In Parts 1-7, you’ll learn how to develop your pitch, identify your keywords, and optimize and promote (for free) your site and pages on search engines around the world. They also introduced him to our legendary Doug (who sells antique doors, door handles, knockers, bells or pulls and fitting services) in Windsor, UK.
There are some search engine optimization and promotion techniques that I did not cover as they are unethical. In this part of the guide, I describe these techniques, so you can recognize them and avoid them!
(a) Ethics of search engines
Borrowing from the Wild West, white hat SEO generally refers to ethical techniques, while black hat SEO refers to unethical techniques. Search engines are designed to help people find really relevant results for the keywords they enter, in a ranked order. Relevance is a mix of the “authority” of the site in general and the specific relevance of the content on the page to the search performed. Anything that undermines this (ie creating false impressions of authority or relevance) is unethical because it undermines the key purpose of search engines.
Black hat practitioners tend to view search engine optimization as a war, and search engines and SEOs as the enemy, to be defeated by hook or by crook. White Hatters tend to view search engines as friends, who can help them do business.
(b) Hidden page text
Blackhatters creates hidden text in the page code (not intended for humans). At a simple level, this could be white text on a white background. The text is usually hidden because it doesn’t fit with the rest of the page content, but it does help with search engine results. This, by definition, means that as a human searcher, you are likely to be disappointed by the result when you land on this page.
In its Webmaster Guide, Google urges you to “make pages for users, not search engines. Don’t mislead your users or present different content to search engines than you show users.” “avoid hidden text or hidden links”. If you want to avoid being blacklisted by Google, I recommend heeding this tip.
(c) Purchase of inbound links
In its Webmaster Guide, Google asks you to “avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.” A good rule of thumb is whether you would be comfortable explaining what you have done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask: ‘Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?'”
You can find links on the web to PR8 sites for sale for $200. From our exploration of PageRank above, you’ll understand why such a high price can be supported. As you can imagine, Google and others frown on this activity, as it undermines the entire principle of democracy that underpins PageRank. Buy votes? Unethical!
The consensus on the forums is that Google looks for unnatural link patterns, including substantial cross-links, strong growth in the number of backlinks, and the same anchor text in most links. I advise you to avoid this type of activity completely!
(d) Use of link farms and IBLNs
In its Webmaster Guide, Google says “do not participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or ‘bad neighborhoods’ on the web, as your own ranking will may be adversely affected by those links.”
In practice, Google identifies “bad neighborhoods” by devaluing backlinks from the same IP subnet. When a site is simply a link farm site (listing a bunch of links to other sites, in exchange for links or money), Google will eventually identify it as a “bad neighborhood” and remove the links from its index.
Independent Backlink Networks (IBLNs) are a network of sites that directly or indirectly link to your site in such a way as to promote it through search engine rankings. The way IBLNs get around Google’s IP monitoring is by using a completely different web hosting plan for each site you want to link directly to you.
This is time consuming and will cost you a lot of money. It’s also not foolproof and (if caught) can cause Google to simply remove all direct referrers from their index (sites they find blatantly created simply to link to your main site) or, worse yet, drop your entire IBLN: including the site main one you were trying to optimize for. Don’t be silly, keep it clean!
(e) Use of hidden pages or sneaky redirects
In its Webmaster Guide, Google recommends “avoiding ‘front door’ pages created just for search engines or other ‘cookie cutter’ approaches, such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.”
As Doug reads this, he begins to understand why doorknockers.com fails to rank higher in search engines. That domain just redirects to a different site (with a regular business name) that doesn’t rank well on Google either. This poor businessman has clearly become an unwitting and almost innocent victim of Google’s policy to catch Blackhatters.
You also understand why having your content on antique-door-knockers.com will be preferable to redirecting people to a domain based on your company name (Doug Chalmers Limited).
Next, we move on to the tools you can use to monitor the effectiveness of your continuous optimization…
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SEO Expert Guide – Promoting Paid Sites (Marketing) (part 7/10)
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SEO Expert Guide: Continuous Monitoring of Results (Part 9/10)
