by Marelise da Silva | Sep 23, 2010 | SEO
Ever wondered exactly what Black Hat SEO (Search Engine Optimization) means? It is the unethical under the table way of search engine marketing. Think you don’t know about it? I am sure you have at least browsed to a couple of websites practising these bad website ranking methods.
Black Hat SEO
Keyword Stuffing: It is by repeating keywords on your page in a un user-friendly way usually hidden from the viewer. It is an attempt to manipulate your page ranking and search engines takes note of this.
Invisible Text: Exactly as the heading suggests “invisible text”. Example: using a white background with white text. Once more the user can’t see the text because it is hidden and it is focused on search engine bots and crawlers
Cloaking: Search engines knows what is on your website as their spiders crawl your pages periodically and adds them to their index. Cloaking means showing a page to the search engine crawlers and a completely different one to the users browsing the site.
Doorway Pages: A doorway page is a web page built specifically with the intention of ranking well in the search engines without any real valuable content of its own. Doorway pages usually links to the real destination page with valuable content or redirects there.
Selling Page Rank: Selling of text links to advertisers/web masters on a high page rank page that passes the page rank value onto their website.
Buying Expired Domains: There are link spammers that monitors (must be boring) DNS records for domains that will expire soon or that has recently expired. The link spammers then buys the domain and replaces the content and links with their own. Most search engines resets the link data on expired domains.
Link Spamming: Link spamming similar to link farming (see next heading). Link spamming takes advantage of link based ranking algorithms, such as Google’s Page Rank (PR) algorithm. It gives and passes a higher page rank (PR) to a website the more other highly (PR) ranked websites links to it.
Link Farming: Link farming involves the linking to websites that are not relevant for the purpose to increase the websites link popularity and PR (page rank) value.
Spam Blogs: Spam blogs better known as “splogs” are similar to link farming. Spam blogs are fake blogs created only for spamming.
Page Hijacking: Page hijacking is achieved by creating a copy of a website which shows the content similar to the original content of the hijacked website to a web crawler but redirects the user to unrelated websites.
Mirror Websites: Mirror websites is the hosting of multiple web sites all with similar content but using different URLs containing keywords in the URL. Most popular search engines gives a higher page rank (PR) to pages where the specific keyword searched for appears in the websites URL.
URL Redirection: The URL Redirection method is used by taking the website viewer to a different page without their intervention. For example using META refresh tags, javascript or another server-side method.
by Marelise da Silva | Sep 22, 2010 | SEO
If your website isn’t ranked that good on the search engines and you like it that way, then you have found the tips you have been looking for…”The BAD way to do search engine optimization“.
Many people and businesses put up a website without any consideration towards attracting targeted visitors from the search engines. If this is you, then you are most likely following one or more of these “BAD Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips”.
Please note that if you follow these tips, your precious website will have a negative impact on the search engines.
Bad SEO Tips
No Focus: Try to cover as many different and diverse topics as you can find to include on your website. You might want to combine a computer hardware website, a poetry company and a gardening business all on the same website. This will insure the search engines are confused about your core topic and objective.
Keywords: Create your own keywords and keyword phrases in a foreign language mixed with your own language instead of doing keyword research on phrases that are actually being searched for on the internet. Focus on only 1 keyword which is the most competitive and that also has the lowest conversion rate available.
Page naming: Always name the pages on your website with numbers instead of keywords and mix underscores mixed with hyphens between words.
Graphic only home page: Since the home page is most likely the most important page on your website, always put content on your images or substitute a welcome page that says “Enter Site”. Search engines doesn’t read the text on images but at least you will have full control of which font you can use.
Duplicate content: Copy content directly from other websites to trigger the search engine duplicate content penalties. Copying other people’s content is a risky business but you can get away with it – right?
META tags: Use keywords and terms like “about” and “home” in the title tag which is one of the most valuable META tags because it is visible. Always create duplicate META keywords and META descriptions so that they are the same across most of your pages. Also, stuff your pages with dozens of keywords in your META keywords instead of only the ones that are related to that particular page.
Analytics: Never apply any tracking software to analyse any conversion happening on your website. You also don’t have to understand how visitors find your website and through which keywords. Never make regular changes based on any real world results.
If you follow these “BAD SEO tips”, you will make life easier for the rest of us that really wants to attract targeted visitors and to get business from our websites.
by Francois Muscat | Sep 16, 2010 | SEO
It is not that hard to find a web design company or to find website developers to develop your online application according to your needs. The question is…do they understand search engines? Do they know how to optimize your website and make it search engine friendly? Do they really understand Search Engine Optimization?
So you told your web design company that you would like to appear on the search engines. Great, now what? It’s not an accomplishment if you type in your company name in the search engines and you are ranked number 1. How can this benefit you? If people already knew your company name why not just type in your URL to browse to your site (if they knew your URL of course).
What if you were ranked on the first page on the search engines for the keywords your company relates to? If you were, people would find you without typing in your company name on the search engines but by searching for relevant keywords and keyword phrases that you are targeting.
Search Engine Optimization is vital
Most web designers/developers don’t know the critical information regarding SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and the vital role it plays when designing/developing a new site. SEO needs to be taken in consideration from the first moment when the development for your site has begun.
Most of the factors like met content, title tags, headings, keywords, meta descriptions, content, image tags, linking structure, xml sitemaps, etc plays an important role in the on page optimization of your website.
SEO doesn’t consist of just on page optimization. Off page SEO plays a bigger part than most think. Off page SEO consists of article submissions, press releases, social bookmarking, back links, etc. All of these factors needs to be in place if you want people to know about your website.
My site looks great!
What is the point if you have the greatest, nicest looking website and no one knows about it? It is the same as if you had an expensive new sports car and it just stood in your garage because you don’t have fuel to drive it.
If you are in the process of designing / developing a new site, I strongly suggest that you speak to your web designer about this and to make sure that they understand SEO and Search Engine Marketing. Your website should be build from the start with on and off page SEO in mind.
by Marelise da Silva | Sep 15, 2010 | SEO
WordPress is an excellent blogging platform with loads of blogging features. It’s easy to set-up and maintain to make sure you can start blogging straight out of the box. WordPress can be used as a blogging platform, CMS (content management system), E-Commerce platform, social network, press release website, etc.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plays a big role in blog marketing and any other online marketing strategy to make sure your content is listed on the search engines.
WordPress out of the box doesn’t include enhanced SEO features but having one of the biggest open source communities in the world, smart people created a couple of plugins that can be installed without any hassle to make sure your blog gets listed on the top search engines. Find below a couple of plugins to help you optimize your WordPress blog.
WordPress SEO plugins list
- All in one SEO pack (Optimized your blog for the search engines. You can add specific keywords and meta descriptions for your blog posts).
- Google XML Sitemaps (Creates an XML sitemap containing links to all your categories, pages and blog posts)
- Platinum SEO Plugin (Similar to All in one SEO pack with a couple of extra features)
- SEO Smart Links (SEO Smart Links can automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your posts.)
- SEO Slugs (Long URL’s may have a better ranking in search engines because it will contain more keywords. But search engines like Google tends to ignore some common keywords such as “you”, “a”, “the”, and “what”. This plugin will remove all the unused common keywords in your URL)
- SEO No Duplicate WordPress Plugin (If you must have duplicate content on your site for whatever reason, SEO No Duplicate will allow you to state which version of the post search engines should index while ignoring the others.)
- Robots Meta (Robots Meta enables users to control which pages/posts can be indexed and which can’t.)
- Nofollow Case by Case (This plugin allows you to strip the “nofollow” command from your comments, and then you can apply it to only the comments you don’t wish to support.)
- Google positioner (It’s important to know your keywords. And this handy plugin allows you to track the keywords you’re getting searches for.)
- Broken link checker (This plugin will monitor links in your site and list out links that don’t work or any missing images.)
by Marianna Muscat | Sep 13, 2010 | SEO
1. Write descriptive headlines.
Make sure your article headline would make sense to the average reader when written on a blank sheet of paper. That headline might show up out of context in an RSS reader, a search result or who-knows-what. So the headline alone must tell the reader what to expect. And, of course, the headline will likely become your article’s title tag, which is key to SEO.
2. Forget about wrap.
Don’t shorten your headlines or subheads. If they wrap to two lines, it’s OK! This isn’t print.
3. Write descriptive links.
In a sentence like ‘SEO improves your organic ranking,’ don’t add a ‘click here’ at the end for more information. Make ‘SEO improves your organic ranking, the link itself. You can also have click here, if you want. Just make sure there’s a descriptive link in place.
4. Mention the primary person/topic/event in the article headline.
Seems obvious, doesn’t it. Apparently it isn’t. If your article is about writing, make sure writing is in the headline.
5. Mention the primary subject in the first paragraph.
lots of articles don’t have the subject or the description of the key information or whatever else in the first paragraph. Why oh why?
6. Resize images in an image editor.
I know you’re in a hurry to get that story uploaded. But take the time to resize images properly, using an image editor. Don’t resize them using the content management system or HTML. Image crawlers want to ‘see’ an image file that matches the size and shape of the displayed image.
7. Write ALT tags for images.
Write an alternate tag for your image that fully describes the image. I guarantee your content management system has a field for the ‘alt’ tag, or uses another field for it. The right ALT tag can help you get that image indexed, and help rank the text around it.
8. Give images relevant captions.
Put a relevant caption under or near the image, or at least make sure the text of the paragraph before/after that image is related. That helps search engines figure out if the image is relevant, and could get you higher rankings.
9. If you write a related story, link to it.
If you write a story the importance of SEO to improve your rankings and therefore traffic/conversions, and wrote a related story a year ago, link back to it. By connecting the stories, you create a cluster of relevant content.
10. Use full names.
The first or second time you mention a person or company, use the full name. Not ‘Mr. Macleod’ or MacLeod’, but ‘Jamie MacLeod’. Not ‘SEO, but ‘Search Engine Optimisation’. That will give search engines and searchers who look for the full name a better shot at finding you.
It’s about your readers
I didn’t say ‘keyword’ once, did I? That’s because everything I’ve mentioned is equally good for your readers and search engines. It’s also because, if you’re writing about your products or services, your search rankings and traffic will flow naturally from your subject matter.
Don’t try to shoehorn in the phrases you think will generate traffic. If you really want to do that, hire an SEO consultant. That way, you can write beautiful prose, and hate the consultant when they change it.
by Francois Muscat | Sep 9, 2010 | SEO
To attract more visitors to your website is the ultimate goal in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Everyone agrees that organic search results is more effective for conversion and producing positive results.
Websites that have a higher organic search ranking are usually more trusted by people for a service or product and it shows that the website has authority.
This post is the first part in a series where I will be discussing things to do for the optimization of your website.
12 Search Engine Optimization steps to do:
- Research: Start your SEO campaign with keyword research. Select key phrases that are highly relevant to the services that your business provides. Specific key phrases with 3-4 words are best if you want visitors that are ready to buy.
- Structure: Use keywords in your domain name, page names, titles, headings, folder names, etc.
- Navigation:Use keywords in your navigation links. Make your website easy to navigate for both search engines and for visitors. Include a XML sitemap if your website navigation is complex.
- META Tags: Use keywords and key phrases in the title, description and keyword tags. Each page in your website should have about 4 keyword phrases that are highly relevant to the content found on that page.
- Content: Use keywords in your content. Use keywords 1-2 times in the top 25% of the text.
- Local: Take advantage of local search opportunities by using your city, state and community names in your body text and on your contact page.
- Valid Code: Validate your code and remove coding errors. These errors interfere with spiders crawling your site and they affect browser compatibility and usability. There are many online code validation websites available.
- XML Sitemap: Include a XML sitemap for your website and submit the sitemap to Google Webmaster tools and Yahoo Site Explorer.
- Links: Gain backlinks to your website from highly relevant blogs, authority sites, directories and other websites that are part of your industry.
- Blog: Start a blog either as part of your website or on a separate domain. Link to relevant pages on your website using your keyword phrases. Comment and participate on other blogs.
- Web Analytics: Install website analytics on your website to monitor progress. Watch not only your overall visitor count, but which keyword phrases are bringing visitors and from which search engines.
- Patience: Do learn patience. Search engine optimization is a long term commitment.
Part 2 will be covered in the next post where it will focus on what you should never do in your website.
