SEO Tips and Techniques for Blog Owners

One Topic per Blog – Other people may disagree with this, but think about this way: wouldn’t you feel irritated when you visit a site that you consider as a good source of book reviews and suddenly find the need of having to navigate yourself out of bird watching articles in order to get to the posts that you wish to read?

Since blogs are generally for free, you should simply open a new blog for every topic you wish to write about. Anyway, this won’t take up much of your efforts since you can easily apply all other SEO techniques you’ve used on your old blog in your new one. Modifications will be very minimal.

Always End with a Question – Commenting options in blogs are one of its best features and it’s also something that can definitely increase traffic in your blog. One way to encourage more people to post comments on your blogs is by always ending every post you make with a question. At the very least, you can simply end all your entries with a simple and friendly invitation to your readers to air their thoughts. Mention as well that you’ll welcome any suggestions, replies, or even counterarguments they may wish to make.

Commenting on Other Blogs – Another way to increase the number of comments in your website is by commenting in other people’s blogs as well. Commenting on other sites will take only a small portion of your time and enable you to make new friends as well. Owners of blogs and websites you’ve visited and commented on will consequently feel that they should return the courtesy by visiting your blog as well.

Using Trackbacks – No matter how well you write, how great your topics are, or how loyal your readers are, there’s no way for you to guarantee that your readers have read everything you’ve posted in your website. If you’ve written an entry that contains relevant data to previous entries you’ve made, make sure that you provide trackbacks or links which will direct the readers to old but relevant entries.

Writing in Series – People always like it better when articles or entries are written in continuity. Series make the articles more cohesive and allow readers to understand a particular subject in a systematic way. As such, always take note of the old entries you’ve written and if there’s a chance for you to write a Part II or even just a Part I-B then write it by all means!

Choosing a Blog Domain – If you are interested in building traffic to your website, you need to be practical when it comes to choosing the name for your blog. If the main topic of your blog has something to do with pet care, make sure that your blog domain contains those keywords. This will enable readers to quickly grasp what your blog’s all about!

Choosing a Title – All your entry titles must be composed of two parts: the eye-catching bit and the keyword. The positioning doesn’t matter but your title definitely has to contain both. If you’re talking about getting rid of computer viruses, you can make up a title such as “Byte the Bug – How to Get Rid of Computer Viruses”.

Secondly, entry titles must be brief because longer ones will have reduced impact on readers.

Speak the Language of Search Engine Spiders – Make sure that your blogs speak the same language that search engine spiders do. Firstly, links must be easily identifiable. Website codes must also be easily understood. Use basic HTML codes as much as possible.

Getting Listed – Advertise about your blog! Talk about it in forums and have it listed in bookmarking sites. Do everything you can to increase traffic for your website!

Lastly, always make sure that the content in your blog is updated and of high quality. A great layout is never enough. Content is still the factor that can make or break blogs so be sure that you’re writing entries that people will be interested in reading!

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No one in the web can be self reliant because no matter how good a webmaster or a writer a person is, there will always be a time that he will have a need for the support of other web users.

A site owner may have the best articles in the world but his site would not be able to attract as many visitors if he does not promote the website. One way of promoting a website is through the article directory submission. This method is proven not only effective but it is also free.

The principle applied in article directory submission is interdependence. The site owner submits his articles to the article directory and benefits from it by getting as many visitors as possible. The article directory on the other hand, also benefits from the submitted articles.

Any site owner can write his own articles and submit them to article directories for promotion. However, he can also commission writers to ghost-write for his website and the said articles can be submitted to the article directory under his name.

There are plenty of article directories that accept free submission but they have different requirements. Make sure that the articles do not have a particular formatting when submitting articles to these directories. To save on time, always prepare a self description to submit along with the articles.

To maximize the exposure the site can get from the directories, always remember to incorporate a box with information about the site as well as the writer. These boxes, aptly called resource boxes, will help in promoting the site to the readers who would want to contact the article writer.

Any person registered with the article directories can submit their articles manually. However if there are plenty of articles to be submitted, it would be wise to use a software or tool for the automatic submission of the articles. Another option is to employ another person who will manually submit the articles to the directories himself.

A person who is short of articles for submission to article directories can also purchase public label rights articles which are really very affordable. However, the site owner should have the public label right articles rewritten so they would appear unique to the search engines.

Never submit public label rights articles that have not been rewritten to avoid being penalized by article directories. There are article directories who evens suspend members who submit articles that are all over the web so always be careful when using such source.

While there are plenty of article directories accepting free article submissions, it would be best to choose a directory which has a high page ranking. This means that the article directory is visited by more users which mean there is a great possibility of the submitted articles getting the desired effect of getting more visitors to the site. Also prefer article directories that offer RSS feeds or live feeds.

These directories will always try to outdo each other by claiming each site as the best and the most frequented by visitors. Why not try to search for the articles that have been submitted on the site and check if it can easily be located? Try to search for the article title, topic or even the author.

And before anything else, make sure the author profile that will be submitted is very concise. It will also help in site promotion if a photo of the author can be uploaded on the site.

Submitting articles on a highly-ranked article directory submission site will help the site gain the much-needed traffic and improve its rankings with the search engines. So maximize the benefits that can be gained from these sites by making sure the articles are attractive, easy to read and very informative. To top it all, never forget the resource box and the brief article about the author.

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There are many opportune times to make press releases. It is best to do one when launching a new website, presenting new products to the market, when your website gets an award, when you transfer to another location, when you have closed big deals or made great sales, when you go beyond your target sales, or when your product or service gets certification from the government of a reputable 3rd party accreditation agency. When you make press releases for SEO purposes on these occasions, people recognize your site or products and become likely to get interested in them.

Of course not all press releases are good, there are millions of badly written press releases, which also prove quite futile for SEO purposes. Here are some tips that you can use to make your press releases useful:

1. Provide Useful Content – readers love facts and if your company keeps statistics and figures of its operations, you can use them to entice your audience present your site in a credible manner. It is not enough to say that your product or company is good, you have to prove it by giving people facts.

2. Think like the audience – when writing your press release, place yourself in the shoes of your would-be readers. Write in such a way that they would become engaged on what you are saying. One of the purposes of the press release is to invite people to check you out and you have to think in their perspective to achieve this.

3. Remember that you are making the press release for SEO purposes – of course your priority is the content, but do not overlook the other important aspects of SEO such as keyword density. When writing the press release, have these keywords in mind, but do not go overboard by using them too much.

4. Do not be afraid to explore – do not just get stuck with one distribution channel for your press releases. There are other venues for such purposes like RSS feeds, blogs, and other websites. Try spreading your press releases all over the place, not only in one news agency, but also in others.

5. Do not be afraid to ask for help – a lot of press releases are bad because they were written by people working in the company, whose perspectives are too close to see things in the eyes of the readers. PR agencies are out and about for such purposes and there is nothing wrong in hiring them. However, choose a good PR agency, look at their previous works and see if they are interesting enough for you and if they are good in making press releases for SEO purposes.
6. Stay fresh – once you have published your press release, keep updates about your company. Send out press releases once in a while to help remind people about you and your offerings. But do not overdo it, as if you give out press releases too frequently, people might just ignore you.

7. Entice readers to jump to your page – write your press release in such a way that the readers would want to jump on to your website. If you have certain information to give in the press release, do not give everything there entirely. Keep the readers in suspense and tell them that if they can know more by visiting your site. This is after all the why you were using the press release for SEO purposes in the first place – you want readers to go to your page.

8. Keep track of the results – you would of course want to know if your press release is doing its work by tracking down how many people went to your site because of the release. Most PR companies would provide tracking services as part of the package or with just a little extra charge.

Press releases are not only good for your company, they are also good for your website. So go ahead and try using press releases for SEO purposes, and see how far you can go with such a remarkable tool.

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In the SEO parlance, keyword density means the concentration of the keywords targeted by the writer for the entire article. Some people believe that the greater the keyword density, the better their chances are of being found in the web. However, this belief has created a lively debate among SEP practitioners considering the restrictions imposed by some article directories on keyword density.

The questionable keyword density is aimed to get the attention of the top search engines so that whenever a user clicks on a certain keyword, the site containing the SEO articles will be on the top list. But no one really knows the exact density or mathematical formula required by these search engines so the guessing game must continue.

For one, each search engine has a different keyword density considered optimal enough to land the site on the top search list. So there goes the logic that the greater the keyword density in an article is, the better chances for it to appear on the top spot of the search engines.

Some writers get so engrossed with keyword density that their articles no longer speak to people but to the search engines. Of course there are articles targeted at getting the attention of search engines but most SEO articles still have to be written to attract people.

Since no one knows the exact keyword density required by these search engines except those who work for them, it would be safe for any writer to just key in as much keyword as possible provided it does not affect the readability of the article. Some keywords are easy to place right in the articles but there are keywords that would get any writer frustrated.

It is important to find harmony between the keyword density as well as the readability of the article. This is easily said than done especially when an article requires a keyword that is much too difficult to blend in with the normal words used in normal writing.

Those with much experience in SEO writing recommend a keyword density of between three to five percent. More than that would not only be quite impossible but also catastrophic for the readability requirement of the article. Well it can be done if the article is targeted for search engines alone and not for the reading public.

While getting as much keyword density to an article will increase its chances of being found by search engines, there are a lot of disadvantages in mushrooming an articles with too much keyword. One obvious effect, as found out by many who have tried and failed to combine great keyword density with readability, is the poor quality of the article.

Another effect not known to most people is that some article directories consider too much keyword stuffing as spamming. Some article directories will give the writer a warning and will not include the article in its list. However, some article directories are so strict that they suspend the accounts of writers who tend to go overboard and stuff their articles with keywords.

Any SEO writer concerned about quality writing and keyword density should know that while too much use of keyword is not wise, improper use of keywords can also be disastrous to the articles. An article with a keyword density not greater than one percent will not likely be found by search engines.

An article may be written superbly but if the article could not be found by the search engines then it would b useless. Anyone who has tried to use the search engines for a certain topic will agree that the tendency is to click the top searches on the first page. What comes next after that page is ignored.

Expert SEO writer prefer articles with a keyword density of not less than one percent but more than one to five percent. So learn from the expert and write better SEO articles.

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At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That’s what search engine optimization is about.

You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your web pages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a few simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title bar on your homepage.

The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on your homepage’s title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your company name.

Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the title bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other.

The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search engines generally list sites that contain quality content rather than scintillating graphics. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords – the words that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site.

Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However, the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.

To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format in order to increase your search engine rankings.

Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. Many people believe that meta tags are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still, it’s worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags in their ranking formula.

To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must access the code. To do this, click the “view” button on the browser menu bar, and select “source.” This will pull up a window revealing the underlying code that created the page. If there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top of the window. For example, a meta tag would read: meta name=”keywords” content=. If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This may not do much for your search engine rankings, but any little boost helps.

Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a factor that is extremely important in terms of search engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.

If you type in “free link popularity check” in a popular search engine, the search engine will then show you what sites are linked to your site. In the case that there aren’t many sites linked up to yours, or that the sites that are linked up have low search engine rankings, consider launching a link popularity campaign. Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.

Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can’t boost your rankings yourself. Don’t ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed your way.

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A search engine is an information retrieval system that is designed to help find information stored on a ca computer system.

In 1990 the very first search engine was created by students at McGill University in Montreal. The search engine was called Archie and it was invented to index FTP archives, allowing people to quickly access specific files. FTPs (short for File Transfer Protocol) are used to transfer data from one computer to another ocer the internet, or through a network that supports TCP/IP protocol. In its early days Archie contacted a list of FTP archives approximately once a month with a request for a listing. Once Archie received a listing it was stored in local files and could be searched using a UNIX grep command. In its early days Archie was a local tool but as the kinks got worked out and it became more efficient it became a network wide resource. Archie users could utilize Archie’s services through a variety of methods including e-mail queries, teleneting directly to a server, and eventually through the World Wide Web interfaces. Archie only indexed computer files.

A student at the University of Minnesota created a search engine that indexed plain text files in 1991. They named the program Gopher after the University of Minnesota’s mascot.

In 1993 a student at MIT created Wandx, the first Web search engine.

Today, search engines match a user’s keyword query with a list of potential websites that might have the information the users is looking for. The search engine does this by using a software code that is called a crawler to probe web pages that match the user’s keyword. Once the crawler has identified web pages that may be what the user is looking for the search engine uses a variety of statistical techniques to establish each pages importance. Most search engines establish the importance of hits based on the frequency of word distribution. Once the search engine has finished searching web pages it provides a list of web sites to the user.

Today, when an internet user types a word into a search engine they are given a list of websites that might be able to provide them with the information they seek. The typical search engine provides ten potential hits per page. The average internet user never looks farther they the second page the search engine provides. Webmasters are constantly finding themselves forced to use new methods of search engine optimization to be highly ranked by the search engines.

In 2000, a study was done by Lawrence and Giles that suggested internet search engines were only able to index sixteen percent of all available webpage’s.

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These days when we need information we no longer go to the local library and throw ourselves at the reference librarian. Now when we need information we boot up our personal computers, connect to the internet, and access our favorite search engine and type in the keywords that should access the necessary information. Thrilled, we scan the long list of potential hits, it looks like its going to be an easy research project. Cheerfully, you click on the link for the first website, and then the second, and then the third. Each website is filled with gobbely gook that bears little resemblance to the information you are looking for. Taking a deep breath you return to the search engine’s homepage and reenter your keywords, jumbling the order of the words, thinking that maybe this time you’ll get a hit. Once again you get nothing but a bunch of gobbely gook. You run search after search after search. You try a variety of search engines, other then a few advertisements you get very little information about what you’re looking for.

Resisting the urge to throw your computer out the window, you grab your car keys and wallet and head to the local library.

You have just been a victim of spamdexing.

Spamdexing is a problem that drives everyone from the college student trying to write a research paper, to the businessperson trying to make a go of their business related website, to the powers that be at the search engines insane.

Spamdexing is the use of various methods that manipulate the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine, usually in a manner that is inconsistent with the indexing systems guidelines. The word spamdexing was first coined by Eric Convey in an article he wrote for The Boston Herald in 1996. The article was called “Porn sneaks way back on Web.”

Spamdexers are webmasters that take complete advantage of search engines, completely ignoring respected forms of search engine optimization. Spamdexers use a variety of techniques to make sure their websites are in the listed in the fertile first two pages of search results, many times the pages bear little if any resemblance to the original search.

Search engines powers that be understand the frustration spamdexers bring out in people struggling to run legitimate internet searchers. They know that spamdexing can add hours of time and mind-numbing frustration to what should be a simple internet search. Its clich but they really do feel your pain and are trying to eliminate the problem. On January 25, 2007 Google took an active role in trying to stop the spamdexers on its search engine by going after websites that specialized in Google bombing. Several of the major search engines have rewritten their web crawler’s algorithms to make keyword stuffing difficult, rejecting any websites that simply made lists of keywords.

Most search engines would like internet users to report websites that they suspect of spamdexing.

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Is a name important? Yes because this is the best way for customers to identify the product or service one has to offer to the consumer.

A good example is a car. A few years ago, one company wanted to introduce a vehicle called “Diablo” to the Mexican market. It sounded good but the idea was scrapped after knowing that this word in English meant devil.

The same lesson can also be applied when choosing a domain name of SEO purposes. This is because it is important to think of one that is related to the business. If people are unable to see a connection, the desired result will fall way below the sales projection.

This can be achieved by brainstorming a list of possible names and then thinking later on which is the best. There are those who use a domain registrar to help in the process since someone could already be using it. The most important thing to remember is that this should be able to give the public an idea of what the entrepreneur is offering.

In order for people to easily find the site, it will be a good idea if the some of the keywords that are used by search optimization engine are also in the domain name. It doesn’t have to be long and the shorter this is, the better. This makes it easier for people to remember even if the entrepreneur is allowed up to 67 characters when establishing it.

Thinking of a domain name also costs money. It is better to buy it rather than thinking of one up because those who do this will probably take years in order to get the brand established in the market.

By registering it, the individual is sure that no one else will be able to use it and the potential customer will be immediately directed to the website.

It is advisable to buy one with the .COM ending because that is the first thing that will always come to mind even if the entrepreneur chose .NET or .ORG as the domain name. If this was already taken, the person can get a way with it by using a hyphenated version, which some people find attractive when using a search optimization engine.

When the entrepreneur has one domain name set up, it will be a good idea to also secure others that are closely spelled to what has been established. This is because people sometimes misspell by accident and should the customer be diverted somewhere else, that is a loss in potential sales for the individual.

The person doesn’t have to get a dozen since this will be expensive however getting 2 or three versions is sufficient.

Picking a domain name for the SEO is important as this increases the chances of this being seen by potential customers. It also wouldn’t hurt to submit some articles to various websites that has a direct link to it.

But the person can’t simply rely on keywords or articles to get traffic. Another way will be to buy meta tags and pay per click, which are other forms of promotion strategies.

The person should remember that the domain name is the beginning of any type of business in the Internet. When the right one has been selected, the entrepreneur will just have to fine tune the website making it user-friendly for the customer.

If there are new products being offered, it will be a good idea to also send out a press release. An email can be sent to the regular customers that are on file so that this can also be forwarded to friends and family members.

The steps taken will cost a few dollars but this will all pay off when the money starts coming in.

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Search engine optimization is the art and science of making websites attractive to the internet’s search engines. The first step in successfully achieving stellar search engine optimization is to lure search engine’s web crawlers to your website. Web crawlers are computer programs that the search engines use gather data and index information from the websites. The information the web crawlers gather is used to determine the ranking of a webpage.

One of the fastest ways to hamper a web crawler is to construct a website that has frames. Most search engines have crawlers that can’t penetrate the frames, if they can’t get into a webpage to read it then that webpage remains unindexed and unranked. Two search engines, Google and Inktome, have web crawlers that are capable of penetrating frames. Before submitting your website to a search engine do some research and find out if they have a crawler that is incapable of penetrating any frames.

If you have written frames into your URL it will probably be worth your effort to go back and rewrite your URL’s. Once you have rewritten your URLs you might be surprised to find that the new addresses are easier on humans as well as web crawlers, the frameless URLs are easier to type in documents as links and references.

Once you have rewritten your URL’s it is time to start submitting your website to search engines. Some webmasters like to use an automated search engine submission service. If you decide to go with the submission service you should be aware that there will be a fee involved, the minimum fee is typically fifty-nine US dollars. This price should keep a few URLs on the search engines for a year. Other webmasters like to avoid big fees by submitting their website to individual search engine on their own.

Once your webpage is submitted to a search engine you need to sit down and design a crawler page. A crawler page is a webpage that contains nothing else expect links to every single page of your website, Use the title of each page as the as the link text. This will also give you some extra keywords that will help improve the ranking the crawlers assign to your website. Think of the crawler page as a site map to the rest of your website.

Typically, the crawler page won’t appear in the search results. This happens because the page doesn’t have enough text for the crawlers to give that individual page a high ranking, after all its nothing more then a portal to the rest of your site and your human users won’t need to use it. Don’t panic if it crawlers don’t instantly appear to index your website. There are a lot of websites available on the internet that need to be crawled, indexed, and then ranked. It can sometimes take up to three months for a web crawler to get to yours.

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The good news is that search engines have figured this out, and are now on guard for “spam” pages and sites that have increased their rankings by artificial methods. When a search engines tracks down such a site, that site is demoted in ranking or completely removed from the search engine’s index.

The bad news is that some high quality, completely above-board sites are being mistaken for these web page criminals. Your page may be in danger of being caught up in the “spam” net and tossed from a search engine’s index, even though you have done nothing to deserve such harsh treatment. But there are things you can do – and things you should be sure NOT to do – which will prevent this kind of misperception.

Link popularity is mostly based on the quality of sites you are linked to. Google pioneered this criteria for assigning website ranking, and virtually all search engines on the Internet now use it. There are legitimate ways to go about increasing your link popularity, but at the same time, you must be scrupulously careful about which sites you choose to link to. Google frequently imposes penalties on sites that have linked to other sites solely for the purpose of artificially boosting their link popularity. They have actually labeled these links “bad neighborhoods.”

You can raise a toast to the fact that you cannot be penalized when a bad neighborhood links to your site; penalty happens only when you are the one sending out the link to a bad neighborhood. But you must check, and double-check, all the links that are active on your links page to make sure you haven’t linked to a bad neighborhood.

The first thing to check out is whether or not the pages you have linked to have been penalized. The most direct way to do this is to download the Google toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com. You will then see that most pages are given a “Pagerank” which is represented by a sliding green scale on the Google toolbar.

Do not link to any site that shows no green at all on the scale. This is especially important when the scale is completely gray. It is more than likely that these pages have been penalized. If you are linked to these pages, you may catch their penalty, and like the flu, it may be difficult to recover from the infection.

There is no need to be afraid of linking to sites whose scale shows only a tiny sliver of green on their scale. These sites have not been penalized, and their links may grow in value and popularity. However, do make sure that you closely monitor these kind of links to ascertain that at some point they do not sustain a penalty once you have linked up to them from your links page.

Another evil trick that illicit webmasters use to artificially boost their link popularity is the use of hidden text. Search engines usually use the words on web pages as a factor in forming their rankings, which means that if the text on your page contains your keywords, you have more of an opportunity to increase your search engine ranking than a page that does not contain text inclusive of keywords.

Protecting Your Search Engine Rankings

Some webmasters have gotten around this formula by hiding their keywords in such a way so that they are invisible to any visitors to their site. For example, they have used the keywords but made them the same color as the background color of the page, such as a plethora of white keywords on a white background. You cannot see these words with the human eye – but the eye of search engine spider can spot them easily! A spider is the program search engines use to index web pages, and when it sees these invisible words, it goes back and boosts that page’s link ranking.

Webmasters may be brilliant and sometimes devious, but search engines have figured these tricks out. As soon as a search engine perceive the use of hidden text – splat! the page is penalized.

The downside of this is that sometimes the spider is a bit overzealous and will penalize a page by mistake. For example, if the background color of your page is gray, and you have placed gray text inside a black box, the spider will only take note of the gray text and assume you are employing hidden text. To avoid any risk of false penalty, simply direct your webmaster not to assign the same color to text as the background color of the page – ever!

Another potential problem that can result in a penalty is called “keyword stuffing.” It is important to have your keywords appear in the text on your page, but sometimes you can go a little overboard in your enthusiasm to please those spiders. A search engine uses what is called “Keyphrase Density” to determine if a site is trying to artificially boost their ranking. This is the ratio of keywords to the rest of the words on the page. Search engines assign a limit to the number of times you can use a keyword before it decides you have overdone it and penalizes your site.

This ratio is quite high, so it is difficult to surpass without sounding as if you are stuttering – unless your keyword is part of your company name. If this is the case, it is easy for keyword density to soar. So, if your keyword is “renters insurance,” be sure you don’t use this phrase in every sentence. Carefully edit the text on your site so that the copy flows naturally and the keyword is not repeated incessantly. A good rule of thumb is your keyword should never appear in more than half the sentences on the page.

The final potential risk factor is known as “cloaking.” To those of you who are diligent Trekkies, this concept should be easy to understand. For the rest of you?cloaking is when the server directs a visitor to one page and a search engine spider to a different page. The page the spider sees is “cloaked” because it is invisible to regular traffic, and deliberately set-up to raise the site’s search engine ranking. A cloaked page tries to feed the spider everything it needs to rocket that page’s ranking to the top of the list.

It is natural that search engines have responded to this act of deception with extreme enmity, imposing steep penalties on these sites. The problem on your end is that sometimes pages are cloaked for legitimate reasons, such as prevention against the theft of code, often referred to as “pagejacking.” This kind of shielding is unnecessary these days due to the use of “off page” elements, such as link popularity, that cannot be stolen.

To be on the safe side, be sure that your webmaster is aware that absolutely no cloaking is acceptable. Make sure the webmaster understands that cloaking of any kind will put your website at great risk.

Just as you must be diligent in increasing your link popularity and your ranking, you must be equally diligent to avoid being unfairly penalized. So be sure to monitor your site closely and avoid any appearance of artificially boosting your rankings.

Related posts:

1. Increasing Your Search Engine Ranking
2. A Brief History of Search Engine Optimization
3. Three Ways to Advance Your Search Engine Rankings