from Guillaume Rembert

As long as Search Engines are around, people have made every effort to get their website on top of the results. The race of being number one on google is still on and now known under the name - Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). But as much as we want to know how to get there - the more Search Engine developers try to hide the big secrets. It has become a real “cat & mouse” hunt.

People have tried many things to win this game. Some of them “good” - some “bad”. Hang on, you may think, if there is a way to get my business up to the top and increase my sales - I dont care how I get there! NO - that’s a very plain and shortsighted assumption and would only work for a short time, if at all! The consequences are disastrous. The following Search Engine Strategies can and will put you on the search engine’s “blacklists” which in simple terms mean - you are out! Banned from Google, Yahoo… and such like.

The commonly used term for bad SEO techniques is “Black Hat” SEO in contrast to “White Hat” SEO techniques which use an ethical ways to optimise a website in order to achieve better ranking positions. Watch out which methods SEO companies are using, promising your business immediate number 1# results. This article will help you to understand the various “bad” methods, so called “Black Hat” techniques - and yes maybe there is a little bit of magic involved.

Let us put the “black hat” SEO into two categories: Content Spam and Link Spam.

Content Spam:

The first search engines were using only the website’s content to measure the site’s relevance to certain search keywords.

Hidden & Invisible text:

This is the easiest and the most common spamming method. It simply means to set text in the same colour as the background, use a tiny font size or hide it in HTML code sections. For a real person looking at the website nothing will change, but for a search engine crawler, it will make a difference. The code will have more content and so it will find a higher keyword density. This problem was quickly fixed with an algorithms to check the accessibility of the text before the search engine consider it as relevant content and then take the appropriate actions.

Keyword stuffing:

This can be a “black hat” method, but is also used for “White Hat” SEO.

A website can be penalised when its overloaded with a specific sentence/keyphrase in order to make a search engine think the content is more relevant than others. This technique can be used in combination with hidden text too. Most of the search engines now have mechanisms in place to avoid the abuse of keywords.

Scraper sites:

Web scrapping is copying content from one or more other/unrelated websites and put it on this 3rd party website without copyright permission, it’s a mirror site adding no new value. Most of these websites are overloaded with advertising - which is their source of income. One should be careful to use this method, as it is severely punished.

Doorway pages:

A doorway page is a fake page that a real user will never see. It has been created to optimise search engine results, but if you click on the link, a redirect will lead you to a different webpage.

Cloaking:

Basically, cloaking is quite similar to doorway pages. The difference is that the website will show a different content depending on the IP address the user requesting the page has. If an IP address is recognised as a search engine spider, a script will deliver a different version of the page.

Link Spam:

Search engines have step-by-step changed their search algorithm judging the value of a website and therefore the websites ranking. Incoming links are only one attribute checked by the search engines. The more relevant the referring websites are, the better.

Link farms:

On these community-like websites each member is linking to the others, trying to pretend high relevance to the search engine crawler. These communities were commonly named “mutual admiration societies”.

Hidden links:

The technique is the same as it is with the hidden text: Links are added to a site which visitors won’t see in order to increase their link popularity.

Sybil attack:

The principle again is the same as with link farms. One person will buy multiple domain names and then create various websites linking to each other in order to pretend high value of content and importance.

Wiki Spam:

A wiki is a website that everyone can edit and modify. Black Hat SEO will use it to add links to their website, most of the time on unrelated pages.

Blog Spam:

As on wikis, people can add comments on blogs, forums or guest books. Posting links to a website is an easy way to increase your link popularity.

Page hijacking:

This is one of the most unethical ways to increase your website’s link popularity. It simply means to copy the content of another website but modifying the out-coming links. It is often referred to as 302 forwarding.

Always keep in mind that the techniques mentioned above truly are unethical ways to optimise your website for search engines. Using “Black Hat” SEO can and will add your website to the blacklist of most search engines, and has the opposite effect. And it does not stop for big companies either many have already tried to use “Black Hat” SEO techniques and were banned. Imagine - people who will type in a banned brand name or keywords related to it and they will simply not find the website and end up on your competitors website enjoying their offers.

from Mike m


Affordable SEO services don’t necessarily mean lower quality of service. Rather, it really takes some serious effort to keep your SEO services cost low and at the same time to provide the desired quality of service pertained by your clientele. After all, Search Engine Optimisation is a methodical process with ample opportunity for experimentation. Whatever process or practices the search engine optimizers adopt, search engine placement in organic listings and increase in targeted traffic flow should be their ultimate objective. This objective can be fulfilled only when one keeps oneself abreast with the continuous developments in the field of search engine optimization. Only high Search engine placement is not the absolute solution but the SEO consultants should ensure that they are optimising their clients’ websites for right set of keyword phrases. Right set of keywords means those phrases are widely searchable terms and have relevancy to the clients’ website.

Any standardized SEO plan is dependent on the following factors:

• The total number of web pages within the particular website which is to be optimized.

• The total number of key word phrases that will be targeted.

• The competition within the industry to which the website belongs to.

• The number and quality of links to be achieved from different search engines and other sources.

However, in order to offer affordable SEO plans, the SEO experts needs to carefully take up various points coming under search engine optimization and try to cover up all the aspects of SEO. There are also some common steps that need to be followed under each SEO plans:

1. Primary Website Analysis Report: This is the most common feature of any affordable SEO services and can’t be neglected at all as it forms the base for rest of the SEO services.

2. Key word Analysis: Even an affordable SEO service package should comprise of this activity as it provides the right set of keywords which would be on target for the entire on page and off page SEO activities.

3. Industry and Competition Analysis: As the competition various from one industry to the other so the keywords need to be selected carefully as wrong selection of keywords can jeopardize the entire SEO process.

4. SEO Consultation: Any affordable SEO plan how inexpensive it may be need to follow the above three steps. However, the extent of study for each of the above activities may vary from one SEO plan to other. Depending upon the findings of the above activities, SEO consultation should be provided.

5. On-page Optimization Activities: Any affordable SEO packages can not do away without On-page activities. The number of web pages that would be optimized is dependent on the type of SEO plan chosen by the client.

6. Off-page Optimization Activities: The amount of off-page SEO activities must also be dependent upon the time to be spared under the particular SEO plan.

Aspirerankings is one such SEO firm in India that offers both standardized and affordable SEO packages. To have a complete idea about the affordable SEO plans, feel free to visit aspirerankings.com.

from nilesh747

I need to know any good institute which offers courses in Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing.