2009 by seoroad
Filed under Spamming and Black Hat
So you have got a brand new shiny website and you are raring to tell everyone about it. You submit your site to Google, Yahoo, MSN and a few directories. You sit back and wait for visitors to come pouring in, right? Wrong! Visitors will never find your site if you are not listed in the top few search results on the Search Engines (unless you are into Internet Marketing and have a big fat list of opt-in email subscribers – which 99.9% of us do not have). Because lets face it – if your website does not show up on a Google search, you may as well not have one. Its like opening a shop on the moon.
So what do you do to make sure your site appears in the top ten rankings?
First I will tell you what NOT to do:
1. Do not submit your site to the Search Engines. Search Engines will crawl your site if its mentioned / linked on other big sites which are crawled daily (I will show you how to get your site there a little later).
2. Do not submit to thousands of Directories or FFA pages Submitting your site to thousands of irrelevant directories will do you more harm than good. Its alright if you submit to a few niche directories related to your field. NEVER use mass submission software and submit to FFA (Free For All) link pages as your site will be seen as spammy by the Search Engines and you will be sandboxed and/or penalized.
3. Do not participate in linking schemes The Search Engines are getting smarter by the day and participating in Link schemes like Link Farms, Webrings, Link Co-ops etc. will only hurt your site.
4. Do not use content that is already being used by hundreds of other sites Posting duplicate content on your site will attract a duplicate content penalty from the Search Engines. Thousands of cookie cutter sites having the same articles posted on them does not benefit anybody. Instead write fresh content. Search Engines love fresh content.
5. Do not use shady/blackhat tactics I have actually seen very experienced webmasters use stupid techniques like creating doorway pages or adding a whole bunch of keywords into a paragraph of text and then changing its color to the same color as the website background (so that visitors cannot see it but the Search Engines can) and similar blackhat tricks. This is very dangerous and can get your website banned from a Search Engine. Read Google’s guidelines about what not to do here – http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
6. Do not stuff your site with keywords If you think your site is going to rank well because you have stuffed all your keywords into your main page, you have another think coming. Only use 2-3 keywords per page and make your website copy interesting to your readers first. Remember – People first, Search Engines later!
7. Do not use the same keyword for all your incoming links and don’t point all your links to your homepage If all the incoming links to your site are having the same anchor text and all your links come in to just the homepage, it looks artificial to the Search Engines. Your incoming links should be spread across multiple keywords and across multiple pages of your site.
Now that we know what not to do, we can proceed to the 7 Steps that will get your site a top ten ranking but before I do that, I’ll say a quick word about keywords. It is most important to do your keyword research BEFORE you start promoting your site. If you end up optimizing your site and getting links for the wrong keywords, all your efforts will be wasted and you will have to start over. So the foremost thing to do is use a tool to research your keywords. My favourite tool is the one from Wordtracker – freekeywords.wordtracker.com. I would also recommend using Good Keywords (goodkeywords.com) and The Dowser (thedowser.com).
Now, here are the 7 steps that will get you into the top ten on Google:
1. SEO: Search Engine Optimization – This is single the most important step you can take to increase your rankings. On page optimization like putting your keywords in the title, adding meta tags, h1, h2 tags, image alt text, robots.txt are simple things you can do yourself. Few webmasters realize the importance of SEO. Instead they lay more emphasis on promoting their website through PPC (pay per click) advertising, Blog posts etc. There are many free tools on the Internet which can help you with SEO. If you are not technically inclined, I would suggest hiring a SEO Company or a SEO firm to do the job for you.
2. Exchanging Links – Thats right. Exchanging links the old fashioned way still works. Most people would scoff at the idea but if you exchange links with the right websites, it can do wonders for your rankings. You should always exchange reciprocal links ONLY with sites which are related to your subject. Hundreds of link exchanges with irrelevant websites will do no good to your rankings – thats the catch – relevancy, and this is where most webmasters make a mistake.
3. Build quality content – When you write quality content, people will WANT to link to you. So ask yourself this – is the content I am writing /program I am developing going to be interesting enough for people to want to link/tag to? Not only will this get you hundreds of links the natural way but also keep people coming back to your site. A win-win situation for everybody!
4. Participate in Communities – When you participate in forums related to your subject, not only do you gain reputation and business but also linkbacks to some interesting content you wrote or some product you shared with others. Use social bookmarking/ tagging sites like Digg.com, Del.icio.us, Furl, Reddit etc. to spread the word about your site. This will help you get links from high trust rank sites and ultimately increase your rankings. But remember – dont spam! If your site does not add value to people, you will get negative comments. It might even hurt your site if you spam these services as they will ban your url which will also stop other readers/users of these services from sharing your site.
5. Write Press Releases and Articles – You should write articles about the subject which you are knowledgeable about and tell people about it through forums, submit it to sites like ezinearticles.com, findarticles.com, goarticles.com etc. Each article should have a link back to your site with your main keyword as its anchor text. Normally you can use the footer of the article for this.
You should write Press Releases about the new product/service you have launched. Your Press Release should look like news and not like an advertisement. Dont use Press Releases if you dont have anything newsworthy to say as it would show your site in a bad light. Press releases should be short and to the point. These will get you hundreds of backlinks from High pagerank and high trust sites.
6. Get High PageRank, High TrustRank, .EDU links – Links form high pagerank sites, high trustrank sites and .edu domains hold a lot of weight in the Search Engines. Its not easy to get these links but once you get them, your rankings will most likely climb a few 100 notches. So how do you get such links? No, I am not going to suggest that you sue Google so that you can get on CNN or something crazy like that.
A few suggestions:
a. Develop a free software/tool related to your industry and spread the news about it. If you cannot do it yourself, get it developed from a freelance programmer. You can find hundreds of programmers at sites like scriptlance.com and getafreelancer.com
b. Sponsor a college event/seminar related to your industry. Most educational institutions have websites (which will mention everything about the event including a link to the sponsors website. wink, wink, nudge, nudge).
c. Advertise in Online Yellow pages, Product pages and Industry portals.
d. Distribute Bumper stickers with your website url printed on it (just kidding)
7. Buy links – I know a lot of SEOs advice against buying links but they do it themselves quite often. Buying PR9, PR8 related Authority site links will boost your rankings like nothing else will. There are many brokers out there who sell links and many forums you can buy links from. I would suggest using TextLinkAds.com, LinkAdage.com and TextLinkBrokers.com. I would also advice buying blogroll links, blog posts and sponsored reviews wherever possible (on relevant sites related to your field only).
If you consistently and sincerely work as per the above suggestions, you should get a top ten ranking for your site within 3-6 months. If you dont want to hassle yourself with going through all the above steps, you can always hire a good firm which offers SEO Services and they will do it for you 
Best of luck! Until the next article,
Ameet Arurkar
Spotting a Phony Search Engine Marketing Company Within 3 Minutes
December 12, 2009 by seoroad
Filed under Spamming and Black Hat
Raise your hand if you’ve ever received an email promising top 10 placement on the search engines. I get them all the time, and I’m in the business. Often these kinds of
companies use “blackhat” tactics that can get you kicked off the search engines. These tactics would include hidden text, doorways pages that the public can’t see, link farms, and a variety of other strategies.
Often blackhat search engine marketing (SEM for short) companies use deceptive sales practices and prey on business owners who know they should be doing search engine
optimization (SEO) but don’t know much about it. Luckily, these companies have some similarities in their deceit. Here are five ways to spot a phony search engine marketing
company as well as three great ways to find a quality SEM company.
They Make Promises of Front Page Placement in a Short Period
A phony SEM company will promise to put you on the front page on three of your key phrases in at least three of the top 10 search engines. Remember, the big three search engines — Google, Yahoo! and MSN—account for approximately 90 percent of the
searches done on the Internet. So the bottom seven search engines divvy up the last 10 percent They’ll let you pick the top 10 key phrases and then work to get you on the lower ranked search engines that have a miniscule percentage of the searches. So the
phony SEO company delivers on their promises but it doesn’t result in a great increase in website traffic.
Their Site isn’t Highly Ranked or is Blacklisted
Do they register highly in the search engine? Are they blacklisted? You can tell their blacklisted by going to Google or one of the other search engines and typing in “site:www.theirdomainname”. If there are no results then most likely they have been blacklisted or are brand new. One of my clients signed a contract with a company this
past year. I showed him that both of the company’s web sites were blacklisted, most likely for using deceptive practices. Do you want your website and business marketed using deceptive practices? Do you want to get blacklisted by Google?
They’re Vague About What They Do
A phony SEM firm will give you vague ideas on what they will do, as well as not tell you the nefarious things they will do. Be wary when a company talks too little in specifics and too much in vagaries. With my proposals I give specifics without giving away my
trade secrets. If they don’t give at least some specifics then they are probably trying to hide something.
They Bully You When You Question Them or Say “No”
One of my clients talked to a search marketing company about pay per click advertising and wanted me to check them out. The company wanted $10,000 in advance and
promised traffic at a good cost per click. But it would have taken three years to spend that kind of budget with the number of searches on his phrases. Thanks, but no thanks. So the
black hat started in with rhetorical questions that presumed I would be an idiot if I didn’t use their services. I calmly said “no” again, and he started up again, so I just hung up.
Don’t waste your time on a bully.
They Contact You
If they are so good at search engine optimization, then you should be contacting them.
They will have high rankings on the search engines themselves on terms that people are searching for. There are some legitimate companies that do initiate calls, so ask for references from clients who are seeing success.
Three Great Ways to Find a Quality Search Engine Marketing Company.
If you’re going to do SEM I would recommend:
1. Talk with colleagues or friends that are seeing success with other companies. They should be able to give you an idea of specific results they are seeing and how well they
are being treated by their SEO company.
2. Use the search engines to find local companies that are doing well on the search engines. If you live in Dallas, type in “Dallas search engine optimization firms”.
Assuming that the people on the front page are local, you can meet with them to find out more about how they work, what they charge, and what results you might expect.
3. Listen for the Big Three Fundamentals of SEM. A genuine SEO company will talk about finding the best phrases to market, getting more content on your site, and getting incoming links to your site. There might be some ancillary techniques they’d recommend,
too, but the three tactics mentioned above should be the foundation of their work.
So, in three minutes you could look up their site, ask them for specifics, and request references. If any of these three are questionable, politely say you’re not interested and hang up. And then start looking for a company who is reputable with an acquaintance,
shows up well on the search engines, and is using good fundamentals. By doing this you will save yourself time, money and headaches.
Blackhat SEO – A Bunch Of Rankers
December 11, 2009 by seoroad
Filed under Spamming and Black Hat
I have noticed a growing trend among webmasters who are desperately seaking top search engine positions for their website. A few years ago Blackhat SEO was seen as some kind of evil practice which would lead you directly to hell. But over the last few months it seems Blackhat SEO has become quite popular, and many webmasters are now using blackhat methods to get their website ranked!
I don’t condone or use these methods myself, but i think it is worth studying the methods used by the blackhats, or as they’re sometimes known Search Engine Spammers. Firstly lets take a look at each type of SEO and explain what each one does.
Black Hat SEO:
This is what people have come to refer to as search engine spammers. They create low quality documents and sites with content generated by software
and rank them highly for target keywords. These sites add no value to the web because they provide no fresh content, no extra information and generally very little except monetization tactics for the site owner.
Thats what black hat SEOs are after: money. The tactics used to make it happen are frowned upon by most mainstream webmasters as well as the search engines. Some of it is borderline unethical while most is not. Its a judgment call I am not here to make
White Hat SEO:
In my book, white hat search engine optimization is a contradiction in and of itself. If you are a white hat, you are doing everything according to Googles
rules. That means you are building sites purely with the user in mind and with total disregard for the search engines. Google puts it this way “build the site as if search engines didnt exist”. That
makes you a white hat. If thats what youre doing, then you are not doing any kind of optimization at all.
White hat? Only by accident: it doesnt really exist.
Gray Hat SEO:
This ranges from very light to black hat and could in fact encompass all SEOs. It really just becomes a question of the level of aggressiveness you are willing
to use in your tactics as well as the content sources you will use. An example is syndicating other peoples content on your blog with just enough of your own text to make it pass the duplicate content filters.
Ok so that’s a summary of each of the hat colours, lets look at the darkside now, and check out some of the methods they use.
As you may be aware most blackhat seo’s don’t usually create their own content/websites by hand. They use software/scripts to automatically create hundreds and thousands of pages use content generators. The best known content generators are:
RssEvolution
RSSGM
Fantomas ShadowMaker
So what about promotion? White Hat SEO’s usually ask other website owners for reciprocal links and submit their links to link directories. Well that’s not how the blackhats do it! Blackhat SEO’s refer to their way of gaining backlinks as “link dumping”. This basically means placing as many links on interactive websites as possible. When i say interactive i mean websites that run scripts such as blogs, guestbooks and forums .etc.
Comment Spam:
In it’s purest form this basically refers to leaving comments on blogs, with a link back to their website. But you can imagine how long this process would be searching for blogs and commenting on each of them, so the blackhats usually buy or more often code their own software to automate this process. The effect is hundreds and thousands of backlinks to their websites.
Forum Spam:
There are millions of forums online, and blackhats target them too. Much like comment spam, they will basically just register at forums (sometimes not needed if guest accounts are allowed) and spread their
links to their website across threads. Now as always blackhats want to make this process automated so they use a program known as Xrumer to automatically register and post threads at thousands of forums.
Guest Book Spam:
This is an old skool method of link dumping used by blackhats but it is still widely used, it basically means using software to automatically post comment on guestbooks. Although this is the old way of doing it, many still use this technique because a lot of older guestbook software doesn’t use the “No Follow” tag.
Trackback Spam:
One of the newer link dumping techniques is trackback spam. It was invented so that blogs can serve as conversation forums. When a website links to a blog post, the blog will recognize this link and create a link back to the website. This is done so that readers of the blog can access relevant content or see what others have written that relates to the blog post they just read. This is a very efficient blackhat way of getting targeted one-way backlinks. Much more so than the methods above.
So that’s a quick summary of how Blackhat SEO’s go about getting ranked. I don’t recommend using these practices as they often lead to search engines banning your website from the SERP’s.
Has Your Website Been G-Slapped?
December 7, 2009 by seoroad
Filed under Spamming and Black Hat
Getting to the top of the search engines has never been easy and the bad news is that it has gotten even harder, especially if you are trying to peak Mt. Google
Recently, with respect to information quality, Google raised the bar even higher with another algorithm tweak that effectively reshuffled (and in some cases evaporated) page rank across thousands of web pages.
Thus if your website’s PR (or that of its inner pages) recently stole quietly away in the middle of the night with nary a goodbye take consolation in the knowledge that you are not alone; this calamity has befallen countless others.
The latest Google algorithm tweak/update has been pretty widespread and non-discriminatory in nature, targeting both new sites and well established veteran sites too.
In the good ole days it used to be that a gray page-rank bar was indicative of a website/web page that had been banned from the Google index but that seems to no longer be the case. Lately it would appear that being grayed-out merely reflects a webpage/website that is under probation (of course in certain cases a gray PR band could actually reflect a banned website/web page).
So what does this all really mean?
Google Web Paradise
Understanding Google’s goals and objectives is fundamental to search-engine optimizing your website effectively and correctly within their guidelines. The first thing you need to appreciate is that online search is a business. Google is Top Dog in the search engine business for two very simple reasons:
1. Google returns the most accurate results for any given search query.
2. Of all the search engines, Google has the fastest retrieval rate for almost all queries.
Being number one for both the above listed parameters obviously has major advantages; it ensures that more people flock to use your search engine and, as has been proven time and time again, where the crowds gather the advertisers hover not far behind.
Advertisers want to get the best bang for their buck so they will naturally tend to spend their dollars where they can get the greatest percentage of targeted and relevant eyeballs; which means advertising on the major search engines (of which surprise, surprise) Google is the leader!
Google’s domination of online search is a tangential derivation of the saying “The Richer Get Richer,” because as Google gets better and leaves the other search engines floundering in their dust, more and more people (and advertisers) will naturally tend to gravitate to them!
The New SEO Horizon
The first thing that should be understood is that the debate about the existence of the Google Sandbox has been laid to rest once and for all. It exists and has become even more expansive as well as having gotten more rigid!
As of January 2005, Google had over 100,000 servers with which to store data in its cache index. The cache index is where Google stores a copy of every page that the googlebot crawls on the internet.
Those web pages that eventually make it into the Google Primary Index (the index that displays the resulting listings in response to a query) are the pages that have been evaluated as most relevant and qualified for that particular query.
Web pages or websites that Google evaluates to be comprised of largely duplicate material that is already in its index are relegated to the supplemental index (the backburner). The supplemental index contains web pages and/or websites that Google considers, for all intents and purposes, to be irrelevant.
In other words you do not want your website to end up in the supplemental index because nobody will ever get to see it!
In 2006 Google suffered a very major server-overload crisis. Since then they have acquired several more servers, but this new algorithm tweak/update tends to suggest that they are leaning much more towards the principle of efficiency-and-quality versus volume-and-quantity.
In essence it appears that Google is adopting an approach geared towards maximizing efficiency of storage and organization of data. This by its very nature means restricting the amount of content that gets crawled, cached and eventually indexed (i.e., saves server space) as opposed to trying to accommodate every single piece of data that is drifting across the internet.
This certainly may go some distance explaining the zeal and passion with which they executed operation “gray band” that affected thousands of websites and web pages.
Recovering From Being G-Slapped
If your website/web pages have recently been demoted (loss of page rank) or now shamefully display a grayed-out PR bar where once a shimmering green existed, then your website has indeed been Google slapped!
So where do you go from there?
There’s a saying that states “understanding the nature of the beast is the first step in divining its true intent” (which is just a fancy way of saying: if you know what makes something tick then you’ll be better able to predict its future actions.”
Keeping that in mind, it is possible to deduce the following aspects from the May 2007 Google update:
1. A gray PR band will be the norm for all new websites and web pages; in other words think “probation period.” The length of time the PR bar remains grayed-out for any particular website/web page is dependent upon a number of factors which include:
a) How unique the content on a web page is. Pages that boast highly original and unique content will tend to be released from the gray zone quicker.
b) A web page that has a lot of unique traffic will have a shorter probation period (note that the origin of that traffic is something the search engines factor in to rule out sneaky play by individuals attempting to game the search engines).
c) Links! Links! Links! Yes, when it comes to SEO it is impossible to ignore the link factor. A page that “naturally” acquires a good number of topically related links will experience a shorter probation period.
d) Greater link activity will increase the importance of the destination page whereby such a web page will tend to attain higher PR quicker. This makes sense because a hyperactive links denotes popularity (websites that are popular are so because people find them useful).
e) The amount of time people spend on your site is also an important parameter that the search engines take into account. People tend to spend more time on websites that they find useful and the search engines can determine that fact through the use of sophisticated tracking scripts.
Bottom line: It is becoming increasingly difficult to game the search engines (the use of blackhat techniques) as their algorithms get smarter and more sophisticated.
The May 2007 Google update amply illustrates that Google is aggressively gunning for its vision of Web Paradise which by necessity means smacking down hard on websites that offer little useful function to that vision!
Simply put, if you wish your website to advance up the SERPs you need to make it user oriented. Visitor use and appreciation of a website appears to be the single strongest factor in determining that website’s eventual position on the SERPs in Google’s brave new Web Paradise!
Google Adsense Webrings a Viable Marketing for Authors
December 3, 2009 by seoroad
Filed under Spamming and Black Hat
Blackhat Seo Techniques
Now that you have an idea of what affiliate marketing is and would like to try this free way of making money online, you have several items to consider and think through. First, what type of affiliate marketing programs will you participate in? There are thousands of options available to you. Think of some things you are interested in, whether it be cooking, reading or other stuff. Then find some free affiliate programs that cater to that particular interest. It doesn’t hurt to enjoy the subject matter! A comparative analysis of popular travel related websites and online ticketing facilities give us details on transaction costs and individual and company perceptions on e commerce facilities for ticketing and travel. It is phenomenon taking place everywhere these days.
Google Adsense Adwords Marketing Information
The same person who may walk by a storefront this afternoon may very well be surfing the internet tonight. More and more people are relying on the internet to find information and places to spend their money on the products they need. B2B and industrial companies are slow to embrace online marketing. They like to search online to conduct their research to find out about the different cities they are considering. See Affiliate Elite
Adsense Adwords Google Marketing Information
Keep in mind that there is no ‘one’ great secret to making money online. PR on the internet is so expanding rapidly because of its vast distribution network the broad potential of contacts and of course its cost-effectiveness. Many people go online to look for a way to supplement their income or even get out of a job they detest. Offering something for nothing is another common practice that works great with affiliate marketing programs. See Cheap PLR Articles
Learn Seo
In truth it is one of the singularly great things about the net if you can get the hang of it. The first step of planning is to define your goals in light of the target market you aim to reach. The flip side to the increased opportunities for successful internet marketing is that a lot of individuals and companies have already set up shop online or are clamouring to do so. Get more at http://www.affiliateelitebonus.org/affiliate-finding-software/online-marketing-affiliate-program.php For example if you are a web developer you won’t make money online by becoming an affiliate of websites selling fishing equipment.
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