I Can Get you Removed From Search Engines

One of my clients was talking to me today. He is using our search engine submission tool and was very confused as why his website was showing some weird string queries.

First background about his site. His site has been online since 2000 and is ranked very well on all search engines. He site is very much devoted to real estate.

Couple of days he discovered that his site shows some weird things. To protect my client website I will use (example.com).

What we have done is google “site:www.example.com”

This will show you how many urls of your website google has. However one search showed example.com/?link1=10

He was puzzled as to what the ?link1=10 actually means. So he called us and ask me about this weir stuff that was happening. I guess sometimes we go the extra mile for our clientsJ

What has happened?

What is this /?link1=10?. Nothing was indicating that he has this page on his website, in fact this exact page does not even exist, but yet google found it.

Page /?link1=10 or anything that has example.com/?something_goes_here are called string queries which are used to identify products or even real estate search for homes if customers can view homes on your website.

With result of google finding this weird page, google automatically lowered my client site to the unknown. Basically my client lost ranking from google and other search engines.

Why this happened?

Using sting queries you can simply remove any website from search results, however it will take time to do that. Your website first must return status code 200-OK. This 200 page is simply a soft lending page for your 404 page.

To give you an example, If you remove a page from your web-site and than you re-visit that page again it will show 404 error. In some cases you may set up a custom 404 page which results in “not found”.

To see what you have just go to your website and type “www.mysite.com/anythinguwant.html”.

This should return 404 page or custom 404 page.

But back to 202 pages. To see if your website returns 202 page, search for a tool online. Use "header checker" as your search term.

When you get result it should be similar to this: “HTTP/1.1 200 OK”. It has to show 200OK.

Here is how it works:

To remove pages from search engines you need to have a lots of duplicate content. When I say a lot, we are talking 100’s of pages of duplicate content. Simply one page has to be same as the other page and 3rd page has to be same as 4th pages…etc. They all have to be on your website.

So how this “hacker”..let’s call him that, did this. He did not have access to my clients server, but still he was able to remove his site.

What he has done is checked if his website returns 202 pages OK. If it did, he than assigned random pages to his domain name.

For example: example.com/index.html?haha=iwillremoveyou or example.com/index.html?link1page=330, or example.com/index.html?haha=link2page

You get the idea. What he has done, he has assigned a string query of “haha”. Than he copied all urls into some free hosting company and just wait and relax until search engine picks it up.

Form search engine point of view these are links that point to his domain. More links you have the quicker search engines return to your website.

Because these links were pointing to some new pages on his domain, search engine though that this was a duplicate page, and now there are two main pages, and suddenly his website dropped on all search engines.

See how easy that was? Guess what, MSN is very vulnerable to this! I am not sure if they fixed it yet. If you do this on MSN, it is almost guaranteed someone site will just disappear.

Rest of the search engines, google, msn, yahoo will just lower your ranking, but will not remove you. Not matter what , it is pain to get back to top search results.

How to fix it

You will need to do mod rewrite or 301 redirect .

About the Author:
Martin Lukac, represents EnginePromoter.com, http://www.EnginePromoter.com search engine marketing web-site for search engine optimization and website submission. Promote your website and get top rotating positions on over 250+ search engines, including a niche website submission. EnginePromoter.com also operates http://www.1AmericanFinancial.com and real estate portal http://www.RateEmpire.com
Posted: 27-02-2007
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com

Search Engine Optimization History

Webmasters today spend quite some time optimizing their websites for search engines. Books have been written about search engine optimization and some sort of industry has developed to offer search engine optimization services to potential clients. But where did this all start? How did we end up with the SEO world we live in today (from a webmaster standpoint seen)?

A guy named Alan Emtage, a student at the University of McGill, developed the first search engine for the Internet in 1990. This search engine was called "Archie" and was designed to archive documents available on the Internet at that time. About a year later, Gopher, an alternative search engine to Archie, was developed at the University of Minnesota. These two kinda search engines triggered the birth of what we use as search engines today.

In 1993, Matthew Gray developed very first search engine robot - the World Wide Web Wanderer. However, it took until 1994 that search engines as we know them today were born. Lycos, Yahoo! And Galaxy were started and as you probably - two of those are still around today (2005).

In 1994 some companies started experimenting with the concept of search engine optimization. The emphasis was put solely on the submission process at that time. Within 12 months, the first automated submission software packages were released. Of course it did not take long until the concept of spamming search engines was 'invented'. Some webmasters quickly realized that they could swamp and manipulate search results pages by over-submission of their sites. However - the search engines soon fought back and changed things to prevent this from happen.

Soon, search engine optimizers and the search engines started playing some sort of a "cat and mouse" game. Once a way to manipulate a search engine was discovered by the SE-optimizers they took advantage of this. The search engines subsequently revised and enhanced their ranking algorithms to respond to these strategies. It was clear very soon that mainly a small group of webmasters was abusing the search engine algorithms to gain advantage over the competition. Black Hat search engine optimization was born. The unethical way of manipulating search engine resulted in faster responses from search engines. Search engines are trying to keep the search results clean of SPAM to provide the best service to customers.

The search engine industry quickly realized that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as an industry would not go away, and in order to maintain useful indexes, they would need to at least accept the industry. Search engines now partially work with the SEO industry but are still very eager to sort out SPAMMERS that are trying to manipulate the results.

When Google.com started to be the search engine of choice for more than 50_f the Internet users it was highly visible to anyone in the industry that search engine spamming had reached a new dimension. Google.com was so much more important to the success of a website that many webmasters solely concentrated on optimizing their sites for Google only as the payoff was worth the efforts. Again - Black Hat SEO took place, pushing down the honest webmaster and their sites in search results delivered. Google started fighting back. Several major updates to Google's algorithms forced all webmaster to adapt to new strategies. Black Hat SE-optimizers but suddenly saw something different happening. Instead of just being pushed down in the search results their websites were suddenly completely removed from the search index.

And then there was something called the "Google Sandbox" to show up in discussions. Websites either disappeared into the sandbox or new websites never made it into the index and were considered in the Google Sandbox. The sandbox seemed to be the place where Google would 'park' websites either considered SPAMMY or not to be conform with Google's policies (duplicate websites under different domain names, etc.). The Google Sandbox so far has not been confirmed or denied by Google and many webmasters consider it to be myth.

In late 2004 Google announced to have 8 billion pages/sites in the search index. The gap between Google and the next two competitors (MSN and Yahoo!) seemed to grow. However - in 2005 MSN as well as Yahoo! Started fighting back putting life back into the search engine war. MSN and Yahoo seemed to gain ground in delivering better and cleaner results compared to Google. In July of 2005 Yahoo! Announced to have over 20 billion pages/sites in the search index - leaving Google far behind. No one search engine has won the war yet. The three major search engines however are eagerly fighting for market share and one mistake could change the fortune of a search engine. It will be a rocky ride - but worth watching from the sidelines.

About the author:
Christoph Puetz is a successful entrepreneur and international book author. Examples of his search engine optimization work can be found at http://www.webhostingresourcekit.com and http://www.highlandsranch.us
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) the Safe Way

To start this article, let’s make certain that everyone knows what a search engine (SE) is. This is a website that will accept an input word or phrase and search a database to give you information that matches the input information that you supplied to it. The best known SE’s are Google and Yahoo.

There are many definitions for SEO so we will try to boil them down into a simple one. The condensed definition of SEO is -- the action of using techniques to make your page(s) appeal to search engines so they will rank the page high in the search engine results pages (SERP). For additional definitions, run a Google search to get plenty of reading on the subject.

Why be concerned about the SERP ranking? This is what produces the free traffic to your site. These people found you all by themselves using the SE and they arrive at your site open to read what you have to present. They are not suspicious as they would be if they arrived at your site by clicking on a banner ad or on a Google Adwords or Adsense ad. This traffic is the life blood of your business. Readers who arrive at your site by a search engine are much easier to sell than those who come from pay per click or banner ads.
SEO has created the profession of search engine optimizer. This profession breaks down into two groups called the white hats and the black hats. (From the old western movies where the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black hats).

The white hats work to create good, solid content that the SE’s are looking for. Their form of optimization is presenting the good, solid material in a format which appeals to the SE.

The black hats try to trick the SE into thinking that a site has valuable information on it by various methods and tricks.

When search engines (SE’s) first came on the scene, they were not very sophisticated and people on the Net found ways to easily trick them into giving a page a higher ranking on the SERP than the page deserved.

An early black hat trick was to fill in all the white space on the page with the page keyword in white font color (white letters on a white background). If the page was viewed on the screen, it looked normal with five or six keyword occurrences, but if you looked at the HTML, you would see the keyword on the page say 300 times. This was called “increasing keyword density” and this worked for a short time until the SE’s got smarter. When they learned to look at the background color and the font color for these 300 keywords, the SE’s started penalizing those website for cheating. The interaction between the black hat SEO’s and the search engines has developed into a “cat and mouse” game and is still on going.

Google has some of the best minds on the Net working for it and those minds are constantly working to stay ahead of the “black hats”.

It is not uncommon for a “black hat” page to be ranked well in the SERP’s one day and gone the next. This is because Google has changed its algorithm for what it considers relevant on the page. The black hat tricks that worked yesterday were discovered and the page is gone from Google or ranked so far back in the SERP that it is “dead meat”. Google has a goal to rank pages with outstanding, relevant content high on the SERP. If you create that outstanding, relevant content and develop traffic, your page will rise in the SERP rank. You are not trying to fool Google, you are building what Google wants.

I learned this information from using Site Build It (SBI) since it guides you through this part of building your page. Each time you create a page, you first preview it to see that it meets your visual requirements. Then you submit it to “Analyze It” a program that evaluates the page. Once it has completed its evaluation, it tells you what it detected that needs to be changed to make the page more acceptable to search engine spiders.
Make the changes to the page and resubmit to “Analyze It” until it gives you a report with no more suggestions. At that point, you preview the page to make certain your changes have not affected the visual presentation and it is ready to publish.

The following are a few guidelines what I learned from building retirement jobs online.com on Site Build It. If you follow these guidelines, you will build a page that is structured the way the SE’s like.

1. The web page file name should contain the primary keyword. For retirement jobs online.com this would be “retirement-jobs-online.com/keyword.html.
2. The page title should contain the primary keyword. This is the Title tag in the HTML code.
3. The page description should contain the primary keyword. This is the description meta tag.
4. The keyword list should begin with the primary keyword. This is the keywords meta tag.
5. The first heading in the body should contain the primary keyword. This will be the H1, H2, or H3 tags in HTML. “H” tags indicate a heading which will be bold font. The 1, 2, or 3 indicate the size of the font for the heading.
6. The keyword should appear in the first 90 visible characters of the text.
7. The key word should appear a moderate number of times in the body. Here is where it gets a little fuzzy. Too few occurrences will not help you and too many occurrences can be considered “keyword spamming”. I do not know the exact formula, I just do what SBI says. Quite often “Analyze It” tells me to lower the occurrences of keywords on a page.
8. The keyword should appear in the text of a text link on the page.
If you build your own website, you will need to know HTML so you can fill in the the meta tags for the title, keywords, and description. This is not hard to do and you can learn it without too much trouble. If you use SBI, you fill in text boxes in the SBI template and SBI writes the HTML to accomplish this. If you are using MS Internet Explorer, to see the HTML for these inputs, go to www.retirement-jobs-online.com and right click in the center of the page. Click View Source in the dropdown box and a Notepad window will open with the HTML code for the page. Here is what you will see near the top:

< !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" >

< HTML >

< HEAD >

< TITLE >Retirement Jobs Online - retirement jobs online for people over 50< /TITLE >

< link rel = "alternate" type = "application/rss+xml" title = "RSS"

href = http://retirement-jobs-online.com/retirement-jobs-online.xml >

< META Name = "Description" Content = "Retirement jobs online for retirees seeking flexible work schedules" >

< META Name = "Keywords" Content = "retirement jobs online, retirement careers, entrepreneur, part time, retiree, retired" >

The

< TITLE >

tag is the page title.
The

Name="Description" Content= is the description.

The

< META Name = "Keywords" Content = is the keyword list.

You can write this HTML if you just use the tags exactly like they appear ABOVE and insert your text between the quotation marks.

Enough HTML lesson! The intent was to show you where these various inputs appeared on the page. If you build your own website, do not forget to fill these out each time you build a page.

In summary, do not chase after the latest “hot” SEO technique. Focus on creating solid content and follow a few rules on how to structure your page and no matter how Google changes its SE algorithm, your pages should continue to rank well.
Good luck with your future online endeavors.

About the Author:
John V. W. Howe is an entrepreneur, author, inventor, patent holder, husband, father, and grandfather. He has been involved in entrepreneurial activities for over 40 years. He has founded www.boomer-ezine.com, www.retirement-jobs-online.com and www.boomer-entrepreneur.com to help Boomers (baby boomers) become entrepreneurs when they retire.
Content Provider: http://www.my-articles.com

SEO Dos And Don’ts

You don’t have to be a SEO expert to make a fortune on the web. Search engine optimization is not complicated at all. It may be exhausting and annoying. You may get frustrated. But it is so easy if you know the basic rules. Read the following SEO Dos and Don’ts and start making money.

SEO Dos :

1. Stay natural – Search engines like natural behavior. Remember it whenever you get a tempting proposal to pay for software that will boost your search engine optimization and get you to the top search engine ranks.

2. Links, Links, Links – The online world equivalent to: “Location, location, location”. Links are the foundation stones of your SEO strategy. The quantity and quality of the links pointing to your site are the main criteria that affect your search engine ranking. Never stop creating new links to your site using techniques like links exchanging, articles submitting, affiliate marketing, link buying etc.

3. Page and site optimization – Remember, Search Engines like what human like. Optimize your site according to valuable keywords, you have found on wordcount.com or overture. Make the navigation on your site easy and clear.

4. Automate and delegate – Do not work on your own – use software to automate processes and outsource some of the search engine optimization to others.

SEO Don’ts:

1. Do not shoot and forget – Search engine optimization is an ongoing task. You will not see results in a day or in a month. Do not work on one site too much too fast. In other words, add links and pages to your site gradually.

2. Do not optimize only for the best search engine – Google is not the only search engine and all search engine change their ranking algorithms every once in a while. Do your best to get your site in a high place in at least three of the best search engines.

Now that you have read the SEO Dos and Don’ts, all there is to do is work on your sites’ search engine optimization. It may take time but it sure worth it – You can have fun and lots of money. Good luck.

About the Author:
Paton Jackson
Simply the best information about search engine optimization on SEO Dos and Donts on TiGilet. www.tigilet.com – Web Content Experts
Article Source: Free Articles Directory

Google Seo - What To And What Not To Do

In Google SEO (search engine optimization), you, the webmaster, wage war with Googlebot, Google's listing spider. Only this war has no weapons. Instead it is your content veruses the army of Googlebot's other sites to rank.

To win this war there are things the webmaster must do, and things the webmaster must not do, should he stand a chance in winning the war and claiming a position on the top 20 results of Google.

There are many things a webmaster must do to take the edge of Googlebot. First and foremost, create the website. Let it be something unique, or better than the rest. Add pages on top of pages of content. You could put articles, information, anything. With one exception. It MUST be relevant to your website. After you have about 10 pages worth of content, get some links to your site. Submit to directories, loads of them. Try to submit to directories without a reciporical link requirenment. Also use word-of-mouth advertising to get a view visitors. As soon as you have some links, some visitors, and loads of content, hit your view visitors with a boom. Offer rewards for who could refer the most members, or who could submit the most articles, or anything to promote your site. Also remember to squeese in possible keywords in your content, and DO NOT forget meta tags, they are the key to SEO.

You may have noticed, I never mentioned when to submit your site to Google, that's the thing, don't. If google picks up your site before you submit it, you get a way better rank.

Now you have come up with a very good SEO website. Now you need to make sure not to blow it. Whatever you do, DON'T:

1: Have link exchanges with non-relevant sites, this will hurt you.

2: Do not cheat. Cheating is placing "invisible" keywords on your site. (white text on white background) Googlebot picks it up, and boom, no more rank on Google.

3: If you find the need to submit your site, do it, ONCE. If you submit twice then, say goodbye to your rank.

That's all and good luck with the SEO. With this, good keywords, and minimal compition, you will get within the top 20 of Google.

About the Author:
Abe Smith owner of the Webmaster Forum (www.webmasterforum.buildtolearn.net/index/homepage.html) enjoys writing articles and tutorials about web programming, SEO, and computer security. I can be contacted at gametyrant2000@yahoo.com Please contact me if you would like to use this article on your website (for free).
Article Source: www.iSnare.com

Site Owners with SEO: DOs and DON'Ts

As a search engine optimizer, I've had a great opportunity to work with many site owners for website submission and optimization services and had some working experiences to share with you in this article. Site owners come from different categories: e-commerce sites, services or personal pages. Some of them have the expertise in Computers and Internet but most of them are the neophytes in the search engine optimization (SEO) religion. So, the purpose of this article is providing novice site owners with some useful rules of behaviors (DOs and DON'Ts) to come along with their SEO campaigns.

* SEO firms DON'T help you out. DO help yourself - Search Engine Optimization process is more and more manipulated and it is becoming the big market nowadays. Many websites are offering SEO service with different costs. They promise that customers' sites will be on top of search engines. If so, who will be kicked out of the list? No one? So if you are a site owner with a small budget and modest knowledge of SEO, lean on SEO firm as just an advisor. They cannot do all the things for you. To help you out in SEO, do it yourself. In most cases, the site owners will play an important role in the success of SEO campaigns.

* DON'T submit your sites to thousands of search engines and directories - Simply, in reality, there are not even thousands of "engines" to submit to. There are, however, hundreds of search directories, hybrid search engines, free-for-all (FFA) pages and classified ad sites. They are simply a list of unorganized links to the last fifty or so URLs that were submitted to the service. The primary purpose of these sites is to gather email addresses from Web marketers so they can be sent offers for other products and services. By submitting, you are unknowingly giving your consent for them to email you. Some major search engines (e.g.: Google) are not fond of such link farms and may actively ban this type of site.

* Repetitive submissions DON'T improve your rankings in search engines - Many site owners misunderstand between search engine submission and search engine optimization. So they just dig in finding as many as possible free submission services on the Internet and hope that someday their site will be on the top. Search engine submission is just the first step to quickly notify the search engines about the nascence of your site on the Internet. How your site grows or how your site is optimized is more important to search engines to place your site at the top of the search index. So repetitive submissions don't work in these cases. Take time to pay more attention to your site's content and link building.

* DON'T try to trick the search engines in any way - The search engines today are smarter than you have ever imagined. The techniques like most times keyword repeated in a row (keyword stuffing), same color text used as the background (hidden text), doorway pages.. are obsolete and they may be against you. Search engines don't like to get fooled and they may penalize your site for that. Moreover, be careful with the services like automatic link exchange or buying text links. You can use them on your own but take precautions.

* Your websites' exposures on search engines DON'T mean top rankings and web conversions - Some SEO firms guarantee that your sites will be included in search engines. It is so easy because when your site is indexed, it is included in search engines right away and you can see it there by some simple but useless keywords. No one will find you with that keywords or syntaxes. In addition, pay attention to for which search engines the SEO firms will be optimizing your site. It will be easier to get listed on some less-reputed search engines comparing to Google or Yahoo. On the other hand, distinguish between standard and sponsor listing. You must pay for sponsor listing but get less visitors and sales. So make sure you understand clearly what SEO firms are offering. A successful SEO campaign requires the acumen of site owners as well as a tight cooperation between site owners and optimizers. Before the campaign starts, they should discuss the price, the time for the campaign, keyword selection and the specific search engines for optimization....

* DO get familiar with SEO tools such as search engines, HTML, PageRank - Some site owners lean on the webmasters on every task related to their sites (e.g.: add a text link, change page title). In most cases, the site owners will play an important role in the success of SEO campaign by getting familiar with SEO tools like search engines, HTML, PageRank. Search engines and PageRank evaluation will help you search for competitors' sites, evaluate the keywords, check sites' link popularity (number of links to your sites) and link saturation (number of pages on your sites have been indexed). Besides, with HTML basic syntax, you can easily exchange links with other sites on your own and stop calling the webmasters all the time for modifying pages with links.

* DO start writing today - Site owners may be beginners in SEO but experts in their industries. And today, writing is a significant skill to do SEO. Start writing some articles about your business now and submit them with your backlinks (links to your website) to article directories to increase the popularity of your site. For instance, suppose you were a mother at home and managed an ecommerce site selling some strollers and baby accessories. That will be wonderful if your share your experiences in choosing and using the strollers with other mummies-to-be on some women forum and article directories. Not only are search engines notified but also some potential customers will be attracted to your site.

In this article, I've provided the site owners with some basic rules of behaviors to do SEO. They include but not limit to myths about Search Engines, SEO firms, importance of SEO tools and article writing skill. Learning them today to make friends with search engines and shove your competitors aside.

About the Author:
Article by Mike Pham of TopTrafficWholesaler.com, a leading company in Internet Advertising. Offers international online web site advertising in the form of various banner display advertisement and full web page ads categorized into highly targeted website traffic.
Content Provider: http://www.my-articles.com

Good And Bad SEO Practices

Search Engine Optimizing is a set of practices developed to help you get a high traffic and PageRank, while simultaneously building a useful and functional website that will respond to the needs of your potential users. While some website owners are getting their site indexed by following and enhancing these guidelines, others are looking for a way to sneak in and crawl up search engines by developing various strategies to cheat spiders.

Most search engines have their specific rules on which SEO practices are legitimate and which are not. While they disagree on some borderline issues, they do have a set of basic principles in common.

Good SEO Practices

• creating logically-structured pages
• logical paragraph use
• including a site map
• providing clear links to each page
• using descriptive and not too long meta-tags
• validating you code
• providing information-rich content that visitors would find useful
• creating your website content based on the users' needs as if search engines didn't exist
• using spell-check
• avoiding duplicate content

Bad SEO Practices

• using invisible text and links to create false keyword density
• using non-compliant HTML to manipulate relevancy (e.g.: a title that doesn't have anything to do with the page content)
• using CSS to manipulate relevancy (e.g.: using hidden elements by executing code to reveal them)
• sending automated requests to search engines
• using doorway pages created just for search engines
• using machine generated code to produce keyword-rich content
• cloaking - presenting a different content to users than to search engine spiders
• linking to spammers and other bad websites
• participating in linking schemes to increase PageRank
• creating pages that install viruses and other badware
• using unauthorized software to submit pages, check ranking etc.
• re-submitting the website without any reason

Borderline Issues

• inserting comments in the HTML code
• using invisible form elements to hold keyword values
• using HTML elements for keyword stacking (e.g.: image alts)
• using machine generated code for usability reasons (e.g.: in order to check for browser versions)

These borderline issues are controverted and ambiguous techniques. Most of the time it is very difficult to say whether these techniques were used to trick the spiders or only for usability purposes. The search engine is the one who has to make the ultimate decision.

Major search engines are constantly fighting against illicit techniques to get your website indexed and increase your PageRank and developing new and improved automated solutions to detect them. They even encourage users to report any website that is trying to abuse SEO guidelines. Thus using illegitimate ways to crawl up search engines may result in your website being banned. Once it's been removed from the search engine index, it will no longer appear in search results.

Google, as well as other search engines, are trying to develop a pro-active attitude among website owners and convince them it's more efficient to make use of legitimate SEO practices. One thing you should always ask yourself when building new features and writing content is whether you would be doing it even if search engines weren't there at all. This is the best way to drive traffic to your website and get better ranking.

Copyright © 2006 Andreas Obermueller

About the Author:
Andreas Obermueller is webmaster of Hit4Biz.com - Marketing Related Information
and recommends Marble Host as reliable Web Host
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Introduction To SEO

Over the last few years, search engine optimization (SEO) has been needed and used more and more, although it has been around for much longer than most people think. With new development tools being used to create websites that are heavy on Java, Flash and images, it’s important to have something that the search engines can read. If the content can’t be read by search engines then they can’t index it, and if your site doesn’t get indexed then it won’t be found when people search for it on Google, Yahoo, MSN, or anywhere else. This article will outline what SEO is, how it works, and some unethical SEO methods that you should avoid.

What is SEO?

SEO is a way of analyzing your site and modifying it to allow search engines to read and index it more easily. SEO is all about maintaining and building websites that get ranked highly on the major search engines.

You see, when people use a search engine, they generally don’t look beyond the top 20 or so results. If you want to make any money from your website, you need to get ranked in the top 20 out of potentially hundreds of websites.

How Does SEO Work?

Search engines maintain a huge database containing information from individual websites. Most of the information search engines collect isn’t listed on their results pages, but it is taken into consideration when it comes to deciding those results’ rankings.

It is very important that you encourage the search engines to rank your website in a high position, and you can do this through the keywords that you use on your website, as well as when you submit it. If the keywords you use in your submission tool don’t match the ones on your site then you could harm your rankings – be sure to have all the keywords you want to use on the website itself before you submit it.

Most websites don’t focus on their topic well, and so keyword lists containing 50 or more phrases per page are recommended. By focusing some of the pages of your site on keywords, you will score higher with the search engines.

Free Search Engines.

The major search engines on the Internet are still free, and it’s not hard to take advantage of this free advertising – you can do it in as little as an hour.

There are several companies that provide free SEO tools, or you can pay a professional to take care of it for you. Looking around on the web will turn up all sorts of useful resources.

What is Unethical SEO?

Unethical search engine optimization techniques can be unlawful, unscrupulous, or just in bad taste. You’d be surprised how many people use these methods. A lot of what is now called unethical SEO used to be accepted, until people went overboard and it started to have a negative affect on the web as a whole.

Keyword stuffing is when your site consists of long lists of keywords and nothing else. Don't do it. There are ways to put keywords and phrases on your site without running the risk of getting banned.

You may have seen ‘invisible text’ if you’ve been selecting the text on a page and found words that are the same color as the background. This text is often lists of keywords put there in the hope of fooling search engine spiders while hiding the words from visitors. This is considered unethical, and you shouldn’t do it.

A doorway page is a page that isn’t designed for real people to see – it’s purely for the search engines and spiders, in an attempt to trick them into indexing the website in a higher position. This is a big no-no and should be avoided.

Even though unethical SEO is tempting, and does work, you shouldn’t do it – not only is it annoying to users, but it’s likely to get you banned from the search engines sooner or later. You sites’ search engine rankings just aren’t worth the risk. Use efficient SEO techniques to get your site ranked higher, and stay away from anything that even looks like unethical SEO.

SEO is a set of techniques used in order to attract visitors or prospective customers to your website, and the goal of a search engine is to provide high quality content to the users of the Internet. These two objectives are not in opposition, if you do SEO the way it should be done.

About the Author:
Anton Cheranev Has Created An Ultimate SEO Spy Software Available At ==> www.TheSeoDetective.com
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Are You A Black Hatter?

Are You A Black Hatter? If you are using these techniques, you are a Black Hatter (arranged alphabetically).

- Buying Expired Domains: Basically checking on expiring domain's DNS record and PageRank and later buy them when they expire and replace the pages with links to their pages. (I don't know if any isulong seoph entries are doing this, but where do they get their PR if they have just recently registered their domains? hmmm.)

- Cloaking: Presenting a different content to search engine spiders than you display to user's browser. This can also be used in ethical SEO (No known issue from any isulong seoph entry yet)

- Doorway Pages: Nonsense pages full of keywords for the purpose of sending a visitor to a page. Also known as landing pages, jump pages, gateway pages, entry pages, bridge pages, portal pages and many more. (Any isulong seoph entry using this method? let me know)

- Duplicate Content: Copying other site's written work with little or no changes. This usually depends on the content used, if it's freely redistributable or copyrighted. (Some isulong seoph entries use this method to have some content on their site and some prefer to write their own content to prevent Duplicate Content Penalty)

- Hidden Text and Links: Text that is the same color as the background or the font is too small to read. (We all know who used this method and this technique is only a short term solution to get to the top, since Google will eventually ban the site)

- Keywords that are unrelevant to the site: Optimizing keywords which are not related to your site (Some are submitting isulong seoph entries but the content are totally not related to the keyword, although the term isulong seoph could mean anything)

- Keywords Stuffing: Excessive and repeatitive keywords in alt tags, meta tags, content, etc. (isulong seoph, isulong seoph, isulong seoph, isulong seoph, isulong seoph, isulong seoph, all for the sake of 3-7% keyword density)

- Link Farms: A network of pages on one or more Web sites, with the sole intention of improving the search engine ranking of those sites. (Some isulong seoph entries are subscribing to these services to get their sites exposed to the rest of the link farm in no time flat)

- Multiple Domains without Redirecting: Using multiple domains and not redirecting to a single domain will cause duplicate content penalty. (Buying multiple domains for isulong seoph entries, for example isulongnaseoph.com,isulongnaseoph.net and isulongnaseoph.org all having the same content, instead of redirecting the other two domains to one site)

- Pages that contant spyware and viruses (Providing spyware, porn, and viruses. Who would do something like that?)

- Google Bomb - It's targeting a specific site by creating links to it using a specific keyword. (For example, promoting an isulong seoph entry site by creating links everywhere, adding this link: isulong seoph, no wonder there are over 500,000 results when searching "isulong seoph")

- Google Bowling: Also known as Google Sabotage, Submitting competitors sites to link farms to get them penalized (This is a way of black hatting an isulong seoph entry to remove him on the top spot. Be warned, someone might hire a cheap european hacker and sabotage your site)

- Scraping: Pulling information from other websites voilating copyright law and uses them mainly for monetizing the site using advertising. (This is when a site has no real content and uses a scraper tool to get content from other sites)

- Selling PageRank: Providing links to other sites is good, but selling for the sake of PageRank is not. (It's better to get links normally than to buy one)

- Using small images: Using blank images and stuff it with alt keywords or hidden links. (If you see a very small image on an isulong seoph site with an alt tag = isulong seoph, he is using this black hat method)

- Spam Comments: Posting fake and random comments on blogs and guestbooks with link to your site (This is the most common black hat method ever done by an isulong seoph contestant, check their backlinks to see the victims)

- Spam Emails: Telling everyone about your site knowing they are not interested. (Email spam is very common nowadays, I doubt any isulong seoph contestant would embarass himself by sending unsolicited emails)

- Spam Referer: Commonly known as Referer Spam, this involves involves making repeated web site requests using a fake referer url. Search engines base the importance of sites by the number of different sites linking to them. With this, a referer-log spam can be used to increase their rankings of the spammer's sites, by getting the referer logs of many sites to link to them. (This is already an issue on one isulong seoph entry)

- Spam Ping: Commonly known as Sping, this involves sending pings from blogs to a ping server excessively in a short span of time. (This is done by very excited isulong seoph bloggers who want to blog all the time and want their site listed on ping servers right away)

- Sybil attack: A spammer may create multiple web sites at different domain names that all link to each other, such as fake blogs. (Now, I am sure many isulong seoph contestants have set up their own blogspot,wordpress,blogsome,etc sites that all link to each other)

- Too Many Links: A page with more 100 urls will drain your PageRank (It is recommended to have less than 100 links since more than that can drain one's PageRank in the long run, unless all the links are good high PR and relevant reciprocal sites)

- Using unauthorized software to submit pages, check rankings and other automatic queries. (Lazy people use easy to use tools to do their job, unlike ethical SEOs who are working for days and nights promoting the site)

- URL Redirection: Redirecting to another site without a user's intervention. This is acceptable by using 301 redirect, but using Meta Tag redirect, CGI and Javascripts will be a SEO problem. (No known isulong seoph issue so far)

If you are guilty with any of these, you're in BIG Trouble dude. Black Hat SEO is very common to SEO newbies who have no idea what are the right methods to optimize their sites. They want everything done as fast and easy as possible. This is very understandable, but they should stop doing these illegal methods immediately.

REPORT A BLACK HATTER: Reporting a search engine spam is a legitimate means of eliminating unfair competition and making the search engines a more effective resource. Google: http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

Yahoo: http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/ysearch/cgi_reportsearchspam

MSN: http://feedback.search.msn.com/default.aspx

RECOMMENDED LINKS TO MAKE YOUR SITE SEO FRIENDLY: By simply following these guidelines, you will have no problem getting properly indexed. The right way is usually the hard way.
Google Webmaster Guidelines: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
Yahoo Content Quality Guidelines: http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/basics-18.html
MSN Guidelines for Successful Indexing: http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx?t=SEARCH_WEBMASTER_REF_GuidelinesforOptimizingSite.htm

BANNED IN SEARCH ENGINES? VISIT THESE SITES TO BE REINDEXED: Don't lose hope if your site is banned in search engines, visit these sites to learn more.
Google Request Reinclusion: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843
Yahoo Review Request: http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/ysearch/cgi_urlstatus
MSN Request Reinclude: http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx?t=SEARCH_WEBMASTER_PROC_ReincludeYourSite.htm

So, will you still use Black Hat Methods? Don't tell me I didn't warn you. Good luck!

About the Author:
Visit this site to learn more about other SEO tips: Isulong SEOPH
Alfredo Palconit is an outsourced web designer from the Philippines. You can visit his portfolio site at Web Design Philippines and seo site at Isulong SEOPH
Added: 20 Sep 2006
Article Source: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/37262.html

SEO - What You Should Not Do

SEO is one of the economic ways to get your url listed on the top of free search engines. That is why SEO become so important. There are tons of guidance in SEO on the internet. But in the other hand, there are also misguidance in SEO. They always say to optimize, optimize and optimize your web page with keywords, without considering another factors like determining keywords or phrases keywords effectiveness, how many times you should repeating keywords on your page, etc. What I want to tell you is, that's not enough. If you want to get effective search engine optimization, then avoid these mistakes:

1) Using wrong keywords.
What I mean with wrong keywords are using certain keywords or phases that have no effectiveness in value. Using these kind of keywords will bring you thousands of competitors (not visitors) and make your site stink.

2) Keyword density exceed than 5%.
It is true that to get the top on search engines, you need to repeat keywords several times on your page. But, too much repeating keywords on your page will make your site being penalties, since search engines assume it as spam. Just follow the thumb rule: keyword density may not exceed than 5%. This is the safe way to get your url listed on search engines. If you have any difficulties about this, simply, divide the keyword with the numbers of total words. Multiply the result with 100%. Now you got it.

3) Hidden texts.
Hidden text is text that has the same in color with web page's background and this is a part of spam. Many web masters use hidden texts technique to increase keyword density. Indeed, these texts is unreadable by human visitors but, spiders can recognize it.

4) Too much images/flashes.
This is another mistakes of building web sites. Many web masters use images and animations in their web site to attract visitors. It does make their web sites dynamic but, search engines can not see even an image on their site. They don't realize that search engines are blind. If inserting an image become so important, use it's alt attribute so search engines robots can read the alternative texts. The alt attribute itself have to represent keywords you use.

5) Javascript
Like animation, Javascript does make dynamic web site but, search engines cannot recognize it well. So it is need to be avoided.

About the Author:
Endar WS is a SEO copywriter. Visit his site for more information of search engine optimization and get your url listed on the top 25 of free search engines. http://www.2search-engine-optimization.info
Article Source: www.iSnare.com

Black Hat SEO – What Never To Do Or Get Banned

While there are many legitimate skills in SEO there are also those that can work but if you get caught using them the results can be disastrous. When search engine optimization became an issue many techniques were employed because at that point the search engines used a much simpler algorithm. As these tricks were used to exploit the simpler algorithms they were also served to make them more advanced. Let’s look at a few tricks.

Cloaking and redirects are methods whereby you show one page to the search engine but a different one to the visitor. A redirect merely brings visitors to one page and then sends them to another page by refreshing the page with one on their site. Cloaking involves fooling a search engine’s indexer into thinking that it is something else and getting the indexer to send false information back to its boss.

Other techniques involve overloading metatags with keywords or even hiding keywords in plain site on the webpage. A variation on this technique is to shrink the keywords so that are too small to be seen by the naked eye.

Using unrelated keywords is another trick especially when combined with the above mentioned tricks. By using unrelated keywords in this manner you can drive traffic to your site from multiple sources.

Using an overly optimized landing page can also work. This is not the same thing as a legitimate landing page. In this case you use any and all methods to overly optimize a single and use that to lead people to your site. This would involve using all of the above methods for this one page.

The ultimate penalty for using the unscrupulous methods is banishment from the search engines themselves. Be careful when you employ these dark methods for fear of this punishment. Being penalized is one thing but to not even be on a search engine in the first place is your worst case scenario.

About the Author:
AllianceLeads SEO is a Search Engine Optimization solutions provider. With over 10 years experience dealing with high end clients, Allianceleads SEO has a thorough understanding of helping businesses compete successfully in the online world. Visit www.AllianceLeads.com for more information
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Top 5 most common mistakes with do-it-yourself SEO

I look at a lot of sites on a daily basis. There are a lot of common problems I see on sites. Some people may have tags set-up improperly or use tags that have no real purpose. I have compiled a list of the 5 top do-it-yourself SEO errors. It's safe to say that many do-it-yourselfers may have at least one of these errors on their sites. These should help you omit these often costly mistakes and pull you up in the ranks.

1) Keyword tag – A keyword tag is for keywords, but not for any keywords. You can’t just stuff this tag with keywords that your entire site is related to. The tags should reflect keywords only on that particular page; not the entire site and not every keyword you think your site might be searched on. Also, you should have no more then 20 words in the tag. You should not repeat any word more than 3 times. If you sell tickets, for example, don't write: Broadway tickets, circus tickets, hockey tickets, boxing tickets and so on. Do use Broadway, circus, hockey, boxing, tickets and so on.

2) Abstract tag – It is sometimes used as a replacement for or combined with a description tag. However, more and more people are using these to stuff keywords. Search engines like Google are interested in what is on the page. More specifically, what visitors can view. In my opinion, the abstract tag has no place on a site.

3) Description Tag – The whole point behind this tag is to describe what the “page” is about. Keywords related to the page should be implemented as well. The limit on words should be 20 – 25. I see many website owners stuffing this tag with keywords, or having a description that is entirely too lengthy. Stay within these guidelines and you will be fine.

4) Title tag – This, to me, is the most important tag. This is the first tag the search engine reads. It tells the search engine what the” page” is about. Don't put your web address here. Do not add your company name in the beginning of this tag either. It should not exceed 60 characters.

5) Content- If you notice, I have been commenting on relevancy to the “page”, not your overall site. Each page has it’s own keywords. Tag the title tag, description and keyword tags. All of these keywords should be the same. Add them to your content as well. Now your page should be fairly well optimized.

Why do sites fall short? Simple, content is not optimized. Search engines are, for the most part, pretty basic. You type in a search term and it retrieves sites containing those terms while also taking a few other factors into account. So, if your site doesn’t have these terms, how will you be found? You won’t. Over do it with keywords and you will experience the same result, but for different reasons. Sometimes reading everything about SEO can be bad. Trying too many tricks, tips or methods is like too many cooks spoiling the soup. In the end they can do more bad than good. These are very basic rules that should be followed by all. In, doubt? Always consult or hire an SEO professional.

About the author:
Joe Balestrino
For affordable SEO, SEM, web design and more visit Joe’s site http://www.mr-seo.com
To Read the latest News on SEO read Joe’s blog http://mrseonewz.blogspot.com/
Or, read more articles on SEO visit http://mr-seo.blogspot.com
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Search Engine Optimization - Advice and Tactic

Unique content is King. Search engines love new, unique and updated content. If you produce new content at a rate of just one reasonably sized page per day and tied in with the other advice throughout the site, I can almost guarantee you will get good listings. Remember though, write for the visitors but cater for the search engines. If your field of expertise fits into a niche in the market, all the better for you but you must get unique content all you will fall behind.

Page Structure. Search engine bots can sometimes get confused with poorly coded html, javascript and other web languages. If the bot has to wait too long or cannot decipher the web language then it will just abandon your site and move on to the next, even if it manages to get through the code it usually leads to poor search engine indexing of your website. You should also keep to widely used file extensions like .htm, .html, .php, .asp for your pages.

Loading Speed. The loading speed of your website should be kept to a minimum, if it takes long than 5 seconds on 256kb+ connections then you lose visitors - both real and search engine bots. There are a variety of reasons why pages can load slowly, it may either be your web server, poorly coded server side code like php or client side code like javascript which can slow or even stop your page from loading.

Visitor Navigation. This is more an aesthetic feature of your website focused at real visitors but you need to have some sort of standard navigation that is the same throughout your whole site. People can be put off and leave your website if they find it difficult to browse easily, search engine bots may also miss links if they can only be found deep within your site. Try to make as many internal links as possible available on each page.

Site Hierarchy. Site hierachy can be great for adding keyword density to your web site. An example of site hierachy working effectively would be this page, seo-advice.php. The full link contains SEO twice - www.seoassistance.com/seo-advice.php which is very beneficial in the way search engines determine your sites relevance to a particular subject. Use your domain, folders and file names to your advantage.

Avoid Blackhat SEO. Blackhat SEO is a vast topic that commands little respect from real webmasters as it means using underhand methods to gain search engine rankings, although the site is usually banned quickly. Blackhat SEO includes using link farms, search engine spamming, hidden or disguised text, fake meta tag data, using duplicate content and using doorway pages. I would recommend you stay away from tactics like this as you will end up losing out in the long run.

Targeted Linkswaps. Link swaps are great but you must make them work for you. It does little good for you when your going for top search engine positions when your link swaps are untargeted. You should choose some specific keywords for both the link text and the link title text then make sure before you link swap that the other webmaster adds those specific keywords with the link.

About the author:
Daniel Chow
Article by www.SEOAssistance.com
Search Engine Optimization Advice & Tactics, www.SEOAssistance.com
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