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| Here are a few Frequently Asked Questions on Search Engine Optimizations |
| What is SEO? |
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is defined as (in my own words):
"The process of finding out the best keywords for a web site and by the use of optimizing the web site along with other off-page work making that web site attain a higher position in the search engine result pages (SERPs) for those selected words."
Although the exact calculations used by the search engines are kept secret, there is lot of knowledge and observations in this field from thousands of webmasters worldwide.
It could be said to be a branch of online marketing. In general terms you can say that it means to make a web site more visible and make it look important in the eyes of search engines.
Not being familiar with SEO and not applying it compared to actually doing the right things can make a huge difference in terms of visitors to your web site.
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| What is Black Hat SEO? Why is it considered to be bad? |
The term Black Hat SEO is used widely to describe any and all tactics of search engine optimization which are considered "unethical" or are forbidden or frowned upon by search engines. It's hard to put an exact definition on black hat SEO since its definition is constantly changing. Web optimizers are constantly coming up with new search engine marketing techniques and tricks designed to boost the ranking of their site a few slots, and sometimes these end up falling into the realm of black hat SEO.
Some people object to the term black hat SEO, claiming that anything you can do to get the search engines to boost your rankings is fair game, so long as you don't get caught. However, those against black hat SEO argue that it is responsible for much of the useless information out there on the internet today. Since black hat SEO is driven solely for the purpose of boosting rankings, many people build websites with little or no informative value for users, but are keyword rich or use other SEO techniques and therefore get higher rankings than sites that really do have something to offer the public. Google and the other major search engine companies agree with this argument, and many of them will penalize or ban sites they find using black hat SEO. For this reason, we don’t recommend using black hat SEO, especially with the wealth of other effective SEO methods out there.
However, the line between black hat SEO and white hat SEO becomes blurry when you try to nail down a definition. In essence, all SEO is aimed at boosting your rankings through the manipulation of content or other elements, so in a sense, all SEO marketing is black hat, since it is deliberate. But for practical purposes, we can say that anything Google or the other engines outline in their Terms of Service as being against the rules is definitely black hat SEO.
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| What is Cloaking? |
Cloaking is commonly referred to as a black hat, or unethical, SEO practice. Cloaking consists of deceiving search engine crawlers by directing them to web pages that are not actually visible on the domain that the crawlers are trying to analyze. Usually, these false pages are loaded with keyword rich content and search engine optimization designed to boost the search results ranking of the web page.
However, since cloaking is an artificial method of boosting rankings, most search engines frown on the practice of cloaking, and will penalize web sites that they find to be using cloaking as a method of search engine marketing.
To properly understand cloaking, you have to understand how the search engines scan sites to determine their relevance, popularity, and ultimately what their position should be in the search results rankings. The main method by which they accomplish this is through crawlers, which scour the internet analyzing web pages for keywords, inbound links and other factors.
Cloaking works when a hidden web page is armed with a CGI script that scans the IP address of incoming visitors. If the IP address is determined to be that of a regular human user, then they will be directed to the home page of the site. However, if the cloaking page determines the visitor to be a crawler, then they will direct it to a page loaded with keywords and optimized content designed to trick the crawler into believing the site is of more value than it is, and thus award it a higher ranking.
Cloaking is similar to doorway pages, in that it is a practice used solely for the purpose of SEO marketing. The pages represented by cloaking serve no actual purpose, and are of no use or benefit to the average user. Therefore cloaking is seen as spamdexing, and will be punished by search engines. While some web optimizers still employ this practice, in this day and age there are far better SEO tools that you can use than cloaking to boost your ranking in a lasting manner.
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| What are Doorway pages? |
| Doorway pages are web pages created solely for the purpose of attracting the attention of search engine crawlers in an attempt to boost a site's ranking in the results pages of search engines. Doorway pages are sometimes used by search engine optimization firms, but in general it is recommended that you avoid using them at all costs. Since doorway pages serve no purpose except to manipulate the search engine rankings, many engines will actually penalize you if they discover that you are using them. Doorway pages cannot actually be navigated to through the index page of the website they represent. Rather, doorway pages are intended only to be visible when you search for keywords through a search engine. These doorway pages will have no actual value for the user however, and will only act as click through pages to get to the actual site they are meant to represent . Nowadays, doorway pages have also become quite ineffective. When they find doorway pages through a search engine, rather than click through, most users will simply opt to go back and find another page through their search results.So why do SEO marketing firms and SEO "experts" use doorway pages? As you would expect, some search engine marketing firms are much better than others. Often times, less quality SEO firms will rely on automated programs to build sites for their clients, and these often include doorway pages as part of the website structure. These are poor forms of SEO tools, and should be avoided. Other times doorway pages will be used as a way to market sites comprised of lots of Javascript or Flash to the search engines. Again, this is a bad practice. Overhauling your content, building up inbound links or finding alternate ways to externalize Javascript and Flash are in the end much more effective than using doorway pages. |
| Will using Javascript on my site affect mV search ranking? |
There are a lot of mixed messages out there when it comes to the topic of whether or not using Javascript makes for good search engine optimization. Some people are avid believers that it should not be used at all, while many others will propose all kinds of different ways to use Javascript sparingly. So if you're considering whether or not to use Javascript on your own website, or you're just wondering what the fuss is all about. The big attraction to Javascript for web developers and designers is that it is a relatively simple programming language that can allow you to create many effects that traditional HTML simply cannot. In addition, Javascript is a great solution to the problem of code bloat. Code bloat occurs when the size of an HTML file used for a web page approaches the limits set by the search engines. Exceed these limits, and you will be penalized with a lower ranking in the results pages. However, there are plenty of critics out there who will tell you that using Javascript can also harm your rankings, because it makes it harder for the search engines to crawl your site.The reason for this is relatively simple. First of all, the search engine crawlers have a lot of ground to cover these days. And crawling through lots of Javascript code makes it very difficult for them to get to the information they are really looking for, which is keywords and relevant text and information about your site. Therefore, since the crawlers have a difficult time actually finding out anything of relevance about your site, it can hurt your SEO strategy. Another reason people tend to look down on the use of Javascript is that developers will often put navigation links inside javascript's. .However, there are ways around these problems, and the foremost solution is to externalize your Javascript code. Now, if you have only a few lines of Javascript and a lot of keyword rich text on a given page, in all honesty, it probably won’t affect your ranking enough to matter. But if you're going to incorporate a lot it, externalizing your Javascript is definitely your best bet.To externalize your Javascript, simply copy the javascript code you want to use into a Notepad files and save it as "filename.js". Be sure you change the file type to "all files" when you save, so that Notepad doesn’t attach a ".txt" to your file. Once you've saved the file, upload it to your webserver. From here, you can reference the file in your HTML coding, as shown below.<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="something.js"></script>Since the javascript itself is saved separately, you'll spare the crawlers from having to go through hundreds of lines of code when analyzing your site, making for much quicker recognition of your page value.All things considered, the use of Javascript isn’t going to make or break or break the SEO strategy you've planned out using various SEO tools and long hours of keywords research. There are all kinds of other strategies that may more directly affect your ranking, such as link building and proper keyword density. But this will make it easier for the crawlers to process your site information despite using Javascript, and that's never a bad thing.
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| What are Banned Websites and how do they become banned? |
When you hear about banned websites, it often times doesn't necessarily mean what you think it means. People talk about banned websites when they refer to sites that have been penalized by Google for violating some of its policies about search engine optimization. An outright ban on a website, however, is very uncommon, so the term banned websites can be something of a misnomer. But, there are lots of things you can do wrong regarding SEO to have Google penalize your site severely, so that your position in the search engines results rankings can fall dramatically, creating the impression that you must be one of these banned websites.
Basically, the only cure for banned websites is to try and fix your search engine marketing strategy to try to better conform to Google's standards. This can be difficult since Google doesn't speak much publicly about its exact policies for banned websites. But there are many well known tactics and methods that Google frowns upon, and in the end, it can be much easier to avoid using these methods in the beginning than it is for banned websites to try to right the ship and climb back up the rankings.
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| How do I find out the best keywords to target? |
The "best" keyword depends on the following main factors:
1.) The amount of traffic it will generate.
2.) The difficulty of attaining a top ranking.
3.) The profitability of that keyword.
In this answer I will address each point and give recommendations on tools to use to help you in your assessment.
The Amount of Traffic it Will Generate
Often people choose keywords based on how popular they think they may be. Mostly it is based on "real world" factors rather then fact which is readily available. For instance, I recently saw someone who proposed they were going to go after the term "nursing homes" due to the aging population.
Although this area may be growing quickly, those interested in finding out more information often do not use a computer or if they did, would not be researching it online. Although they would still get visitors, they would find there are much better keywords to target with profit in mind. When it comes to traffic, the best measurement is actual searches. This will tell you how many people search in a day or month for that term and it can be a great indicator. Always remember however, that this is total searches. These search numbers will always be divided among the SERPs.
The Difficulty of Attaining a Top Ranking
If you simply chose the keywords with highest amount of traffic, you could still lose money. This is because these keywords typically warrant a lot more work to rank for. A perfect keyword is one that has a lot of searches but little SEO competition and moderate to easy to rank for.
The Profitability of that Keyword
There are also keywords where you may get 1000s of visitors with only one conversion while others where you can achieve 1 for every 100. This should be factored in as unless you make your money per impression, you want the highest number of conversions per visitor. The best way I know to evaluate this is to run an AdWords account. The amount of data you receive by starting a campaign can be very useful in establishing the conversion rate. I believe it is always better to spend $10 to find out a keyword isn't profitable then to spend 6 months getting it to number one, THEN find out its a dog.
The moral of the story is although there is no such thing as a "perfect" keyword, you can find the best ones for you by using a combination of the factors above. |
| What is KEI and how do I use it? |
KEI stands for Keyword Effectiveness Index. KEI is a ranking system based on how popular a key word is and how much competition it has on the Internet. The higher the KEI number, the more popular your keywords are and the less competition they have. It also means that you'll have a much better chance getting ranked high on a search engine. A low KEI score means not many people are searching for that keyword and it has too much competition. Hence, eliminate all KEI scores with a low number and choose those with a high KEI score. The higher the score, the more profitable your keywords will be to your web site.
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| Where in my code should I put my keywords? |
We all know it is not enough to have your keyword in the meta keyword tag.
Here is a list of places to put it in the source code, ordered by estimated weight:
- Title tag.
- H1 and H2.
- In paragraphs and general text on the site.
- In STRONG tags: <STRONG>Keyword</STRONG>
- In the file names of the web document: www.domain.com/keyword.html
- ALT description attributes on image tags: <IMG SRC="" ALT="A picture about Keyword">
- TITLE attributes on anchor tags: <A HREF="" TITLE="Here you can get info about Keyword">
- SUMMARY attributes on tables: <TABLE SUMMARY="In this table you will see keyword">
- In the file names of images: <IMG SRC="keyword.gif">
- Meta description tag.
- Meta keyword tag.
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| How is the best way to write my title? |
The title is most probably the single most important place to put your keyword.
Have the word in the beginning of the title and also in the end. Try to vary it in different forms as well.
If you want to brand your company name you should keep that name in the end.
Try to follow this and at the same time make it look natural and appealing for the visitors. Remember that this is what is most visible in the SERPs for the visitor. |
| What is the best way to write the URL's? |
In Regards to Google it has been stated by two of their staffs involved in the SEO community (Google Guy and Matt Cutts) that the dashes (-) are better than underscores (_) when writing the URLs.
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| Which methods are considered unethical? |
Page cloaking is a BIG one, which basically consists of using server side scripts to determine whether the visitor is a search engine or a human and serving up different pages depending. The script would serve up a keyword rich, totally souped up page to search robots, while giving humans an entirely different page.
Linkfarms are considered black hat. Linkfarms are basically sites which consist of masses of links, for the purpose of getting rankings in search engines and turning a profit (usually off of affiliate program advertisements on the website).
Duplicate content can keep a page from getting indexed, and some people have even reported trouble with entire websites being duplicated by unethical webmasters, causing problems with their rankings.
Spamming keywords, in meta tags, title tags, or in your page's content is a black hat SEO trick that used to work well back in the 90's. It's long since been basically exterminated as a useful trick.
Linking to "bad neighborhoods", or sites that have been banned from search engines for using the above tricks, while not particularly black hat is definitely unhealthy for your own sites rankings. |
| What is page rank and how does it work? |
One big way in which search engines are granting importance to web pages are based on how many other sites are linking to it.
PageRank is a system implemented by Google that measures web page's importance with only taking into account the links and links related factors. The other big search engines (Yahoo, MSN) probably have a similar system but without an official measurement.
The basics are that each web page is giving votes to the links on that page and the power of the vote is determined by the number of links pointing to the page that gives the vote.
The votes are divided among the links on the page so the lesser number of links, the more share of the vote is given to each link.
Internal links are given a higher share than external.
The scale is between 0-10 but in fact it has many decimals which we cannot see.
0-3 is the most common, 4 is obtained by getting an amount of links and 5 takes some work to get. Only a short list of sites on the internet has PageRank 10.
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| What are some recommended ways to get links to my site? |
The best way to get more links to your site is through hard work.
In order to find sites that are relevant to yours and allow you to post a link on, you can perform the following searches:
Replace the keyword with the phrase you are targeting.
keyword "add url"
keyword "add site"
keyword "submit site"
keyword "submit url"
If you perform these searches for various keywords you will find plenty of sites that will allow you to post your link on and that are related as well.
You may also submit to directories. This is a long and hard process but it is an easy and free way to get some incoming links to your site.
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| What is Reciprocal linking or link exchange? |
Link exchanging or reciprocal linking is where two sites exchange links. Usually this occurs when a webmaster sends an email to another webmaster requesting a link on their site. Because of how easy it is to get a link this way Google has greatly dis-valued these types of links. They are still worth something but not as much as they have been in the past.
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| What is Link Bait? |
Linkbait is when you create a tool, write a articles or many articles or otherwise do something that works as a link magnet. Website owners start linking to your pages without even being asked, many times the sites linking to you are authorities in your industry so a good linkbait can have a an extremely large positive effect on your rankings.
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| Should I use a site map? |
Yes. Every site should have one .It provides a way for visitors to navigate your site, as well as a shortcut for bots to crawl all your pages.
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