Getting Honest With The Search Engines - Part I

Feature article by Daria Goetsch
SearchInnovation.com

I spend a lot of time reading newsletters and forum postings about search engine marketing. More often than not, people are asking about methods used to improve search engine rankings: what works, what doesn't, and what will get you in trouble.

Search Engine*:
A program that searches documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found.

Algorithm*:
A formula or set of steps for solving a particular problem.

Frankly, no one can predict what will happen from day to day with the search engines. Only the search engine companies themselves know if the algorithms will change from one day to the next. Even the search engine rules change from month to month, sometimes daily. Think of the changes that have happened since pay for inclusion and pay-per-click have taken over the market for search engine results.

It seems so simple to try and comply with the search engine rules. Even though optimization adds to the basic content of a site and source code, there are ways to approach this without stepping over the line.

We personally do not use the methods mentioned below (methods to avoid, methods to be wary of) in order to play it the absolute safest way, using a long term plan in providing you optimum ranking in the search engines.

SEO Methods to avoid

* Keyword stuffing. "Stuffing" keywords into places where keywords don't belong, such as comment tags, image ALT tags where the keywords have nothing to do with the specific image

* Invisible text. Text color the same as background color

* Automated submissions. Using automated tools to deliver huge numbers of pages to submission pages of search engines

* Submissions to "thousands" of search engines. A waste of time, since the major search engines/directories drive the majority of the traffic to websites

* FFA (free for all) links. Link popularity is good, but only when the links are relevant; a link from a page of random links is not worth nearly as much as a link from a site that is relevant to your site

* Search engine marketing companies hosting your pages on their server. The marketing company "owns" your pages, and if you decide you want to move them, you may have a hard time wresting them away. (This is not always the case with marketing companies that also provide hosting, but you need to carefully choose when using this option.)

Methods to be wary of:

* Cloaking
* Doorway pages
* Maintenance programs

Cloaking*:
Also known as stealth, a technique used by some Web sites to deliver one page to a search engine for indexing while serving an entirely different page to everyone else.

Cloaking is very difficult to do correctly, if you do not have an expert providing this service you could well be banned by the search engines. There are ways for this to be done that are accepted by some search engines. In general, cloaking is not always accepted by the search engine rules and can be a gamble unless you are certain your service provider knows what they are doing. Check credentials and get referrals from people who have used their services.

Doorway page**:
A page made specifically to rank well in search engines for particular keywords, serving as an entry point through which visitors pass to the main content.

Doorway pages are not accepted as they used to be by the search engines. A carefully crafted doorway page done by hand is entirely different from an automated doorway page generated by software. A few well-designed pages are a far cry from mass generated automated pages sent in large numbers through the search engine submission page, which are often considered as spam. Again, check credentials and get referrals from people who have used their services.