If you are new to the world of SEO and SEM, you may not know all of the actual subtleties involved. But, if you are going to hire someone to do your SEO work for you, you better know a whole lot more or you could suffer far worse than you ever would trying to do your own SEO work … even without any real experience. Even if you hire an SEO Professional to promote your site, if they do anything that the search engines decide is unethical, your site will be banned and you will have no recourse, legal or otherwise to get it back in!
If you have already looked around the freelance sites, you may see all sorts of jobs people want done regarding SEO work. Somebody here needs ten PR5 or better one-way links to their site. Somebody over here wants 100 comments on DO Follow blogs. If none of that makes sense to you, you really do need to learn what it means whether you are going to promote your own websites or have someone else do it for you. Why?
If you do not learn about SEO, your work could very easily get you banned from the Search Engines or decrease your rankings whether you do the work or not!
What? How? Huh?
The top search engines are constantly evolving their algorithms or the methods that they use to decide both your page’s rank and its placement on the SERP or Search Engine Results Page. A while back, three-way linking or Pyramid linking was all the rage but they quickly became more costly than effective. The basic idea was to provide mutually beneficial, one-way links by linking three sites rather than just two. Thus, instead of reciprocal links (which are still valued less) between Site A and Site B, there would be a link from Site A to Site B, a link from Site B to Site C and a final link from Site C to Site A.
This effectively provided all three websites with one-way links and increased the value of those links. It may have taken the search engine a while to figure out this tactic but figure it out they did and many of those sites were penalized in rank and placement while some were banned altogether. Many of the people doing this were hired by people just like you. While some of the people simply lost page rank, some of them really did lose any ability to get their site indexed on the search engines at all.
Over 80% of all organic (free) traffic comes from the search engines!
Once your website has been banned, sandboxed or otherwise removed from the search engine indexes you may just as well shut that site down and build it from scratch. Google does not care what SEO Service you paid to promote your site. Bing does not care what SEO Company you paid to promote your site. Yahoo does not even care what SEO expert you hired. Once your site is off the search engines, it is off until the search engines decide to let you back in. This can take years to accomplish and most likely will require more money invested than you will ever be able to get back from your investment.
These days, as in the example given above, many people are searching for SEO Experts that will give them all these one-way links. They will only want DO Follow links back to their site and even many of the SEO “Experts” think that this is a good thing! But guess what! Google is neither stupid nor idle and when it updates algorithms, unnatural website growth patterns are going to be red-flagged first and then the search engines will begin the banning process again. With over ten billion websites indexed on each of the major search engines, they really do not need your website to provide their users with viable alternatives.
So what is the answer?
The answer is actually very simple. If you are serious about your online business and want to succeed and stay in business for the long run, do not try to jump to the head of the pack right away. Organic growth is, as the name implies, natural growth. When you are advertising and promoting your site, do not seek to aim for only the high value targets but take on all of the possible targets.
When someone sees your link tagged on one of your comments on a No Follow site are they any less likely to click it than they would be on a Do Follow site? You can still get traffic, and while you may get more value on the search engines from a Do Follow site, you can still get traffic from a No Follow site and your growth will appear more natural to the Search Engines insuring that you do not have to worry about being banned or sandboxed.
If you only have one or two websites that you will never be making a lot of money from, learn about SEO and do it yourself. Would you let someone you do not know come into a brick and mortar business you have built and let them market it and promote it however they see fit simply because you do not know how … even though your lack of knowledge regarding the subject means that you cannot even be sure that they do either? You cannot run a business like that in the brick and mortar world and expect to be successful. Running a business on the Internet is no different.
If you own numerous websites or have valuable and profitable products that will allow for the costs, pay someone to do your SEO for you but be selective. If someone is promising you that they are only going to get you One-Way links on Do Follow Sites do you really think that this “unnatural” growth will go unobserved by the Search Engines? Do you really think that something so Unnatural is going to outrank a site with the same number of links but showing all organic growth or natural growth? Guess what! If you do not know anything about SEO, you need to learn … especially if you are going to hire someone to do it for you! The cost of unnatural growth can literally kill your website.
Proper SEO goes far beyond just getting all the “good stuff” and throwing it together and thinking you will come out ahead of the game. Proper SEO efforts involve many different aspects, some of them more beneficial than the others but only beneficial if you have all of them together, the better with the not so good. Anything less is putting your online business venture on a path to failure. If you are business for the long run, take the good with the better and sooner than you think, your site will be one of the best … and that means you own the Search Engines – they no longer own you because you took some time to learn proper SEO techniques!
Ward Tipton is a Professional Writer who provides highly specialized and quality informational product creation and online content for his clients. Ward recently opened Professional Writing Services for content creation and content distribution services.
Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources
Outsourcing SEO Can Cost You Your Website
Original post:
Outsourcing SEO Can Cost You Your Website
When you build your website, you, of course, want to get high rankings in the search engines. There are lots of ways to do this and lots of ways to NOT do this. Below are 10 things to avoid if you want to be in good standing with the search engines.
- Duplicate Content/Sites – Do not set up multiple sites or site pages using basically the same content with a few different keywords spread around. This does not fool the search engines.
- Cloaking – Cloaking is when a website or webpage is set up to show different content for a search engine spider than the human visitors. The cloaked page (for the spiders) is stuffed with keywords in an attempt to get higher rankings. What it can get you is banned!
- Linking to Bad Neighborhoods – Be careful who you link to because you can be found guilty by association. Do not link to adult sites, gambling sites or link farms. Also be careful not to link to sites that use any of the SEO methods mentioned here.
- Title Stacking – This is simply trying to give each page more than one title tag so you can use more keywords to get higher rankings. The search engines consider this a dirty little trick.
- Doorway Pages – Doorway or gateway pages are pages that are set-up for one keyword topic but then they take you to different content. These pages usually have little value in the way of content and have little to do with the rest of the site. They are used solely to try to get a higher rank in the search engines.
- Redirect Pages – Redirect pages are set up to rank high in the search engines but when you click on the page, it will take you to another page which is usually a sales page for a product or service. So, what you see isn’t what you get!
- Automated Submission Services – Do not use automated submission services. They are against Google’s TOS and can get you banned.
- Hidden Links – This is when a link is added to a page in such a small size that it cannot be seen by human visitors but can be picked up by the search engine spiders. This might work for a time but when the search engines discover it, you will be penalized!
- Keyword Stuffing – Keyword stuffing or spamming is simply being too repetitive with your keywords as to the extent of your content not being sensible. For example if your keywords are cat food and your text reads something like this: When your cat gets hungry be sure to feed them this cat food because your cat will like this cat food. This cat food comes in an easy to open cat food can and contains fish, chicken and healthy ingredients that all cat food should have. So, when your cat is hungry for cat food, give them this cat food because this cat food is the best cat food for your cat!You can easily see why this kind of keyword stuffing should not be used.
- Invisible Text – This is when you hide text by using the same color text and background. The invisible text is meant for the search engines only and not for visitors. This is done so you can stuff a lot more keywords on your page without wrecking your content. The search engines will discover this and they will penalize you!
Be careful not to use these Black Hat SEO methods because it could cause you a lot of trouble with the search engines. Be careful as well, who you hire to work on your site because some of these things can be done without your knowledge and cause your site to get banned or penalized.
A few things you should do to get higher rankings are:
- Research keywords and use relevant keywords on your web pages and in your page title.
- Add new content to your site regularly
- Link with relevant, quality sites
- Use a site map
- Don’t use a lot of javascript or flash. The search engines do not read these.
Following all of the above can keep you from getting banned and improve your rankings!
Terri Seymour (also known as “The eBook Lady”) has over ten years online experience and has helped many people start their own business. Visit her site at http://www.seymourproducts.com for resources, $1 resell ebooks & software, free tutorials, affiliate programs, free ezine and free business ebook with Master Resell Rights. http://www.seymourproducts.com/free.shtml
Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources
10 Ways to Get Banned by the Search Engines
Continued here:
10 Ways to Get Banned by the Search Engines
by Manoj Jasra
Real Time search has been a major focus of many startups and search giants such as Bing and Google. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Podcasts, YouTube Videos, and Flickr all have taken the user generated content to a whole new level. This has put a lot of pressure on the search engine giants to efficiently track/index content for their users. But, the rate of content generation is so overwhelming that real-time social search engines make more sense than the traditional methods of searching for information.
Besides, Google and Bing who have integrated social search concept, there are lots of startups who have invested their resources in leading the way for new paradigm of search. Here are the top 10 search engines for especially Twitter, that are making their way to the future.
A lot of businesses employing an SEO consultant or link building company will often spend countless hours checking their Google ranking to make sure they are seeing progress but is this really necessary and are they focussing on the right aspects of the marketing campaign.
Equally they may insist or the consultant may offer monthly report to show that rankings have moved up (and sometimes down) but feedback shows that many business owners do not really understand the report they are getting, as they are expecting a definitive (the search engines are anything but) report, so when they check their rankings they are different but they don’t understand why.
This can lead to a level of distrust on occasion between parties but in reality it is merely a misunderstanding of the natural ebb and flow of the web from the business owners perspective, or perhaps a failure by the SEO consultant or link building company to fully explain the natural state of things to their client before the start of the campaign.
The purpose of this article is to provide business owners with a generic non technical third party perspective on the natural noise of the net,as well as highlighting a number of questions that they should be asking themselves before placing too much emphasis on a simple snapshot of time as the measure of success of the SEO campaign.
Variations in Google (and other search engines) happen on a constant basis which all affect ranking to one degree or another, for example these variations could include: which data center is serving your results (Google relies on a number of different data centres not just one), or what is today’s or even this hours Google algorithm variation that is being used to shuffle and sift the billions of pages in the index to give you your results.
Equally the discovery of a new page on a site or even a link pointing to a site can make a difference as can variations in your page content, and (simplistically) based on this Google does its shuffle and produces the search results that you see.
Are the results the same hour by hour or minute by minute? Well the answer is a definite no and due to these factors two people conducting the exactly the same search could see a different result at exactly the same time, a situation that is further clouded as more localised results are presented in the search engines. Additionally even if you were to conduct exactly the same search an hour (and sometimes minutes later) the search result can vary.
So does this make a ranking report a wasted piece of paper? This will depend on your perspective and understanding of what you are getting so the answer is yes and no.
A ranking report in whatever form you receive it (generally the more you pay the more elaborate it is) is merely a snapshot of time which is subject to a huge amount of variation. In my opinion it should be used merely as a yard stick of performance over time and at best should be used to monitor the trend of the SEO campaign (which could last from a few months to over a year depending on the competitiveness of the clients market) not be seen as a definitive performance metric.
The other interesting fact is that many ranking reports are produced using software that actually violates Google’s terms and conditions by automatically querying the search engines, so to get round this often the report is produced by querying the search engines anonymously from behind something known as a proxy server.
This fact alone can equally skew the reports findings depending on the proxy servers worldwide location.
Instead of watching for potential website ranking changes try to spend the time adding or organising more pages or relevant content to your site, as this will be much more beneficial both in the short and long term.
Author: Dave Talbot: Correct search engine optimisation and link building services are vital ingredients for any websites success in todays online world. Without them most websites will simply not be found and as a result will never be successful visit =>> SEO Southampton for information on effective website marketing strategies
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The Ebb and Flow of The Search Engines And How This Affects Ranking
Here is the original post:
The Ebb and Flow of The Search Engines And How This Affects Ranking
If you don’t understand why the Real Time Web is huge, you will soon. Thanks to micro-blogging sites like Twitter, a constant stream of human-posted content has infiltrated the Web. This growing infiltration has created a bottoms up approach to content creation that via the progressive support of rapidly developing applications has and will continue to empower every individual to co-create what is deemed as “important” on the Web. The Real Time Web serves as both the database that informs us of what is happening right “Now” and the human touch to the content that will compete with the traditional algorithms for what is deemed as “valuable” content to us all.
Its challenges lie in the filtration and mass integration of both the content and the act of sharing to the Real Time Web. There remain major aspects of the Web that have not yet integrated “searching” and “sharing” of the Real Time Web, including traditional search. But as filtration and integration progress the Web will take the form of a living breathing database.
Here are 5 reasons why Real Time Search will help the Real Time movement change the Web and your experience forever.
1. The “Now” Factor
We saw it with Michael Jackson’s passing. We saw it with the Iran Protests and we see it more and more everyday – the Real Time web provides us with what is happening right “Now” and with vivid detail from around the globe. ”We” is
driving the “Now” factor.
2. We Become Co-Creators
The Real-Time web offers us the ability to become co-creators in not only content but also in what is deemed important. Why? Because we decide what is worth sharing, discussing and having opinions on. This behavior serves as a natural selection of valuable content. Certainly the current web allows for creation of content, but what is deemed as important/valuable is mostly left up to a few individuals, organizations and a bunch of robots. The Real-Time web, once fully integrated, will change that.
3. Humans vs Machines
Have you ever clicked on blue links that lead you to a piece of content dating back to a year ago? Search results lose relevancy each day due to the amount of new content hitting the internet. Spiders, web crawlers and engines decide what content is relevant via algorithms and those results can be manipulated via intelligently structured content (SEO). Real-time search enables users to receive information via conversations and people instead of machines. Take a look at your web results today. Would you rather receive cold content determined by algorithms or what the crowd and people value as good and bad?
4. Facebook Factor
With over 300 million users creating and wrapping themselves around content, once Facebook opens up its search API to the web what do you think will happen? Better yet do you think there is value in being able to search a database of 300 million users’ opinions and experiences? Searching Facebook may be the factor that tips the overall experience of the web into one that is very different than today. Facebook may be the tipping point to where bottoms up (sharing & contributing) will go head to head with tops down (crawling & optimizing).
5. A New Breed of Search Engines
If there existed a search engine that was capable of aggregating and rendering results based on what was shared, peoples opinions and conversations, would you be interested in that search engine? If you knew that there were 6 conversations that provided a fantastic account of a design firm you were considering would that be more valuable to you than the top 3 links on your current search engine results? Would you have more value for SEO based search results or human conversation driven results? How about both? Real-Time search, once developed, will render a new breed of search engines that will capture this new value the New Web has to offer.
At the moment, Real Time Search is only in its infancy, as is the Real Time web. Twitter and the like are simply representations of a big movement that will continue to occur with the creation of more similar services, more adoption of those services and more integration of those services.
What is clear is that our daily use of the Real Time Web’s driving platforms — Twitter, Facebook and the like — is unprecedented. The Internet is no longer simply just a disconnected 3rd party container of tops down aggregation, “We” is now part of its determination. And, search as we know it will soon change to accommodate, thereby delivering a completely different experience of the Web.
Ben Behrouzi has over 12 years in building and managing startups, building management teams, developing core technology infrastructure and leading product design and architecture. http://www.leapfish.com
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