SEO Tips

Prompted by this article at Beanstalk’s SEO News Blog, I’ve decided to address the topic of Black Hat v. White Hat Search Engine Optimization. Now you may be thinking..What is Black Hat or White Hat SEO?

Here’s a quick metaphor to answer your question: Think back to “The Wizard of Oz”, ( I know..it’s been a while for me too!) remember Glinda the Good Witch and Ms. Gulch the Wicked Witch? Glinda the Good Witch wore a white shiny crown while the evil Ms. Gulch donned a black witch’s hat. White v. Black, Good v. Evil. White Hat SEO is Good. Black SEO is bad. Simple.

Black Hat SEO is an underhanded method of attaining higher search engine rankings and traffic for a website. While these Black Hat SEO tricks and tactics work, they ARE considered illegal in the SEO code of ethics. There are literally dozens of Black Hat techniques..some of which are being born this very minute. Here are some of the most common techniques used: Keyword Stuffing, Hidden Text, Doorway Pages, and Duplicate Sites.

Keyword Stuffing consists of stuffing an enormous amount of non-related keywords on a webpage to attract search engine users who are searching for those phrases. In this example of keyword stuffing you will notice that the site looks like a legitimate product page for an “Eternal Life Ring” (Well…as legitimate as a ‘life ring’ sounds I suppose). But if you take a look at the source code you will uncover the hundreds of random keywords he has stuffed into the site. Although they are not overtly present on the page..they are crawled by Search Engines.

Hidden Text is content that is not visible to a user but searchable by search engines. Most commonly,  hidden text comes in the form of text that is same color as the background. White background, White Text. Only highlighting the area with a mouse will uncover the hidden words.

Doorway Pages are pages set up to attract search engine user queries, however, if clicked thru, the user is automatically redirected to another site. Also known as spamdexing.

Duplicate Sites are just that, duplicates of existing sites. The duplicates are usually slightly tweaked with unique meta descriptions but have the same content. Basically they are used to attract more search engine traffic.

It is important when interviewing a Search Engine Optimization company to ask what methods they employ to help you gain top search placement. If they are using any of the above mentioned techniques, I would suggest finding another company. Using an SEO company which employs any form of Black Hat SEO could lead to your website being banned by the major search engines.

Some of the White Hat techniques that you DO want your Search Engine Optimization company to use include:  Internal and reciprocal linking, Content Creation, and Onsite Optimization.
Internal Linking is a means of linking various pages within a website. For example, if I were talking about Maine Web Hosting,  a link to our Web Hosting page would be considered an internal link.

Reciprocal linking is building links with various business partners and affiliations. Most businesses have a “Resources” page on their website. Asking for a link on their resources page is an excellent way of gaining links. In turn, you can reward them by putting their link on your “Resources” page.

Content Creation can consist of updated website content, articles or press releases. Writing fresh, updated and unique homepage content will encourage search engines to crawl your site more frequently resulting in higher search placement and traffic. Relevant articles and press releases distributed online can also create a large amount of traffic to you website.

Onsite Optimization is done to ensure that you have proper and unique Meta Descriptions, Keywords and Titles.

Now before you head down that yellow brick road in search of top rankings, remember that the Good Witch (aka. White Hat Optimization) will always lead you to where you want to go.

Let’s be honest, Google knows EVERYTHING about you. It knows you ‘google’ yourself once a month (okay more like once a week…), it knows that you were recently in the market for a new car, bought an iPhone, and that you are baffled by Halo 3 because it caught you looking for cheats online. In essence…Google has become your closest confidante. But who is Google..and what do YOU know about it?

As a website owner, it is imperative that you get to know Google. Google is largely responsible for the success and failure of your website. He holds the answers to your most important questions: How do I get more traffic to my website? Or How are my customers finding me? Google knows, and unfortunately he isn’t telling.

Luckily for you, it’s not magic, it just involves a little elbow grease and knowledge. We have realized that it comes down to three basic factors: quality inbound links, frequent updates, and publishing content that reflects the interests of your users.

Link building is a means of attracting high quality sites to link to your website.
It’s basically an internet popularity contest. Generally, he who has the most links wins! The more quality inbound links your site has, the better it does in Google search rankings. Is there a magic number of links you should get? YES..more than your competitor! Go Team!

Google LOVES fresh content. Its main job is to crawl through websites to look for new information. By updating your site with new information, a press release, a business blog or even a simple RSS feed, Google will be more likely to deem your site more credible and visit it more frequently. And you know what that means…more visits from Google…higher search rankings!

When writing copy for a website, it is important to write quality content which will be of interest to your readers. There is a lot of talk about ‘writing for search engines’ which consists of stuffing searchable keywords on every page. This is not an effective way to attract repeat visitors. Web searchers who find your site are looking for interesting information, reward them for visiting your site by giving them what they are looking for..and they are sure to return.

There you have it, Google’s secrets revealed…a cheat sheet of sorts. It may not be the Halo 3 Cheat sheets you were hoping for, but it is a great way to start the optimization of your website.

Our weekly SEO and web marketing Q&A show continues with answers to another basic questions fundamental to understanding what search engines find important when they evaluate your site — what are links?

SEO Audio Episode 2

While pretty helpful as far as search engines go (think: all the gems from Matt Cutts, Webmaster Tools, Analytics, etc.), Google still has a vested interest in keeping its search algorithm and ranking methodology top secret, and while they occasionally do comment on issues raised by SEOs and webmasters, they’re typically pretty taciturn about what does and doesn’t work ranking wise. Thus, it was pretty refreshing to have Google’s Webmaster Blog talk about META Descriptions.

According to Google, “Accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, [but] won’t affect your ranking within search results.” Instead, the point of a properly written META description is to attract people to your website by accurately displaying the contents of the page. They use the example of a dynamically generated eCommerce META description that repeats itself and provides vague information as the kind of entry to avoid. Instead, choose simple language that quickly and accurately defines the content of the page.

All of this reinforces what most of us in the SEO trade have believed for a while, but there were a few interesting things on best practices that are worth noting. First was that displaying the META description is a preference, but by no means a rule. Google explicitly states that a META description will only be used in the search results if it is of “high enough quality.” Failing this, expect to see excerpted text from your website or maybe even a DMOZ entry as the descriptive line for your website.

Another interesting thing to note is that Google sanctions programmatically created descriptions, so long as the results are not “spammy.” This is good news for eCommerce sites, and helps reinforce our position, which is that the challenges eCommerce sites face in organic indexing is only a limitation only to the creativity and SEO savviness of the web developer.

Finally, another “no brainer” that is still often ignored by many web designers, is the need for META descriptions to be different on every page — simple boilerplate descriptions copy/pasted sitewide just aren’t going to do it, and Google will be more likely to ignore your description, or worse, put your site in the supplemental index (unless, of course, you believe it doesn’t exist anymore).

Google neglected touching the topic of length with META descriptions, though 150-160 characters still seems to be the rule of thumb, based on how much text actually appears in the results.

While Google’s post didn’t throw any huge curveballs our way, it’s great to see Google talk shop and give a definite answer to questions SEOs have debated about in the blogosphere for years now.