Backhat Tactics that Will Get Your Blacklisted…
When people are faced with the enormous amount of work that they are going to have to do in order to get their website listed on the first page of Google, sometimes they take shortcuts. These shortcuts are classified by the search engines as black hat SEO and your site will be penalized for using these tactics. You website could even be wiped clean from the search engine rankings, causing you to start over again. Avoiding black hat SEO is necessary if you want to be successful with the search engines.
Anything Automated
There are a lot of automated services that will produces hundreds, or thousands, of links in a matter of days. It is important to remember that Google sees all. You can’t hide the fact that your site went from 0 back links to 10,000 in a couple days. It just doesn’t happen naturally. This is a tell tale sign of Black Hat SEO, and they will shut you down for it.
People tend to be attracted to advertisements that have the word automated in them because automated means that they won’t have to do as much work. These services can be anything from directory submission, automated blog posting, commenting, or forum posting. Whatever they are trying to sell you, avoid it. You will see much better results if your links are created naturally. This can only be done by creating relationships with other webmasters, not buy purchasing a product.
Link Sharing Networks
It is ok to share links with sites within your niche that you think have something interesting to offer. Joining a network for the explicit purpose of trading links is discouraged by the search engines though. The link sharing networks on the web are usually hounded by sites of low quality. Getting links from low quality sites will not help you, and if the site has malware on it a link could hurt you. It is much better to build relationships with other reputable webmasters, and let them post links to your site naturally.
Hidden Text
Hidden text went out of style sometime in the late nineties, but for some reason people are still trying to do it. Usually this is done by putting keywords into your background in the same color text as your background. This way your visitors can’t see it but the search engines can. Unfortunately, search engines pick up on this tactic very quickly. They can tell that the percentage of keywords in your site is far too high and will penalize you for hiding your text.
Keyword Stuffing
How often have you found a site on the web only to find that you were unable to read the horribly crafted article in front of you? This is usually a sign of keyword stuffing. Occasionally a site will get away with this, but it tends to drive visitors away. Even if you are able to get away with keyword stuffing in the eyes of the search engines, your visitors may leave you for it. Stuffing is incredibly obvious and will tarnish the quality of your site.
Even though it may be tempting to engage in black hat SEO tactics, they will hurt you in the long run. It is in your best interest to trudge away and do the hard work until your site is ranking where you want it to. This can take a while, but at least you won’t be in jeopardy of losing everything you have worked for.
Deep Linking All of Your Pages on Your Site
Nearly all websites are guilty of sending all links directly to their homepage. Some may also try to link to a few other pages that they consider their better content, but the majority of links are to the index page. This is not a clever strategy and can hold a website back from improving its search engine ranking. Find out why deep-linking is the way to go.
What is a Deep-Link?
A deep-link is a link that points to a page on a website that is not one of the main pages. This would be a page that is one of the internal pages, located deeper within a websites hierarchical structure and considered of lesser importance.
Why Link to These Pages?
Without links, these pages have little chance of ranking or adding to the overall rank of a site. Having all the links pointing to the main index page appears unnatural and can appear suspicious to a search engine. Search engines like to see links pointing to a variety of content, after all that should be the true purpose of a link – to send a visitor somewhere useful.
Another reason is that quite often, inner pages have been keyword optimized for long-tailed keywords, or keyword phrases. This means that they may only need a handful of links to achieve a decent SERP ranking for a low-competition search term. If a site can rank with its internal pages, as well as the index and authority pages, this will not only add to the overall importance of the site, it will bring in more visitors.
Many people obsess about Google PageRank (PR), but consider this: Building links to internal pages will improve their PageRank. If a site has a developed internal linking structure, the internal pages may boost the PageRank of the main index page, or any other page they link to, as they will now pass on more PageRank themselves, via the internal links
The Index Page Looks After Itself
Once a site is indexed and established, most natural links will point to the homepage. There is little reason to concentrate all effort and time, building links to the index page. Greater focus can be placed on improving links to the internal pages; the index page will take care of itself.
It is often easier to rank for internal pages and the more pages a website has ranked, the more importance and authority will be attributed to that website.
How can i find Alexa rating for my site for the last two years?
PLs let me know how can I find the alexa rating for my site for last two years.
How Time On Site Effects Your SE Ranking
You may have heard the saying “Content is King” spread across various SEO websites in the past. The idea is that if your website or blog has strong content it will inevitably bring in visitors. Like most sayings it is an over-simplification and it is often ignored because it fails to explain why, exactly, content matters to SEO. But it does, and ignoring the value of content can lead to serious problems once competitors start knocking on your more profitable keywords
Your Worst Enemy: The Back Button
When a visitor comes across your website through a search or any other link they need to believe that what they have come across is relevant to what they’re looking for and that it is credible. If it fails either of those tests they will probably hit the back button and be gone forever.
The immediate implications of this are obvious. The visitor is gone. He or she won’t be clicking on any of your ads or bookmarking your site or doing anything which will help you out. The long-term ramifications of this, however, are even more severe.
All search engines take into account metrics like time on site and bounce rate when deciding who to place at the top of a search. If the keyword you’ve targeted it not competitive you have more room to ignore this because no one else has relevant content. But once competitors start showing up they will erode your search engine rankings if visitors are staying on their site more frequently than yours.
Explaining Time on Site and Bounce Rate
Time on site is a fairly straight-forward metric. It is a simple average of how long visitors stayed on your website. Time on site takes into account all of the visitors including those who click away in five seconds and those who stay five minutes. A low time on site metric usually indicates that people are coming to your site and simply not finding the content engaging at a glance and so they click back quickly.
Bounce rate describes the percentage of visitors who visit only the content they were initially linked to and then do not visit any other content on the site. Bounce rate is a good indication of how useful the content was to the visitor and how well it is leading readers on to other content on your site. Visitors always have the option to leave at a moment’s notice, and if they find your content to be sub-par they absolutely will. If they find it useful, however, they’re likely to see if you have anything else to offer on the subject.
Improving the Metrics
Now you know what the metrics mean, but how do you improve them?
Time on site can usually be improved by making sure that content is presented clearly and boldly. The first thing the reader should see is a bold headline which contains what they’re looking for. If the keyword you’ve targeted is “best coffee makers” the content should include a large, clear headline announcing “Roundup of the Best Coffee Makers” or something similar. It should be blunt, simple, and easy to see. It is also important to make sure that the introduction paragraph engages the reader immediately.
Bounce rate can be improved by presenting content which is clear and concise all the way through and which the visitor finds useful. Content should not be too long and should not drag on. It should give the reader useful information quickly. If there is more to be said about the subject than cbe summed up in around 750 words that information can be linked to at the bottom of the article or on a sidebar. A visitor who is engaged by your content is likely to click through to the additional content you have on the topic, reducing your bounce rate.
Content Isn’t King – But is Maybe a Baron
Time on site and bounce rate are not the only parts of SEO which are important. They are particularly important, however, as competition for a keyword becomes more fierce. If you have an early lead on a keyword, make sure you content is up to par and results in good ratings in these metrics. They will help you stay at the top of the rankings.
How long dose it take to get your stats listed on alexa?
I have 2 websites and the first is a month old and the second is a week old, Ive promoted the second one more than the first but for some reason mt second still is at “no data” when I search it on alexa, why?
How Anchor Tags Help Search Engines Understand Your Page
Anchor tags are a core component of website structure. They connect web pages within the site. They provide paths to other websites. They are the branches that all web content hangs on. It is small wonder that search engines treat them with such importance. Search engines are constantly looking for reliable ways to determine what page content is really about. Website developers have often used many tricks and techniques to pretend web pages are something they are not, and search engines are always looking for alternative indicators of true content. One of these indicators is the anchor tag.
Text based links are much better for search engine optimization than any other linking method. Anchor tags can contain images as the clickable content, but this means the developer loses an opportunity to insert another set of keywords Flash and JavaScript links are opaque to search engine spiders, and add nothing as a search engine optimization feature. Using text as the clickable component is to use anchor tags as they were originally intended, and maximises the search engine optimization potential of the tag.
The anchor tag address should contain keywords This means that files that are being linked to must have keywords in the document name. This is a simple step, but another detail that will improve website indexing options for search engines.
An element of the anchor tag that should contain keywords, but is often overlooked, is the ‘title’ attribute. The title may not necessarily be used by other page features, such as JavaScript, however it provides an opportunity to enhance the anchor tag with additional information. When the link text is rolled over by the cursor, the title text will appear as tool tip information. This text can be limited to 1 or 2 words, but could contain a full title with 9 or 10 words. This should be populated with keywords, but still be readable have good language structure.
The most important feature of an anchor tag with regard to search engine optimization is the link text. Search engines view it as being important for website indexing, and it should be seen by the developer as a great opportunity to influence search engine ranking. Links where the link text is too long will take up too much space on a web page, especially where they form part of a menu list. Be reasonable in the number of words used, but don’t restrict it to one word.
Graphical link options have become popular in website development as a ‘cool’ option for building hyper links A website developer who relies on these, however, is missing website promotion opportunity. Use text links intelligently, and the will not only look good, but will be an important part of your search engine promotion strate
How do you convert Alexa stats in hits?
Alexa gives out positions of the first 100000 websites, but how can i work out how many hits this sites are getting? Is there any other way to know?
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Linking Out to Improve Your Google Trust Factor
For many years Internet marketers have obsessed over Google Page Rank — building it, hoarding it and directing it.
Many years ago, web marketers traded links with related sites to help their visitors. Software to facilitate this process was sold as a traffic generation tool, not as a way to make Google love you.
No more, now everybody wants one-way links This is partly because it’s too easy for Google to detect link trades and discount them on the (fair) assumption they were made to game the Google system rather than create value for the site visitors.
Now online marketers troll the Internet looking for dofollow links from blogs, profile pages of bookmarking sites and discussion forums. They write and submit hundreds of articles and press releases. They build pages on such sites as Squidoo and Hub Pages. They even pay other sites.
All in the frantic effort to increase their page rank through obtaining links back to their site.
Yet when it comes to the pages on their own sites, they’re fanatically stingy about outbound links The only links you’ll find on the pages of marketing websites are internal links, links to other sites the marketer owns and affiliate links They’d rather jump out a high window than give one iota of link juice away to another website.
And Google knows this.
So it’s like waving a big red flag to Googlebot. Hey, look at me! I’ve studied search engine optimization and so I’d sooner sell my mother into white slavery than give another site a simple dofollow link.
Many marketers and affiliates believe that Google hates commercial — especially affiliate — websites. This isn’t true. Google knows as well as anybody that since 1994 business in the pursuit of profit has driven the development of web-based technologies.
What Google does hate are websites delivering nothing to their visitors except the opportunity to spend money. Google believes — rightly or wrongly but not without their own successful example — that the more value websites deliver to their visitors, the more money those websites can and should make.
Google’s own success depends on delivering relevant and valuable natural search engine results to their customers. Google wants to rank relevant and valuable web sites higher than those delivering less relevant and valuable content.
One form of valuable content is links That’s what Google has built its company on.
The sites that rank most highly are authority sites. Authority sites don’t rank highly because they have the most links from blog comments, but because they deliver the most and best content, including links
One of the authority sites Google loves most is Wikipedia. Yet articles there contain outbound links Most Internet marketers salivate at the thought of getting a link from Wikipedia, but wouldn’t link TO Wikipedia on a bet.
Page rank is important, but is not the only important factor. Do a search right now and check the PR of the first ten sites. It’s not unusual to see PR 3 sites ahead of PR 5 sites. On some searches you can find PR 0 sites above PR 4 sites.
If PR were all-important, this couldn’t happen.
When you put outbound links on your site, you’re signaling to Google you want to give good content to your visitor. Yes, you’re a marketer but not a link love miser. You’re an affiliate marketer but your site is not a thin affiliate site.
Just as you want inbound links from high quality, relevant web sites with keyword rich anchor text, link out to high quality, relevant web sites with keyword rich anchor text.
To find which sites Google trusts most for your targeted keywords, just do a search. Cut and paste the urls of the top sites.
Put the links within your page’s content. Link the keywords most relevant to that page. If you have money links in your content, put the outbound links below the money links One to five per page should be enough to prove to Google your page and website are different from your “selfish” competitors.
Of course, you still need relevant and valuable content on your pages. Outbound linking will not make up for a lack of that.
And of course you still want high quality, relevant inbound links
Nobody outside of Google knows their exact algorithm of the two hundred factors they examine. But when they compare two competitors with good and relevant content, a few relevant, high quality links to other sites may determine which site Google trusts more — and ranks higher.
What are the advantages of an Alexa Traffic Button?
I have a site, which attracts 800+ visitors to the site, but still my Alexa Ranking does not rise. Will putting an Alexa traffic button give hits to the site or not?
Use Desciption Tags to Boost Search Engine Ranking
When developing a website, it is important to use all features available to improve its ranking by search engines. One of the most important features is the Description tag. This tag is placed in the head section of a web page. Its content does not appear on the page visible to viewers, but it is read and indexed by search engines.
Search engines use the Description tag for a number of reasons. Firstly, they see it as being a good indicator of web page content. If a web page holds information on a particular theme, the text in the Description tag will reflect this. Secondly, the text in the Description tag is a key element in search engine result listings. While the Title tag content forms the link in the result, the Description tag content forms the additional information below the link. If the Description tag is not available on a web page, the search engines will use the first few lines of text on the page itself. If you want to have control over the text that appears in search engine listings, ensure you add a Description tag to your web page.
The Description tag should a paragraph of text. That’s approximately 60 to 100 words. If you put too little text in, the search engines will add to it from the page content. See this text as an opportunity to promote your website. It should include keywords, appropriately chosen for the web page. Don’t use more than 5 keywords, otherwise the page loses focus. Repeat the keywords 2 to 3 times if possible, and ensure they are evenly distributed throughout the text. Keywords placed at the start of the body of text are seen by search engines as being more significant than keywords placed at the end of the text. Try to use a natural spread.
Where the web page is created dynamically, for example by PHP extracting content from a database, the Description tag can be created dynamically. This prevents the problem of having several or many pages with the same Description content. The content can be taken from a particular field in the database, or it could be created by merging data from several fields.
When writing the content for the Description tag, you don’t have the luxury of assuming it will only be read by search engine robots, and that as long as the keywords are included, everything will be OK. The content of the Description appears in search engine query results, and will have a strong influence on what people do when they see it. If it is just a list of keywords, it will not be very inviting, and will not generate site visitors as expected. If, on the other hand, it has a strong ‘call to action’ and shows promise of good information, it will be more successful in generating site traffic. The difficult task of the website developer is to satisfy the needs of both search engine spiders and human users, and to make sure the text in the Description tag is appropriate for both.
The description tag is not an optional add-on, or a hidden attribute without use. It is an important part of the structure of a web page, and if you pay it due respect, it will repay you with an increased supply of visitors.