Black hat SEO can also refer to a consultant or specialist who uses unethical practices or sells deceptive techniques to others.

Black-Hat SEO Tactics:

Keyword Stuffing
This is probably one of the most commonly abused forms of search engine spam. Essentially this is when a webmaster or SEO places a large number of instances of the targeted keyword phrase in hopes that the search engine will read this as relevant. In order to offset the fact that this text generally reads horribly it will often be placed at the bottom of a page and in a very small font size. An additional tactic that is often associated with this practice is hidden text which is commented on below.

Hidden Text
Hidden text is text that is set at the same color as the background or very close to it. While the major search engines can easily detect text set to the same color as a background some webmasters will try to get around it by creating an image file the same color as the text and setting the image file as the background. While undetectable at this time to the search engines this is blatant spam and websites using this tactic are usually quickly reported by competitors and the site blacklisted.

Cloaking
In short, cloaking is a method of presenting different information to the search engines than a human visitor would see. There are too many methods of cloaking to possibly list here and some of them are still undetectable by the search engines. That said, which methods still work and how long they will is rarely set-in-stone and like hidden text, when one of your competitors figures out what is being done (and don’t think they aren’t watching you if you’re holding one of the top search engine positions) they can and will report your site and it will get banned.

Doorway Pages
Doorway pages are pages added to a website solely to target a specific keyword phrase or phrases and provide little in the way of value to a visitor. Generally the content on these pages provide no information and the page is only there to promote a phrase in hopes that once a visitor lands there, that they will go to the homepage and continue on from there. Often to save time these pages are generated by software and added to a site automatically. This is a very dangerous practice. Not only are many of the methods of injecting doorway pages banned by the search engines but a quick report to the search engine of this practice and your website will simply disappear along with all the legitimate ranks you have attained with your genuine content pages.

Redirects
Redirecting, when used as a black-hat tactic, is most commonly brought in as a compliment to doorway pages. Because doorway pages generally have little or no substantial content, redirects are sometime applied to automatically move a visitor to a page with actual content such as the homepage of the site. As quickly as the search engines find ways of detecting such redirects, the spammers are uncovering ways around detection. That said, the search engines figure them out eventually and your site will be penalized. That or you’ll be reported by a competitor or a disgruntled searcher.

Duplicate Sites
A throwback tactic that rarely works these days. When affiliate programs became popular many webmasters would simply create a copy of the site they were promoting, tweak it a bit, and put it online in hopes that it would outrank the site it was promoting and capture their sales. As the search engines would ideally like to see unique content across all of their results this tactic was quickly banned and the search engines have methods for detecting and removing duplicate sites from their index. If the site is changed just enough to avoid automatic detection with hidden text or the such, you can once again be reported to the search engines and be banned that way.

Interlinking
As incoming links became more important for search engine positioning the practice of building multiple websites and linking them together to build the overall link popularity of them all became a common practice. This tactic is more difficult to detect than others when done “correctly” (we cannot give the method for “correct” interlinking here as it’s still undetectable at the time of this writing and we don’t want to provide a means to spam engines). This tactic is difficult to detect from a user standpoint unless you end up with multiple sites in the top positions on the search engines in which case it is likely that you will be reported.

Reporting Your Competitors
While this may seem a bit off, the practice of reporting competitors that you find using the tactics noted above or other search engine spam tactics is entirely legitimate and shouldn’t be considered at all unethical. When we take on search engine positioning clients this is always incorporated into our practices when applicable (which happily is not that often).

2. Thoughtful Comment: Don’t forget to spend some time and effort in finding other blogs that are related to your blog subjects. Leave some thoughtful comments to their posts and try to add some humor in your comment because people love humorous content. If appropriate, link back to your posts and with this you can gain some popularity on different blogs.

3. Use of Social Networking Sites: To get some exposure you can submit your post or content to Digg and Propeller and add their buttons on your blog post. If your post is beneficial for the readers such as guide articles, it will surely fit into the top 10 lists. Once you submit your content on these websites and if people like it they will digg or vote for your content. If you can manage to receive 100 votes within a day, your content will get to the homepage and on Netscape if you get 50-70 votes within a few hours, your content might hit the homepage. This is the easiest way to drive traffic on your blog for free. You could also use niche specific social media sites, which could bring in more visitors without much pain.

4. Do You Stumble: Another great way to get huge traffic to your website is “StumbleUpon”. There is plug-in that you can install in your Mozilla Firefox. There are unlimited numbers of people who use stumble plug-in to browse through their favorite websites. There are many blogs who get over 100,000 visits in a week to a single blog post with the help of StumbleUpon. All you need to do is pay a specific amount of fees to the StumbleUpon website and they will add your website in their software. Whenever people will select any topic related to your blog subject, your site will appear on their screen when they stumble.

5. Conduct Contests: Contests are something that many bloggers have been using to get free web traffic for years. You can come up with a prize or many prizes that would attract blog readers. Everything depends on the prize you offer, if it is useful for people you will definitely be able to get a lot of traffic. You can ask your readers to post a comment to win the prize or review your contest post in a creative manner on their blogs. To advertise your contest, try and post threads on different forums to spread the news.

6. Offer Free Stuffs: Visitors love to get free stuff. This is one of the best opportunities to make a good impression on your visitors. You can give away free stuff like software, a domain name, free review on your blog for 1 or 2 days, some gifts like T-shirts with a logo of your blog, play station or bags etc. Make sure that you mention all the guidelines of giving away the free stuff properly on your blog, so that there is no confusion.

7. Invite Guest Blogging: Inviting well known bloggers can contribute to your blog’s growth. You can ask a well known personality in your subject to contribute something on your blog like a comment or review. You will not only flatter the blogger by acknowledging their value but you will also guarantee yourself a link or joining hands with a brand can earn you readers.

8. Theme Updates: Keep changing the look of your blog every month. This will invite visitors to check your blog’s new look every month. They will look forward for new design of your blog and if it’s good and attractive, your blog can become famous.

9. Controversy: Writing something controversial can bring a lot of traffic. Although it can create negative impact among few readers because everyone has different opinions but still it works.

10. Don’t Quit: Never stop promoting your blog even when you are not in your blogosphere. You can add your blog’s link to your e-mail signature and business cards. Keep talking about your blog in offline conversations as well.

Carried out by the Online Marketing Blog, the poll of more than 400 marketing professionals revealed that the slowing economy will prompt 36 per cent of firms to focus on SEO in the near future.

This was followed by blogging, which received 33 per cent of the vote, and pay-per-click search marketing with 26 per cent.

Email promotions, social networking and managing blogger relationships also appeared in the top six.

Commenting on the results, Lee Odden of the Online Marketing Blog said the research showed that SEO is now viewed as a “comfort” strategy by many.

“Search is about customers reaching/seeking companies, not the other way around. With SEO, it isn’t a matter of ’should we?’ - it’s a matter of ‘what’s stopping you?’,” he stated.

A recent study by e-commerce software firm SLI Systems revealed that SEO is currently being used by 87 per cent of online retailers in the US.

What Is W3C Compliance?

The W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium and basically, since 1994 the W3C has provided the guidelines by which websites and web pages should be structured and created. The rules they outline are based on the “best practices” and while websites don’t have to comply to be viewed correctly in Internet Explorer and other popular browsers that cater to incorrect design practices, there are a number of compelling reasons to insure that you or your designer insure that the W3C guidelines are followed and that your site is brought into compliance.

Frederick Townes of W3 EDGE Web Design mentioned a number of less SEO-related though very compelling arguments for W3C-complaince. Some non-SEO reasons to take on this important step in the lifecycle of your site are:

• Compliance help insure accessibility for the disabled.
• Compliance helps insure that your website is accessible from a number of devices; from different browsers to the growing number of surfers using PDA’s and cellular phones.
• Compliance will also help insure that regardless of the browser, resolution, device, etc. that your website will look and function in the same or at least a very similar fashion.

At this point you may be saying, “Well that’s all well-and-good but what does this have to do with SEO?” Good question.

“Proper use of standards and bleeding edge best practices makes sure that not only is the copy marked up in a semantic fashion which search engines can interpret and weigh without confusion, it also skews the content-to-code ratio in the direction where it needs to be while forcing all of the information in the page to be made accessible, thus favoring the content. We’ve seen several occasions where the rebuilding of a site with standards, semantics and our proprietary white hat techniques improves the performance of pages site-wide in the SERPs.”

A fairly logical conclusion, reduce the amount of code on your page and the content (you know, the place where your keywords are) takes a higher priority. Additionally compliance will, by necessity, make your site easily spidered and additionally allow you greater control over which portions of your content are given more weight by the search engines.

Examples

The W3 EDGE site serves as good examples of site that performed better after complying with W3C standards. The biggest jumps were on Yahoo! with lesser though still significant increases being noticed on both Google and MSN.

How To Bring Web Site In Compliance With W3C Standards?

To be sure, this is easier said than done. Obviously the ideal solution is to have your site designed in compliance to begin with. If you already have a website you have one of two options:

1. Hire a designer familiar with W3C standards and have your site redone, or
2. Prepare yourself for a big learning curve and a bit of frustration (though well worth both).

Resources

Assuming that you’ve decided to do the work yourself there are a number of great resources out there. By far the best is the Web Developer extension for FireFox. You’ll have to install the FireFox browser first and then install the extension. Among other great tools for SEO this extension provides a one-click check for compliance and provides a list of where your errors are, what’s causing them and links to solutions right from the W3C. The extension provides testing for HTML, XHTML, CSS and Accessibility compliance.

The Semantic Web is about two things.

Ø It is about common formats for integration and combination of data drawn from diverse sources, where on the original Web mainly concentrated on the interchange of documents.

Ø It is also about language for recording how the data relates to real world objects. That allows a person, or a machine, to start off in one database, and then move through an unending set of databases which are connected not by wires but by being about the same thing.

The Semantic Web was thought up by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the WWW, URIs, HTTP, and HTML. There is a dedicated team of people at the World Wide Web consortium (W3C) working to improve, extend and standardize the system, and many languages, publications, tools and so on have already been developed. However, Semantic Web technologies are still very much in their infancies, and although the future of the project in general appears to be bright, there seems to be little consensus about the likely direction and characteristics of the early Semantic Web.

The Semantic Web is generally built on syntaxes which use URIs to represent data, usually in triples based structures: i.e. many triples of URI data that can be held in databases, or interchanged on the World Wide Web using a set of particular syntaxes developed especially for the task. These syntaxes are called “Resource Description Framework” syntaxes (RDF).

URI - Uniform Resource Identifier

A URI is simply a Web identifier: like the strings starting with “http:” or “ftp:” that you often find on the World Wide Web. Anyone can create a URI, and the ownership of them is clearly delegated, so they form an ideal base technology with which to build a global Web on top of. In fact, the World Wide Web is such a thing: anything that has a URI is considered to be “on the Web”.

RDF - Resource Description Framework

A triple can simply be described as three URIs. A language which utilises three URIs in such a way is called RDF: the W3C have developed an XML serialization of RDF, the “Syntax” in the RDF Model and Syntax recommendation. RDF XML is considered to be the standard interchange format for RDF on the Semantic Web, although it is not the only format. For example, Notation3 (which we shall be going through later on in this article) is an excellent plain text alternative serialization.

Once information is in RDF form, it becomes easy to process it, since RDF is a generic format, which already has many parsers. XML RDF is quite a verbose specification, and it can take some getting used to (for example, to learn XML RDF properly, you need to understand a little about XML and namespaces beforehand…).

]]> http://blog.sgsin.com/?feed=rss2&p=42 http://blog.sgsin.com/?p=41 http://blog.sgsin.com/?p=41#comments Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:43:01 +0000 Tanya http://blog.sgsin.com/?p=41 So here we are, one quarter down and recession to go. Recession has become an unfortunate but popular topic in 2008. Some people follow strict definitions of what qualifies technically as a recession while others speak purely from opinion–or maybe they are speaking from the pinch they are feeling in their wallets. For most, they could care less what you call it; labels don’t make the impact they are feeling any better or any less painful.

Let’s face it, we’re experiencing more than “interesting” economic times, especially those with a marketing responsibility in-house and at agencies. To tap in to the stream of marketing-savvy collective wisdom online, we reached out to our network with a top internet marketing tactics poll for the next 6 months. Over 400 business marketers responded, making this the most popular poll Online Marketing Blog has run to-date.

By: toprankblog http://www.toprankblog.com

Recession ‘a good opportunity to increase SEO spend’

Small to medium-sized firms may benefit from increased spending on marketing techniques such as search engine optimisation (SEO) during the credit crunch, according to an industry expert.

Times of economic downturn mean that firms should seek to stand out from the competition, said Daniel Robinson of Vizcom Design.

He asserted that the best way to do this is to maintain a healthy marketing budget in an effort to retain business and potentially grow.

“Now is not the time for businesses to reduce their marketing budget and particularly their expenditure on search engine optimisation because research suggests that 75 per cent of businesses use search engines in order to find their suppliers,” Mr Robinson said.

He added that for many firms, SEO may offer a better return on investment than pay-per-click advertising and explained that budgeting for this kind of marketing is more cost effective than other types of advertising.

Writing for E-consultancy, Kevin Gibbons, director of search for SEOptimise, asserted that British supermarkets could do more to improve their sites.

He suggested that adding more keywords - such as ’supermarket’ - in homepage title tags could be one way to accomplish this.

1. There are firstly some web pages, one want to be displayed by other websites.
   This set of pages is the RSS feed.
2. An XML file that defines the RSS feed. This file holds URL, title and summary of each page to display.
3. A person which want to read the feed on its computer. He (she) uses an RSS reader or its browser and just adds the feed with the proper command of its software.
4. Or another website that wants to display the feed. It has to load the RSS file from the provider, to extract URL of pages, and display titles and summaries. This may be performed by a PHP script.
5. When someone visits the website of the receiver, the script is launched, it recalls the RSS file from the provider’s website and displays a list of news from extracted data.
6. By a click on a line of the list, visitors display a page from the provider.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. It is used by computer programs that organize those headlines and notices for easy reading.

Also called web feeds, RSS is a content delivery vehicle. It is the format used when you want to syndicate news and other web content. When it distributes the content it is called a feed. You could think of RSS as your own personal wire service.

History

RSS introduced by Netscape in 1999.

Ø The first version is 0.90.

Ø Followed by the 0.91 version that has been improved by the Userland Company in 2000.

Ø In 2000 the version 1.0 based on RDF was created by O’Reilly and further maintained by the RSS-DEV group, and named RDF Site Summary.

Ø RSS 2.0 was defined by Dave Winer (previously worker at Userland) at Harvard University in 2002.

RSS Syntax

RSS defines an XML grammar (a set of HTML-like tags) for sharing news. Each RSS text file contains both static information about your site, plus dynamic information about your new stories, all surrounded by matching start and end tags.

Each story is defined by an <item> tag, which contains a headline TITLE, URL, and DESCRIPTION. Here’s an example:

...

<item>

  <title>RSS Resources</title>

  <link>http://www.webreference.com/authoring/languages/xml/rss/</link>

  <description>Defined in XML, the Rich Site Summary (RSS) format has

  quietly become a dominant format for distributing headlines on the Web.

  Our list of links gives you the tools, tips and tutorials you need to get

  started using RSS. 0323</description>

</item>

...

What problem does RSS solve?

Most people are interested in many websites whose content changes on an unpredictable schedule. Examples of such websites are news sites, community and religious organization information pages, product information pages, medical websites, and weblogs. Repeatedly checking each website to see if there is any new content can be very tedious.

Email notification of changes was an early solution to this problem. Unfortunately, when you receive email notifications from multiple websites they are usually disorganized and can get overwhelming, and are often mistaken for spam.

RSS is a better way to be notified of new and changed content. Notifications of changes to multiple websites are handled easily, and the results are presented to you well organized and distinct from email.

How do people read feeds?

To receive an RSS feed, you need a newsreader - or content aggregator.

In the same way that you need a radio receiver to be able to hear radio stations, you need a feed reader to get the feed content.

There are Web-based readers like Bloglines and My Yahoo.

There are also downloadable newsreaders you can install on your desktop like our PRESSfeed reader.

Others, like NewsGator, have both free and paid services.

Newsreaders offer a variety of special features, including combining several related feeds into a single view, hiding items that the viewer has already seen, and categorizing feeds and items.

Once you set up your reader with your preferences, it will collect the feeds you’re interested in every time there is an update.

Syndicate your content

We have talked about including content specific RSS feeds within your web site but another approach is to syndicate your content across other web sites. This can be achieved in a number of different ways.

To be continued………..

A domain name is the web address of your site, usually preceded by a “www.” For example: www.yahoo.com and www.google.comare two popular domain names.

The “right domain name” for an online business would be one that contributes towards enhancing your image and towards your marketing efforts. It helps in bringing more traffic to your web site. The basic principle is the three S’s- Short, Smart, and Significant!

The motivating factor behind choosing a right domain name is this simple question: “How easy is my Web site to access?” Domain name is the primary point of access for a Web site, and if a domain name is difficult to associate with entity’s name, contains commonly misspelled or even words that are difficult to spell, or lengthy, it is likely that many potential Web site visitors may never reach your Web site just by virtue of the domain name you have selected.

Guidelines for Selecting a Domain Name

There are a few general guidelines, some common sense, which should be taken into consideration when selecting a domain name:

1. Make the Domain Unique – Having your website confused with a popular site already owned by someone else is a recipe for disaster. Thus, never choose domains that are simply the plural, hyphenated or misspelled version of an already established domain. Avoid Copyright Infringement this is a mistake that isn’t made too often, but can kill a great domain and a great company when it does. To be sure you’re not infringing on anyone’s copyright with your site’s name, visit copyright.gov and search before you buy.

2. Ease of association – The average individual should be able to easily associate entity’s name with domain name and vice versa. Always choose a domain name that closely resembles the name of one’s business or organization. Domain names that are difficult to associate with the name of your business or organization can make your Web site potentially difficult for visitors to access.

3. Keep it “short and sweet” – The shorter the site name, the easier it is for a customer to type and most importantly, remember. This also means, the easier it is for that customer to refer other customers to your site. The internet is all about speed and convenience, so choose domain name along those same lines. Make the process of referencing, and getting to your website as painless and effortless as possible for your new customer.

1. Related to category – Your domain name should give some idea of the business you are in, and what your web site is about. When someone hears about your domain name for the first time, they should be able to instantly and accurately guess at the type of content that might be found there. For Example domain names like Hotmail.com, CareerBuilder.com, AutoTrader.com and WebMD.com. The two famous web based brands Yahoo! and Amazon defy this rule. You can’t tell that Yahoo! would be the name of a search engine and Amazon would be a book store. But don’t let this change your mind. Amazon and Yahoo! have the advantage of being the pioneers in their chosen categories, along with consistent brand building efforts and a commitment for quality.
2. Keywords – Selecting a domain name that contains one or more of the keywords you plan to use in marketing your Web site can have a positive effect on the search engine ranking your Web site is able achieve. Use the tool that follows to test the popularity of different keywords currently being searched for:  Keyword Tool.

Brainstorm at least 5 Top Keywords: When you first begin your domain name search, it helps to have 5 terms or phrases in mind that best describe the domain you’re seeking. Once you have this list, you can start to pair them or add prefixes & suffixes to create good domain ideas.

1. Dot What? – There are many different extensions available right now. For businesses, recommend one is .com suffix. It is the first extension that most people try when searching for a Website. With the exception of the very tech-savvy, most people who use the web still make the automatic assumption that .com is all that’s out there - don’t make the mistake of locking out or losing traffic to these folks. Also, since it is one of the oldest extensions, .com shows that your business has been around for a while and that you have a well-established presence on the Web.
2. Use an Ajax Domain Selection Tool – Websites like AJAXWhois and Domjax make it exceptionally easy to determine availability of a domain name - just remember that you don’t have to buy through these services. You can find a name you like that are available, and then go to your registrar of choice.

8. Alphabetical considerations – A instead of Z: If you intend to rely heavily on search engine traffic, like the majority of web sites on the net today, you may also want to consider the alphabetical order of the name. A name starting with “A” would be listed on the top of a directory, while “Z” would go right at the bottom. This may make a big difference on the amount of traffic you can draw from directories.