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SEO 101:
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Myths & Facts
- Submission and Spidering
- Submission
- The spider keeps on comin'
- Removing barriers to spidering
- Keywords
- Avoid single-word terms
- Avoid terms that are too broad
- Avoid terms that are too specific
- Avoid terms that are unpopular
- Avoid highly-competitive terms
- Mine your server reports
- Target word variants and word order
- Ranking Factors
- Content is King
- One-page factors
- Page Weight
- Dead Links
- META tags
- Unknown Factors
- NON-Ranking Factors
- META Keywords
- ALT text
- Title attribute
- Web Standards
- Dedicated IP address
- Changing hosts or IP's
- Adsense
- Resubmitting a site
- Penalties
- Over-Optimization penalties
- Non-WWW penalties
- Black Hat SEO penalties
- Paid Links penalty
- Duplicate Content penalty
- Why did my site disappear?!
- Black Hat SEO
- Invisible text
- Cloaking
- Keyword stuffing
- Doorway Pages
- Orphaned Pages
- Spam
- Links
- Anchor Text
- Links in the body copy
- Internal Links
- PageRank
- Backlinks
- Reciprocal Links
- Link Farms and Directories
- Buying and Selling Links
- Pages not passing PR
- Link Age
- Relevance and Authority
- Suspicious Activity
- Splitting PR (removing or forcing theWWW)
- Summary of link factors
- Changing domains, and renaming pages
- Move a whole site
- Move a directory to a new domain
- Move specific pages
- Advanced Redirecting
- Hiring professional help
- Summarized recommendations
- Further Resources
Last Update: Jan. 2008
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Google makes it clear that it disapproves of certain SEO
tactics, such as hiding keywords with invisible text, or
showing one page to Google's spider and another to actual
human visitors. (See
what Google recommends and what they don't.) Methods
that conform to what the search engines like are called
White Hat SEO, and disapproved methods are called
Black Hat SEO. There is a lot of controversy about
whether Black Hat SEO is really "bad" in the ethical sense.
White Hatters say that Black Hatters are unfairly trying to
manipulate the SERPs. Black Hatters counter, "What
constitutes 'fair'? Isn't any change you make to your
page for SEO purposes an attempt to influence rankings? Why
is one method less pure than another when we're all just
trying to get our pages to rank higher? Further, if an
engine is ranking a bunch of irrelevant sites above mine,
what's so wrong about using any method at my disposal to get
my relevant site ranked above them? Doing so doesn't benefit
just me, it benefits the searchers because it gives them
what they're searching for. And it also benefits the engine,
because searchers will think better of the engine for giving
them more relevant results than it would have
otherwise."
Adding to the controversy about Black Hat SEO is the fact
Google does allow a certain select few sites to operate
contrary to its own stated policies. Danny Sullivan
complains that Google's
cloaking policy is inconsistent (more on cloaking
below), and that the policy wording should be updated. He
further notes that the reason Google allows some cloaking is
that it improves searching rather than hinders it, and that
it's therefore inappropriate to think of cloaking as
synonymous with "bad".
Personally I think that what's good or bad is not the
methods you use, but whether you're trying to get a ranking
you deserve. If your site is really one of the best about,
say, the history of baseball, then it doesn't really matter
to me how it gets to the top of the SERPs for a search on
that phrase. What's annoying to me, and to millions of
people around the world, is when a crappy, useless site
tricks its way to the top of the SERPs, usually in an
attempt to get more visitors to there so they'll click on
the ads there and make money for the webmaster. So to me
it's not how you get to the top, but whether you should be
at the top in the first place.
Whether you think Black Hat SEO is bad or not you should
avoid it anway, because it can get you banned from the
search engines, or at least reduce your ranking. Google has
been known to remove sites it felt weren't playing fair.
Granted, this isn't likely, but why take that risk? Also,
much Black Hat SEO involves some fairly technical work. If
this article is your introduction to SEO, you likely don't
have the skills to be a successful Black Hatter anyway -- at
least one who doesn't get caught.
If you want to stay on Google's good side, here are some
things to avoid:
- Invisible text. Don't put white text on a
white background. In fact, don't put even very light
yellow on a white background. The engines aren't stupid;
just because the colors aren't exactly the same doesn't
mean they can't figure out there's no contrast. Yes,
there are clever ways to try to fool Google about what
the background color actually is, but Google is probably
aware of most of them anyway, and I won't cover them
besides.
- Cloaking. Google knows what's on your site
because periodically its automated robot called
Googlebot visits all the pages in its index, and
grabs all the page content so it can analyze it later.
Cloaking means showing one page to Googlebot and a
completely different page to real human visitors. Google
despises this aplenty.
- Keyword Stuffing. The engines want your pages
to be natural. Finding every place to cram your keywords
onto your pages -- or worse, including a "paragraph" of
nothing but keywords, especially if they're repeated ad
nauseum -- is a big no-no. Do you consider pages with
lists of keywords to be high quality? Neither does
Google.
- Doorway pages. A doorway page is a page built
specifically for the purpose of ranking well in the
search engines and without any real content of its own,
and which then links to the "real" destination page, or
automatically redirects there. Doorway pages are a
popular choice of some SEO firms, although Google has
cracked down on this and many webmasters saw their pages
disappear from the index. Some SEO firms call their
doorway pages something else, in an effort to fool
potential customers who know enough to know that they
should avoid doorway pages. But a doorway page is still a
doorway page even if you call it something else. Some
engines may decide that an orphaned page is a
doorway page, and if so then the page or the site might
suffer a penalty.
- Spam. Spam has a special meaning with regards
to SEO: worthless pages with no content, created
specifically for the purpose of ranking well in the
engines. You think they have what you're looking for, but
when you get there it's just a bunch of ads or listings
of other sites. The webmaster is either getting paid by
the advertisers, or the page is a doorway page, with the
webmaster hoping that you'll click over to the page s/he
really wants you to go to.
Penalties
It's important to distinguish between the two
punishments from search engines since they're entirely
different. Being banned means your site is removed
from the index completely. This is pretty rare; most
people who think they've been banned are actually still
in the index. It's easy to tell whether you've been
banned by Google. Assuming your site was in the index to
begin with, search Google for site:yourdomain.com.
If you get any results, your site hasn't been banned.
Being penalized means having your rank reduced.
Unfortunately I know of no way to test for this. I do
think that most of the time a webmaster thinks they've
been penalized they're wrong. Rankings change, sites drop
-- it's all part of the way the search engines work. But
often many people take it personally and feel they're
being victimized.
Webmaster World has a good checklist
for dealing with a potentially dropped site.
Other resources
Now continue this series below...
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