SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to a set of techniques that are performed on a website with the intention of increasing its search engine rankings. SEO can be performed during the programming stages, while planning and producing content, and by exchanging links or by building one-way links.

Now SEO is big business because if performed well it has the potential to catapult a website to the top of the search engine rankings. Getting on top of search engine rankings is like getting free front-page exposure in an oracle that caters to a billion Dollar market. Naturally, websites are keen to make it to the top and this has generated a massive demand for SEO firms.

Well, there are two types of SEO techniques – Ethical, also known as White Hat SEO and Unethical, also called Black Hat SEO. The lure of getting prime exposure has brought to the surface many firms and individuals who try to adopt unscrupulous SEO techniques to fool the search engines into giving a website top exposure. Of course, there are those too who work by the book – this is how both these techniques work:

WHITE HAT SEO TECHNIQUES

White hat SEO techniques are solid, credible, quality techniques that ensure that a website gets to the top and stays there. Here are some of the popular ones:

1. Great Content: For SEO purposes content is not just king – it is the emperor. If you upload quality content that is well written, informative and entertaining, then search engines will fall in love with your website. Of course, you must ensure that keywords relevant to your website’s theme are built into your content. Search engine algorithms are always on the lookout for websites that provide quality content that is of use to their surfers – so, well, content rules.

2. Programming techniques: SEO while programming a website involves placing search-engine-friendly text in the meta tags, building a clear and concise website structure that can bring up the searched-for content in a jiffy, using structural mark-ups, and building in tags in the title, subtitles and the footers of every content page.

3. Solid keyword research and use: Before developing content, you must figure out the most popular keywords relevant for your website’s theme. To do this you will have to conduct a thorough research using keyword tools provided by major search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Some SEO firms also use third-party software such as WordTracker for keyword analysis. Once SEO firms get their finger on the most expensive and effective keywords, they skillfully build them into the content.

4. Link building: SEO firms trade links with other reputed websites. When a website’s links spread, its search engine rankings automatically go up. Nowadays, may website owners get articles written and submit them to reprint directories, where other websites who need content can pick them up. Of course, the trick in article submission lies in including a resource box at the end of the article that points back to your website.

BLACK HAT SEO TECHNIQUES

Unscrupulous SEO firms use black hat SEO techniques to fool the search engines. These techniques are shortcuts that can take you here and there, but ultimately lead to a dead end. Here are some of the common black hat SEO techniques:

1. Veiled content: The website is stuffed with popular keywords that form part of the background color scheme, and hence are not visible to a surfer. The idea is to trick the search engine into picking up the hidden content.

2. Keyword-spammed content: There are SEO firms who do not get quality content written – instead, they plug in all blah-blah content that is spammed with keywords. The idea is the same – to trick the search engines.

3. Redirecting: Many unscrupulous SEO firms own a bunch of websites that have already been indexed by search engines. When you approach them for SEO, they may plant a code on their existing websites redirecting their links back to your website.

4. Cloaking: Using this technique, SEO firms direct specified content towards search engine spiders but do not hoist it on the website, because it is useless.

5. Tag spam: Meta-tags and other tags of a website, which are used by search engine spiders to quick-reference or index a website are spammed with keywords using this technique.

6. Links from link farms: Link farms represent a humungous amount of useless, content-less websites. Unscrupulous SEO firms use these link farms for building backlinks.

Black Hat SEO can finish a website

Remember that if you use black hat SEO tricks on your website, you might as well write it off. That is because search engine algorithms are getting smarter by the day and now can sniff out useless content, hidden text, redirections and other foul SEO methods. Once search engines figure out that a website is up to mischief then they blacklist it – and once blacklisted, a website is suspended from the search engine’s index and is not picked up until and unless all the black hat SEO is removed. Plus, when a website’s visitors come to know that it is using black hat techniques they will get put off and stay away from it.

To sum up, black hat SEO techniques can destroy a website or business opportunity, while white hat SEO techniques can make it flourish in the long run. Go ahead, make your choice!

When you are planning to start an SEO campaign, it is essential to know the techniques used to optimize your website. This is because there are some SEO firms, which practice various illegal and unethical SEO techniques in their campaigns. Optimizing a website with illegal and unethical SEO techniques in their campaign is called as Black hat SEO. Search engines ban websites that use black hat SEO techniques. Therefore, you have to be cautious while hiring an SEO company and verify that they are using ethical and legal techniques.

The Black Hat Techniques That You Should Avoid

The following are some of the unethical techniques that are frequently used by black hat SEO firms.

• Hidden Page Text: As the content is the key for ranking the websites, black hats add abundant invisible text with the help of CSS (Cascading Style Sheet), or JavaScript by using white text on a white background to hide the text. Usually the text is hidden because it doesn’t match with content of the page, but it can get the search engine ranking.

• Keyword Stuffing: In this technique, the black hats will excessively load the content and meta tag with the target keywords. Generally keyword stuffing consists of litter keywords to deceive the search engines. When search engine discovers the keyword stuffing in your site, it may ban your site from the search results.

• Cloaking Pages: This technique can be considered as similar and also advanced to the above two methods. Here the page content that is accurately visible only to the search engine spider will be displayed differently to the browsers. This technique makes use of either IP address or the HTTP referrer request. Though it may increase traffic from search engines, it looses the ethical traffic that is generated through directories.

• Perverted Link Building: This technique is used to build plenty of back links. When there are thousands of back links linked to a brand new website, then probably it may be due to the black hat technique. Typically this technique uses comment spamming, forum spamming and link exchange programs. Black hats create many micro sites that linked among them, which are intended only to build many links that are highly keyword stuffed.

• Doorway and Gateway Pages: In this technique the Black hat experts create a result page, which is completely different from the actual page. They fill the content with certain keywords that can draw traffic to the website. These result pages are not linked to the site, but will allegedly get the ranking to the site.

With this information you’ll be able to recognize few unethical Black hat techniques that you should avoid while optimizing your website.

In September of 2008, Adwords changed the Quality Score calculation to include the Landing Page Quality.  That means Adwords now considers the relevance of the Landing Page to the keyword when determining Quality Score of your ad.  Fortunately, it’s easy to build a better Landing Page.  Just follow these steps to improve your Quality Score.

1) Consider your Domain Name

The domain name of your website is important.  You want the domain name to be the keyword or to be in the general market for the keyword.  You can’t have a domain name for every single keyword, but try to get your main keywords in the domain name.  If you main keywords are in your domain, odds are your other keywords are related to it. 

Google Adwords considers the domain when assigning the quality score. Use hyphens in your domain name to separate individual words.  This will assist Google in evaluating your domain name.  For example, a good domain name for a website about Adwords Marketing would be adwords-marketing-tool.com.  The domain name contains the keywords adwords and marketing and they are hyphenated to make them readily apparent.

There is some debate to using hyphens in your domain name.  On one hand the hyphens make it easy for Adwords and Search Engines to distinguish the individual keywords.  On the other hand, human visitors tend to forget the hyphens and manually type Urls without them.  The solution is simple.  You should purchase both domains, with and without hyphens.  You should use the hyphenated domain in all your marketing materials.  But, you also have the domain without hyphens should a visitor type your domain without them.

Domain names are only a few dollars for an entire year.  There is no reason why you could not have both domains.  In addition, you should have unique domains for every market you are selling to.  Domain registration fees are very small when compared to your overall advertising budget.

2) The filename of the Landing Page

You can name your Landing Page file anything you want.  Why not make it the keywords the page is tailored for?  For example, if the keyword is “adwords marketing”, name your landing page file adwords-marketing.php.  This accomplishes two things.

First, Adwords will recognize the keywords in the destination url.  It’s another opportunity to get you keyword in the Adwords ad.  Every time you do, Adwords will boost the Quality Score.

Second, human visitors will also recognize keywords in the landing page url.  It will help convince them that your landing is the page they are a looking for.

3) The title of the page should be the keyword

Each page has a title.  You can make your landing page title be the keyword. 

4) Use the keyword in the meta tags

Put meta tags on your landing page.  Make sure the keyword meta tags contains your keyword.  Plus, make sure the description tag also contains the keyword.

5) Add a heading tag with the keyword.

Google recognizes the heading “h1″ tags on your landing page.  Put these tags on your landing page, wrapped around your keyword.

6) Use the keyword in the content

Place the keyword in the content of the page.  You don’t want to over do it, but where applicable use your keywords in the content.

The following is an example of an HTML page targeted to the keywords “Adwords Marketing”.