Avoid Search Engine Manipulation
Don't Trick The Search Engines
With regards to trickery and manipulation Search Engines are exactly like humans, they don’t want to be tricked or manipulated. And again just like humans, any attempt to manipulate is likely to have a down side which is less than desirable.
Attempting to manipulate the SERPs is commonly known as Black Hat SEO and should be avoided at all cost. Black Hat SEO is not only bad for your web sit3. Avoid Search Engine Manipulation, but it does absolutely noting for the reputation of your business.
The penalty for attempting to manipulate Search Engine results can be extreme, such as having your web site removed Search Engine indexes, which virtually guarantees your web site will not appear anywhere in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), something which is sure to affect your web site traffic and your business’s bottom line.
The Search Engine’s Objective
The Search Engine’s objective is to provide users with the results most relevant to their searches. To do this Search Engine’s use Algothrims to determine what web pages to present in the SERPs for any given search.
An Algothrims has been defined by Princeton University as “a precise rule (or set of rules) specifying how to solve some problem”.
The major Search Engines Google, Yahoo and Bing (MSN) all have their own Algothrims so the rules may differ in minor ways between each company. However, it is not just limited to differences between companies but also there may be differences between geographic regions which may have to learned and interpreted.
As I am Canadian I have spent some time analyzing the differences between the search results in Google between Google.com and Google.ca and have determined there are differences in the on-page optimization Algothrims between the two. What this essentially means is what may not be considered spamming by one search engine may be considered as spamming by another and therefore will result in some sort of penalties.
Care when optimizing a web site is always necessary and lack of attention to details are where the mistakes are often made.
What to consider for your SEO
Keywords and Meta Tags
Keyword spamming is the overuse of keywords in the various web site design elements.
Meta Tags have been severely abused in the past and therefore are not an overly effective Search Optimization tool. This does not mean that they should be ignored as they still do have their purpose in the promotion of your web site. Specifically, the Title and Description tags which are visible in the SERPs and are and excellent tool to encourage Search Engine users to click through to your web site.
Some simple guidelines for developing Meta tags and keyword usage:
Title and Description Tags: Only use the keyword / phrase once in the title and description and use it as close as possible to the beginning of your text to give the keyword / phrase prominence.
Keyword Tag: Cramming the keyword tag with every relevant keyword imaginable has no benefit whatsoever. The most beneficial method for utilizing the Keyword tag according to Google's Spam Man Matt Cutts is to include only the relevant keywords which actually are included in the textual content of the web page.
Keywords and Content
The following keyword and content guidelines are Based on an analysis of pages that are placing in the top five rankings for a range of keywords with Google. It must be noted that these are overall averages and the optimum density of keywords and number of words in the content will vary when analysis of specific keywords are used. However the following does provide a realistic guideline.
The header tags such as H1, H2 etc are used in a similar fashion to headings in business reports to highlight important topics and sub topics and these are duly noted by Search Engines..
In general the number of keywords within all Header tags on the web page should range from 2 to 10. It must be remembered that this means all Header tags on the page including all H1, H2 and so on.
The word count and keyword density for the main content area of the web page should be in the 600 to 750 word range with keywords / phrases density of 4 to 16 words. The keyword density is critical, if you use to many keywords within your body text the Search Engines may consider this to be keyword spamming and will reduce the ranking of your page accordingly.
Links and Link Building
Links and link building practices is another area where Search Engines have and are manipulated. It must be remembered the Search Engine Algothrims are very sophisticated and are able to determine the authenticity of a natural link building process.
If you approach link building as the long term project it is, you are unlikely to fall into some of the link building traps which will cause your web site to fall out of favor with the Search Engines.
Link building practices which will pique the interest of the search engines include:
- Sudden increase in links or a new site obtaining high numbers of links quickly
- The buying or selling of links
- Registering your site in link farms and link exchange programs
- Building a linking system from web site you own, especially if hosted on the same server
- Reciprocal linking has little value, Search Engines see it for what it is, a trade not a link to good high quality content
Without doubt the best links you can obtain for your web site will come naturally due to the great content you have developed. It will look natural because it is natural and the Search Engines will certainly notice this and give credit where credit is due.
The Last Word
This is by no means a definitive list of the tactics used to trick and manipulate the Search Engines to provide a good ranking for a web page in the SERPs. They are however, the basic techniques which may be used unknowingly by web site owners.
Getting your SEO right is simple build a high quality site pay attention to the details and over time you will gain the required links and develop the required content to improve your SERP results organically.
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