Archive for the ‘Black Hat SEO’ Category
Are Keyword Rich Domains Worth It?
By: Cade Lee
I have read several articles and discussion on forums about “Keyword-Rich Domains” over the last several months and I though it important to mention a couple of things to be wary of when going out and spending a fortune on domains that seem like they might make sense for your business and major keywords. I should begin with what a “Keyword-Rich” domain is for those that are new to this and have never heard the term before. A “Keyword-Rich” Domain is simply a domain name containing the major keywords relevant to the site and SEO campaign that you are targeting. So as an example, in our industry many of the SEO professionals in Denver target the keyword “Denver SEO“. When you search for “Denver SEO” you will notice that www.denverseo.net is the 5th result. Digging deeper this site has a PR of 3 compared to many of it’s competitors who have earned a page rank of 4 or higher. This domain does have some age as it was created on May 03, 2006 so it is around 3 ½ years old. According to Google, there is one backlink from a web design directory, after further research we were able to determine that the domain has around 523 backlinks. When we compare this to some of the other competing websites that are ranked just below this website like www.hyperdogmedia.com, which has a PR 4, 2 backward links according to Google and according to our research this domain has well over 2085 backlinks. So how is it that a site like Hyperdog’s is ranked below DenverSeo.net? According to some SEO professionals it would be due to the “exact match bonus“. There are many other factors that go into the rankings, but this is definitely a factor as it has been discussed by many internet marketing professionals.
4 Tips to Insure Your Site Does Not Get Delisted
If you’re reading this article, you obviously understand there is quite a buzz around SEO and internet marketing. Not only is it becoming a must to be on the first page of Google, you also need to have a presence on all major social networking sites, article and video repositories and directories listings. Here are some helpful tips on how to avoid getting delisted by search engines so all of your hard work doesn’t go to waste!
Watch your Keyword Density
Your keywords on your web page are very important. It lets the search engine know what your content is about and what you are trying to target with each page. Each search engine has keyword density in their algorithm for ranking sites, however, their equation for density differs from one to another meaning their lenience of density allowed before a penalty varies.
If you know anything about SEO, you understand that at least 75% of searchers are using Google – I would think this is a pretty good place to start. I have heard many SEO’s give the 3-5% rule for keyword density. In my personal experience, I’ve gotten away with 7% and had great results. The idea here is to watch you keyword density throughout your web page and never exceed 9%! If you go over this mark, you are risking a negative reaction from the search engines. I would say stick between 3-6% here and you should be fine.
Keep your Content Original
If you are running your own SEO campaign, you have and will be investing a ton of time. Do not take the short cut and use someone else’s content on your web pages – it doesn’t make sense! Search Engines love original content and in the SEO world, content is king! It is what separates your page from the next before you even begin to create backlinks. That being said, why would you want to be on a level playing field from the start with the same content? Make sure you let the search engines know what separates your page from the competition. Follow the keyword density rule above and write as much as possible!
Do not allow a search engine to disregard your content because it is a duplicate of someone else’s page.
Don’t Hide your Content
As much as we don’t want to say it, the search engines (google bots) are actually pretty smart. They know the difference between visible and invisible content. Search engines will discredit a web page if they feel you are trying to trick them with text that cannot be read. Make sure the text on your page is a completely different font and do not hide it behind images. Make sure you tag your images with keywords but do not make the text invisible. If you are smart you will have content on your Home page that leads to more content in the site.
Tip: Publish articles to your home page with “Read More” buttons and your home page will get credit for all of the content on your home page including important keywords and links.
Be Cautious of Your Affiliate Links… too many = negative ranking
Be cautious of adding hundreds of affiliate links along with product descriptions. If you have too many affiliate links on your website, Google will drop you down the listings.”
I hope this article has helped you understand exactly not what to do to a web page. An SEO Campaign involves blood, sweat and tears which we don’t want to go to waste by getting delisted. Search Engines do not like keyword stuffing, duplicate or invisible content and too many outside links.
Nick Hantge is a SEO Professional with Iniquitous, a Denver SEO Firm. Nick Specializes in organic search engine optimization, traffic analysis and conversion as well as SEO coaching in Denver (303) 999-7963.
SEO Is Just Common Sense
By: Chad Formica
There are many resources online showing individuals how to optimize their websites; all of them have value of some sort. The thing that we see over and over again is that many individuals are simply confused with all the information that is available. If we break down search engine optimization to its most basic form, it’s very similar to visiting the library and using the computer to search for books within the library. The library’s search engine is simply going to find the book that best matches either the keywords or title that you input into this search engine. Well how does the library’s search engine know which book best fits your search? Just logically speaking probably about 90% of the search based on the title of the book. Wouldn’t it then stand to reason that Google also places much emphasis on the title of the document?
The basics of your website and WebPages are the very first place to start any good SEO campaign. Start with a title tag and make sure that it has more than just your companies name and phone number, include the relevant keywords that you have researched through Google’s adwords tool or through www.keywordspy.com. Never overload the title tag because Google is only ever going to read 100 characters of the title tag to begin with so it does not make much sense to extend way beyond that. The same thing goes for the H1 tag; make use of the headlines of your page. You do want to make certain that your headlines are attractive and does catch the attention of your customer; we also want to include keywords inside the H1 tag to attract the search engines as well. The metadata should also be addressed in your campaign, many search engine optimization experts have claimed that meta-data no longer matters; however, in the search engine optimization campaigns that we manage we definitely see an impact from metadata especially inside the descriptions. Our theory on this is that if the metadata has zero effect on our campaign it’s at least gives us a theme for each page that we develop and helps keeps us organized.
I’ve seen about 1 million different advertisements for submitting your website to 1000’s of different search engines, or creating back links overnight and I can honestly tell you that while they might have some positive effect on your search engine optimization campaign nothing will replace useful content and good website optimization. Trying to fool the search engines by using tricks such as mirror sites, or duplicate content is simply a waste of time. Granted you may get a bump in the ratings for a short period of time by going around the “system” but in the long run is that really what you want? If you are attempting to develop a website that will maintain its rankings for the “long run”, and it is wise to develop content that will convert your Internet traffic as well as serve the search engines well.
In previous articles we have discussed “black hat SEO” and what to avoid when optimizing your website, as you are developing your website or optimizing make certain that you pay attention to what could hurt you. Search engines are extremely intelligent and you must provide content that is useful and original. As time goes on this is proving to be more and more difficult which requires creativity and thought.
When you’re working on your search engine optimization campaign make sure that you set aside enough time to really be creative with it, remember that organically showing up in the rankings does not cost you or your company anything but time so make sure that you do not skimp on the time you invest in this campaign. The more time you spend developing content that is useful with keywords for the search engines, the more likely it is that you will show up at the top of the searches for the demographic and target audience you want to reach.
Chad Formica is a search engine expert in Denver that specializes in Denver SEO Coaching and local Denver SEO
Spam in the SEO world
So by now, if you’re learning about SEO (search engine optimization/search engine marketing), you’ve probably heard of Black Hat SEO. What exactly is spamming as far as SEO is concerned? Ultimately search engines like Google, Yahoo, ask and MSN want to provide the most accurate and complete research results that they can to their target market. At the end of the day, a search engine is only as good as the results that it delivers to those that use it. If their audience does not have faith in their search capability, the traffic will dry out and so will the sponsored listing fees as well, and any other advertising fees that they’re able to obtain.
It wasn’t all that long ago (1994) that Internet marketers used various techniques to trick search engines into positioning their sites high in the search results for search terms that didn’t apply to their site. This was very prominent in the adult entertainment world as a matter of fact. It’s in my opinion; the inception of search engine optimization came from the adult entertainment industry.
Today, these techniques do not work for long-term search engine optimization campaigns. It’s true that you can obtain quick rankings in a very short period using “Black Hat SEO” ; however, usually it takes a great deal of work, and the results do not last very long. Once the search engines discover that you are trying to “Duke” their search engine, many of them may not list your domain at all. Search engines are programmed through their algorithms and robots to detect many of the techniques used in “Black hat SEO.” A few of the search engine tricks that used to work, especially pertaining to website design are:
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Keyword stuffing — several websites repeat the same keywords over and over again on both the home page, and even places that you can’t see. They do this by hiding the keywords in invisible layers such as <No Frames> tag, and in meta-tags. Also, spammers will repeat those keywords over and over again at the bottom of the document. For example:
“Denver attorney, best attorney in Denver, attorneys in Colorado, Denver attorneys, attorneys for Denver, criminal attorney in Denver, bankruptcy attorney in Denver, attorney Denver, Denver attorneys.” There’s been much talk as to what is an acceptable amount of keyword stuffing, or keyword placement within the text of the document. As a rule of thumb I have heard that Google does not like to see more than 7% saturation, while MSN and Yahoo! Do not want to see more than 5% keyword density within any given page.
- Hidden Text and Links – another tactic used by spammers has been hidden text and links. What they are doing here is simply hiding keywords from human eyes. By making the text the same color as the background of the website. There is no fooling Google, Yahoo or MSN with these old tricks as the “Google bots” have been able to spot these tricks. Another example of this might be hiding keywords in areas which are not visible, such as placing these keywords in style sheets.
- Content duplication — I know that there are several other search engine optimization professionals that are completely against duplicate content, I do think it has its place. Why would I say such a thing? We should probably start as to why search engines do not like content duplication. Take for example a website that you already own, it ranks very well. You decide that you would like to have two sites on the first page of Google so you simply duplicate your first and post it under a different domain. Search engines want to provide unique content to their searchers; they do not want to provide duplicate content again and again. I should probably explain why I think duplicate content does make sense from time to time. If you’ve written an excellent article and published it with E-zine articles for example, I think it is completely within reason to go ahead and post that on your own blog or website as well.
- Page swapping or cloaking — this is where the website owner has taken content from a top ranking site and placed it on their page to achieve the top ranking. Once they have achieved that ranking they replace that page with completely different content. Cloaking is very similar to page swapping. The intent of cloaking is to serve search engines one page while the end-user is served in other, not a good move!
- Misleading Title Changes — making regular title changes so the indexing bots believe that your site is a new site. The desired effect from this is so that the site is listed again and again, this is considered misleading.
- Domain Spam (Mirrored Sites) — this is very close to content duplication. Ultimately this is why the search engine’s do not like content duplication. Some web owners have duplicated their entire website or maybe even slightly modified their site and target under a different domain or URL. Usually the intention was to obtain more than one listing on the first page. In the end all this does is get you banned from practicing this type of technique, once again it is misleading.
- Refresh Meta-Tag — I am certain that you have visited a website and automatically you were brought to a different page within the site, this is the result of a “refresh meta- tag”. At the end of the day you do not want to use a redirect unless it is absolutely necessary and I strongly recommend using a “permanent redirect” (301) which tells the search engines that the page they are looking for has a different home now. The preferred way to use a refresh meta-tag is to use a delay of at least 15 seconds or more and provide a link on the new page back to the page that they were taken from. Often times a website will use a redirect or refresh meta-tag to take visitors from a page that is obsolete and is no longer being used.
- Cyber Squatting — this refers to taking traffic from legitimate websites. So for example let’s pretend that somebody was to operate a website called www.ebey.com it would be hoping to obtain traffic by visitors that have misspelled the domain that they were truly looking for. Usually when companies are doing this they are promoting completely unrelated contents to that of the site that they are trying to obtain traffic from. Google very much dislikes the cyber squatting.
So even if you do not understand anything about search engine optimization or search engine marketing, it is easy to see that none of the search engines tolerate misrepresentation, misleading searchers or tricky techniques. If the technique you are using on your website does not offer value to the end-user and it is done solely for SEO it is very likely that Google, Yahoo or MSN will take notice. Trying to avoid the hard work of real
search engine optimization is practically impossible. Certainly you can avoid the hard work and go with a technique or strategy that will get you listed with Google rapidly, eventually that domain will get you delisted. At the end of the day it is twice the amount of work to optimize two websites quickly vs. optimizing one website in a nice slow and steady manner.
Cade Lee is a Search Engine Optimization Professional in Denver | Denver SEO