Monday, June 11, 2007

The Dangers of Black Hat SEO

to the top of the search results pages, increase your visibility, drive traffic to your site—with these promises, it is easy to understand why many companies are tempted to avail of the services of a search engine marketing company that use optimization techniques search engines like Google and Yahoo! consider illegal.

Known as Black Hat SEO, these methods include adding hidden texts, creating doorway pages (or, as Google defined them “pages created just for search engines”), key word stuffing (i.e., bombarding your content with too much keywords and phrases), using popular but irrelevant keywords and participating in link farms.

Despite the potential benefits they can provide you, however, Black Hat SEO should be avoided like a plague.

First of all, the search engines could drop your rankings so low that even the most diligent of searchers would have a hard time finding your site. And a lowered ranking, as any business whose web site has been penalized can tell you, is never a good thing. Kinderstart, a parenting web site for example, experienced a 70% decline in traffic and 80% revenue decrease after Google penalized the site in March 2005 for allegedly using Black Hat SEO techniques.

And if you think getting your ranks lowered is bad enough, then read this: in some cases, the search engines even ban sites and remove them from their index list—this means that, unless you’re able to successfully appeal your case, your site will never appear on search engine results page ever again. One example is the case of RICOH Germany. The German web site of the Japanese office-products manufacturer was “de-listed” by Google after the search engine discovered the site using spam techniques to bolster its rankings (the site has been re-listed after the company apologized and its webmaster made the modifications Google demanded).

If you’re really unlucky, aside from getting your site removed from the list, you might also suffer from the same embarrassing fate of BMW.de. While the banning of web sites are never really announced (even to the company that owns it), Google’s engineer Mike Cutts announced on his blog the removal of BMW.de’s site from the search engine’s index and even detailed the violations the web site committed. According to Mr. Cutts, the web site was banned because it used “doorway pages”. Reprimanding the site, he wrote, “That’s a violation of our webmaster quality guidelines, specifically the principle of ‘Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users’.”

To avoid getting penalized or banned, hire a reputable search engine optimization company and ensure that only white-hat SEO tactics will be used. Remember, as great as the promise of improved ranking may sound, the penalties the search engines could impose upon your site once you’ve been discovered to be employing the unscrupulous techniques are even greater.

For more information on how you could obtain higher rankings without having to resort to black hat techniques, visit this site on search engine optimization.

http://www.articles-hub.com/Article/154569.html

The Google Freshness Factor

e is a patent application in the US Trademark Office from Monika Henzinger, published in July, 2005, that certifies that she has figured out a way of determining a document’s “freshness.” In an attempt to associate this new term with Google’s other patented terminology (namely PageRank and TrustRank), forum posters are now referring to the concept as “FreshRank.”

The abstract of this patent application states that one of the problems of determining the freshness of a document indexed in a search engine is that the “last-modified-since” attribute isn’t always correct. Some webmasters have figured out they can change the modify date, but obviously a pattern of abuse developed. It doesn’t fool Google, because what Google looks for is actual modified content. As far as how Google determines how old or “fresh” a document may be is still somewhat of a secret. Lately, in the estimation of many, Google has done a very poor job in determining which web sites present as the freshest content in relation to relevancy.

This brings to mind a pertinent question. How does the freshness factor rank in determining relevancy? It has been determined by some that it doesn’t necessarily matter how fresh a document is to Google, especially if that document has many inbound links pointing to it. Henzinger is attempting to patent a more explicit form of freshness, since not all search engines use the “last modified since” attribute anyways, and stating that search engines need a more reliable way of determining overall updated content.

Unfortunately, with the implementation of the duplicate content penalty, we’ve been seeing problems with the freshness attribute of documents. With Google, in particular, the filter employed to whittle out duplicate content doesn’t appear to be taking into consideration the actual origin of the content. For many, this is becoming a great frustrating point. With the onslaught of the technological advances that Google has placed into the public realm within the last decade, it seems impractical and almost ridiculous that they would leave out the very concept of being able to determine the source of the fresh content. Yahoo and MSN do not appear to have this particular problem, so why does Google?

Another particular problem recently presented to the freshness factor, is Google’s own Removal Tool. Experiences with this tool have been much on the side of unpleasant, if at all useful. For some, the Google removal tool has been often mentioned “as a cure against many diseases.” Diseases such as duplicate content or temporary redirects, for example. While I have used it from time to time, I have done so with a cautionary tone, and never used it on a commercial website; rather only on my personal website or blog. Some of the side effects observed are definitely worth mentioning here, and I know I’m not alone.

If you’ve ever used the removal tool, you’ll notice that the page count of the website in question has not been changed, but rather the pages simply fail to show up. Why is this? Because with the URL Removal Tool, these URLs have not been deleted; they have only been filtered out. So even though these pages appear to have been removed, they are certainly still in the database somewhere.

The period of time Google uses to remove these URLs from their index is anywhere between three and six months. I say from three to six months, even though the Google documentation tells us 180 days; in my personal experience, it has been more like 90 days. Regardless of the period of time, rest assured, they are actually still there. How do I know this? Two reasons: one, I mentioned before that the number of pages are still listed as the same amount before the pages were removed; two, after the removal period, they show right back up in the index, as if they’d never left.

Steve Buchanan writes article on many topics including John Deere Lawn Mowers, Honda Generators and Snow Blowers

http://www.articles-hub.com/Article/156421.html

Top Website Optimisation Software Review

face it.Starting a new website with the hope of achieving a large amount of targeted visitors is a very difficult task. This is mainly due to the fact that one has to go about doing link building in order to gain higher page ranks, which will ultimately result in better search engine rankings, and finally more targeted traffic.Link building is an essential part of website optimisation.Building backlinks to obtain a higher ranking in search engines can be a tedious task if you do not have the knowledge.This however,is only one of the many important components of a successful website.

Other factors include relevant page content, correct optimisation of your meta tags,linking with other websites in the same niche and most importantly, your keywords used.Most people are unfortunately unaware of these important factors which are essential for a websites success.When I started my first commercial based website I was unaware of the many important Search Engine Optimisation techniques mentioned above, and as a result my websites never took off.Only after a while did I realise things such as the importance of linking to other websites in my niche. But how time consuming it was having to search for hours trying to find the right place with little or no luck.

Now there are many software programs out there which claim to help people in search engine optimisation.The question is which one to choose.Factors you should look at include the ability to analyze your competitors' sites, search term popularity of those sites and keywords, how many back links competitors have,keyword analysis as well as where those websites link to.In my experience the answer to all these questions comes from a highly effective program called "Traffic Travis".For those of you who are serious about SEO, this is the one for you.For more information on this program please check out my homepage below.


Did you Find this SEO Optimisation article helpful? For more information on Traffic Travis please visit my homepage at:

http://www.articles-hub.com/Article/157736.html

Get Quality Traffic To Your Website

face it.Starting a brand new website with the hope of achieving a large amount of targeted visitors is a very difficult task for most internet newcomers or even people who have had websites online for some time.This is mainly due to the fact gaining high quality organic webtraffic revolves around being able to do extensive link building in order to gain higher page ranks, ultimately resulting in better search engine rankings(SERP), and hopefully more targeted traffic to your website.Naturally,link building is an essential part of website optimisation.Building backlinks to obtain a higher ranking in search engines can be a tedious task if you do not have the knowledge on how to go about it correctly.This however,is only one of the many important components of making a successful website.

Other important factors include the use of relevant page content, correct optimisation of your meta tags,linking with other websites in the same niche and most importantly, your keywords used which people will use to find your website on the internet.Most people are unfortunately unaware of these important factors which are essential for a websites success.This is where I would like to help you put a stop to all of these above problems.I utilise a product called "Michael's Traffic Videos" which shows you 16 different easily achievable methods of gaining high quality organic traffic.It is spread over 49 DVD Videos covering aspects such as Cost Effective Pay Per Click strategies,off line website promotion, highest quality link exchange databases,press release secrets,viral traffic strategies and the list simply goes on.Now you are probably saying to yourself, this must be another one of the many hoaxes of getting internet traffic.Well I'll leave that decision up to you.If you would like to find out more about it please visit my home page below.

Did you find this review helpful? For more information on Michael's Traffic Videos Please visit my homepage at:

http://www.articles-hub.com/Article/157780.html

Search Engine Optimization Strategy that Supercharges your Website Revenues

of information passed all over the internet about Adsense revenue is shrounded in half truths and does not reflect the basics of Search Engine Optimization Strategy, that any inexperienced webmaster should understand with ease and effectively outdo any competition.


First, like any offline business, one cannot overlook the importance of growth over a Long period of time in all factors related to your website growth and deveopment.

There are two major growth parameters in any website;
The On Page Search Engine Optimization Strategy and
The Off Page Search Engine Optimization Strategy.

Each of these Search Engine Optimization strategy are so related that none can survive without the other.

The On Page Search Engine Optimization Strategy involve;
The structure of the Title Tags on your web page,
The Keywords,
The Description Tag,
The Robot Text file,
The Keyword density,
The keyword Positioning,
The Alt Image Text,
The h1, h2, h3 Tags and
The positioning of the Navigational Links,

While the Off Page
Search Engine Optimization Strategies is solely dependent on;
The number of Reciprocal links on your webpage,
Non Reciprocal Links to your webpage
The amount of fresh content on your webpage.

Please, kindly note the use of the word "webpage". Webpage, since this is the basic unit of ranking used by virtually all search engines.

The Search Engine Robots are such intelligent that they are able to decipher, from the content of your webpage, the Keywords and the Keyword Density once they pass through your site. The robots will also take the first 20-25 words of the most relevant sentence on your content which you notice on the description of your webpage once they have indexed it. For this reason one may feel that On Page Search Engine Optimization Strategy may not be as important, but for the purpose of Off Page Optimization, The h1, h2, h3 tags and the webpage content are the basic reason for any webmaster to want to link to your site.

The competition for targeted visitors is Immense. This means that its important to include all these factors on your webpage since basic reasoning will prevail while ranking is done by the search engines. A Webpage which has done On Page Optimization will rank better than that which has not, even though it may have good content.

Off Page Optimization Search Engine Optimization Strategy is the cradle of ranking by the search engines. The more relevant web pages that have linked to you, the better for your website. There is some basic understanding that, the anchor text used in linking should be similar to the content on your webpage, but any serious webmaster will tell you that not withstanding the anchor text, the content from both WebPages linking to each other should be closely related. If your webpage content is about Acne, linking to a webpage about health with Acne anchor text will hurt your ranking.


Muna wa Wanjiru has been researching and reporting on Internet Marketing for years. For more information on Search Engine Optimization Strategy, visit his site at Search Engine Optimization Strategy

http://www.articles-hub.com/Article/159936.html