Since the development of Search Engine Optimization as a concept, there has been an obvious temptation for some people to try to cheat the system. Because the whole premise of SEO is that keywords create cash, the idea occurred to a lot of people that this could be taken to the extreme, and can best be summed up as: “If they want keyword volume, then we’ll give them keyword volume”. This tends to occur in the shape of website text that contains nothing but keywords (this practice is known as “Keyword Stuffing”). It’s keywords on steroids, and just like using steroids in sport it is still regarded as cheating.
Tag Archives: Search Engine Optimization
Heavenly SEO Practices: Site Maps
Adding a Site Map to your site is one of the easiest and quickest things that you can do to your website in order to help improve it’s SEO, and your visibility with the Search Engines. Reduced down to its simplest form, a sitemap is just a list of URLs. For something so completely basic, it’s incredible how important sitemaps can be when it comes to successful SEO.
SEO: A Tool For Boosting Your Ranking, Not A Silver Bullet
There are many people who have just enough knowledge of the way the Internet and search engines work to know that search engine optimization is important, but not enough knowledge to know that it will not just solve all your problems. SEO is not something you can apply and then sit back and wait for people to visit your website. Yes, it is important and it is an extremely clever concept, but the incorrect application of SEO will no more increase your website traffic than handing out free balloons will make an ice cream shop’s profits go through the roof. Yes, it can help; no, it is not the whole deal.
Should You Outsource Your SEO Work?
If you are looking to launch a website to sell a product or service, you’re probably looking around the internet to see what you need to know or do to succeed. Eventually, the term SEO – and it’s importance – will crop up, along with the help guides telling you how to do it yourself. Doing it yourself is a lot cheaper than outsourcing to a company, so why should you bother?
Is There Such A Thing As Too Much SEO?
It is obviously not easy to write good, SEO-compliant content for a website and still have a standard of content which will impress your readers, and this often shows in the more amateurish attempts at writing a website. One mistake a lot of people make is in thinking that the more they use a keyword, the better it will be for their website. This often results in the writer frequently using the keyword once every other sentence or a similar density. Their reasoning is understandable. If some SEO is good, then a lot of SEO will surely be excellent?
What Is Robots.txt?
For search engines to keep their listings up to date, and present the most accurate search engine results, they perform an action known as a ‘crawl’. This is essentially sending a ‘bot’ (sometimes known as a ‘spider’) out to crawl the internet. The bot will then find new pages, updated pages or pages it did not previously know to exist. The end result of the crawl is that the search engine results page is updated, and all of the pages found on the last crawl are now included. It’s simply a method of finding sites on the internet.
The Seven Deadly Sins of SEO: #7 “Avoid Black Hat Techniques”
They appear every so often on internet marketing forums; people claiming to have discovered a fool proof “black hat” search engine optimization technique. Their technique, available for a price, will propel your website to the top of the search engine listings – and of course they guarantee you’ll never get caught.
Now, think about it. While we’d all like to believe that there are methods that can get us to number one in Google with no effort whatsoever, it just isn’t true. Google is huge, and it’s smart. There’s no denying that those employing “black hat” (a phrase used to describe methods that go against Google, or other search engine, terms of service) techniques may experience success at first, but it won’t be long term. Not ever. In fact, there’ll be lucky if it works for a few days.
The Seven Deadly Sins of SEO: #6 “Title Stacking”
When it comes to search engine optimization, one of the most useful tools in a web developer’s arsenal is the < title > tags within HTML code. Unlike articles, which must be based around keywords (a procedure which is never easy), the < title > tag is a section of code which you can pack with your keywords – all without having to add a context, a readability, and all the other things that an article needs. The extra bonus is that you can have your main page have a < title > tag full of keywords, and keywords are often hard to find on a simple “welcome to this website” page.
The Seven Deadly Sins of SEO: #5 “Hosting Viruses, Malware or Other Nasties”
This may seem obvious; no search engine is going to rank you well in their search results if their bots discover that there is spyware, malware, viruses or any other kind of internet nasties contained within your website. In fact, if a bot does discover such content, your site will most likely be removed and blacklisted for good.
The Seven Deadly Sins of SEO: #4 “Linking To Bad Sites”
Have you ever heard the phrase ‘falling in with a bad crowd’? Well, if you link to websites that search engines consider ‘bad’, that’s the search engine optimization equivalent of falling in with a bad crowd. While your website may not be intrinsically ‘bad’ in itself, if you promote (by linking) sites that violate the terms and conditions of major search engines, you’ll be tarred with the same brush. While it’s unlikely your site will be completely blacklisted, you may see a sharp fall in rankings position – or be removed from the search rankings altogether.
