Set it and forget it AdWords? Um, no. But Google announced changes to roll out its AdWords automated rules, in limited release since December, which it says will help make things just a little less manual. Maybe you could even take a day off.
Automated rules let advertisers set up certain actions — pausing ads, enabling ads, raising bids, and the like — in advance, to be triggered by certain events. For example, an ad could get set to go live on a Sunday night, just when the offer it promotes goes into effect. Or the system could automatically check every morning whether it was displaying in the top three positions on the previous day. If not, it could automatically raise the bid price by 10%. In general, automated rules can be used to change status, bid price or budget.
Rules can run once, daily, weekly, or monthly, and each user on an account can have up to 10 rules.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Smart AdWords Advertisers Looking For Cheap Ads With Google Instant
When people use Google Instant they may be shown ads before they finish their query. So what they did was look for what predictive auto-completions Google offers without any ads being displayed and then they bid on those keywords for virtually pennies on the dollar.
Got that? For example, if someone is looking to buy ads for [data extraction] on Google but doesn't want to pay what the other advertisers are paying or bidding against each other for that keyword phrase. He looked for auto completes for [data ex...] and noticed the keyword phrase [data execution prevention] had no real ads.
They tested placing an exact match ad for this keyword and realized huge cost savings. They claimed "cost was $.20 average CPC, as opposed to $9.00 +. " That is huge!
Smart and savvy way to utilize (not necessarily hack) your way to a smarter way of bidding on keywords.
Got that? For example, if someone is looking to buy ads for [data extraction] on Google but doesn't want to pay what the other advertisers are paying or bidding against each other for that keyword phrase. He looked for auto completes for [data ex...] and noticed the keyword phrase [data execution prevention] had no real ads.
They tested placing an exact match ad for this keyword and realized huge cost savings. They claimed "cost was $.20 average CPC, as opposed to $9.00 +. " That is huge!
Smart and savvy way to utilize (not necessarily hack) your way to a smarter way of bidding on keywords.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
13 Sites to do your Keyword Research
1. Your site
2. Your top competitors site
3. Thesaurus.com
4. Ask.com
5. The DMOZ page for your category
6. The Yahoo Directory page for your category
7. If you’re a location based business, try the local.com search results for your keywords
8. Is the number one page/site in the organic results related to your keywords?
* If yes, spider for keywords
* If no, spider for negative keywords
9. Google News or Yahoo News. Do a search for your keyword first (this one might not be around forever. Google doesn’t normally let their results get spidered)
10. The top authority magazine’s or newspaper site in your industry.
11. The sites where you get your news about your industry
12. Any sites you regularly watch for information about your industry
13. If it’s one of your industry resources, spider it for new keywords
2. Your top competitors site
3. Thesaurus.com
4. Ask.com
5. The DMOZ page for your category
6. The Yahoo Directory page for your category
7. If you’re a location based business, try the local.com search results for your keywords
8. Is the number one page/site in the organic results related to your keywords?
* If yes, spider for keywords
* If no, spider for negative keywords
9. Google News or Yahoo News. Do a search for your keyword first (this one might not be around forever. Google doesn’t normally let their results get spidered)
10. The top authority magazine’s or newspaper site in your industry.
11. The sites where you get your news about your industry
12. Any sites you regularly watch for information about your industry
13. If it’s one of your industry resources, spider it for new keywords
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Google Instant: The Impact On Paid Search
Google Instant rolled out September 8th to much fanfare and ballyhoo. The search marketing industry has been abuzz ever since with speculation about the impacts on both paid and natural search.
Our firm has taken a pretty close look at the initial impact on paid search performance and we want to share our findings with you folks.
Methodology
We studied Google AdWords data from the period prior to the launch of Instant and compared it to the first week-plus following the launch for a wide range of clients. Our client base is heavily retail, so those in other sectors may have different findings.
We looked at the impacts both in aggregate and by advertiser to see if averages hid meaningful shifts. We looked exclusively at data from competitive, non-brand search terms.
We tried to answer the following questions:
• What impact has Google Instant had on impressions and clicks on paid search ads overall?
• Does Instant create a greater emphasis on ads served at the top of the page and diminish the traffic on ads served closer to the bottom of the page? Some speculated that Instant would bias users against scrolling and effectively increase the incentive for higher positioning.
• Does Instant help or hurt the long tail of paid search? Some have wondered if watching the results change as you type would encourage users to keep typing as results get more and more targeted, or on the contrary encourage more to stop early and click on the first mildly relevant link.
• Does Instant help or hurt conversion rates? The stated goal of the product is to get people where they want to go faster. Does it also help them find more relevant ads?
• Does Instant impact some types of keywords more than others?
Findings
Question #1: Overall traffic. Initially following the Google Instant launch we did see a small spike in Google impressions and clicks, both from week to week and relative to our traffic levels on Bing and Yahoo. It should be noted that part of the week to week increase benefited from favorable comps to a slow Labor Day weekend, while, even at it’s peak following the launch, Google’s traffic share just slightly cracked two percentage points above its 30 day average.
We’re not sure whether the media coverage around the Instant launch delivered a genuine lift in impressions and even click traffic or whether this blip is more related to roll-out glitches. Clearly whether Instant will garner Google even greater market share, or will ultimately be little more than an update to the suggest function remains to be seen.
Question #2: Top vs. bottom.
We haven’t seen a large shift in traffic composition between ads at the top of the page and those at the bottom for most advertisers.
We looked at a handful of our larger accounts and measured the baseline fraction of traffic that comes in from ads in the top 3 positions to see if that fraction has materially increased.
As the chart shows, the median shifts aren’t zero, but they aren’t huge either. The median advertiser saw a slight dip in the number of ads in the top 3 positions—likely unrelated to Google Instant—but a slight increase in the fraction of click traffic those high positioned ads represent. Very interestingly, the fraction of orders increased slightly more than the fraction of clicks, possibly indicating improved conversion; it is not crazy to suggest that the people who stop typing early to select an ad do so precisely because they’ve read the ad more carefully than the average searcher has done historically.
On the flip side, have we seen a relative decrease in the importance of ads in position 8 through 12? It bears mentioning that since these already account for a fairly small portion of the traffic for most advertisers, the percentage changes are easier to influence materially. For example, if these low positioned ads usually account for 5% of traffic and that drops to 4%, that shows up as a 20% decline in the table below.
Understanding the spikiness of this data set (particularly the order counts), this data isn’t alarming either.
Question #3: Head vs. tail. This is a bit more interesting. Here we picked an arbitrary number of clicks as defining a “head” term, and looked to see whether these head terms had become more or less important as a percentage of the whole.
The first observation is that the number of keywords meeting the definition of a head term increased for most advertisers. That could simply be a seasonal increase in traffic, but in two-thirds of the cases studied the increase in head ads was greater than could be explained by sheer traffic volume.
These ads did drive a larger fraction of the total clicks and sales for most advertisers in the week after Google Instant launched, but given the increase in the number of ads, this by itself doesn’t mean the tail has been significantly diminished.
Question #4: Conversion rates. Early, early indications are that conversion rates for head and tail may have improved as a result. Not ready to proclaim victory on this front just yet, and we’re not talking about a large change, but we’re seeing some indications that this could create a bit of a virtuous cycle.
Question #5: Keyword-level effects. While there may not be a sea-change in overall performance, there are some interesting keyword-level effects that can be tremendously important for some advertisers.
For example, we’ve noticed a huge shift with respect to treatment of singulars and plurals, with the more popular of the two seeming to become the default. For advertisers with tremendous volumes of business tied to a handful of terms, this can be a very big deal.
For several advertisers, ads running on competitor’s trademarks and domain names seem to have dropped off the map. This may be an Instant effect, or possibly a change to Quality Score algorithms. We haven’t studied this comprehensively enough to guess whether this is universal.
We’ve also noticed some odd effects on keywords that have other completely unrelated meanings. As an example: if you type in “toothpaste” all the results are geared towards “toothpaste for dinner” with no ads showing. This is true even after you’ve typed the whole word with a space after it. When you hit “enter” the ads for toothpaste appear.
The reverse of this is what Glenn Edelman of Wine Enthusiast refers to as “short typing.” You’re looking for “Wine Enthusiast” and you get to “Wine En” and see the results you want. You reflexively hit enter and Google now brings back results for “wine en” which turn out to be different. We’re not sure this is a large enough effect to worry about, but if it is, please refer to it as “short typing” and credit Glenn!
We strongly encourage everyone to do a keyword level report from the period before Google Instant launched and compare it to a similar report for the period after. Use a vlookup to match the traffic volume on the keyword after, to the traffic volume on the top keywords before and vice-versa. The results are fascinating!
Conclusions
At this point, we don’t see cause for massive alarm for most advertisers in paid search. I’d love to see more data from the SEO community to see if the impact is more pronounced there.
Our firm has taken a pretty close look at the initial impact on paid search performance and we want to share our findings with you folks.
Methodology
We studied Google AdWords data from the period prior to the launch of Instant and compared it to the first week-plus following the launch for a wide range of clients. Our client base is heavily retail, so those in other sectors may have different findings.
We looked at the impacts both in aggregate and by advertiser to see if averages hid meaningful shifts. We looked exclusively at data from competitive, non-brand search terms.
We tried to answer the following questions:
• What impact has Google Instant had on impressions and clicks on paid search ads overall?
• Does Instant create a greater emphasis on ads served at the top of the page and diminish the traffic on ads served closer to the bottom of the page? Some speculated that Instant would bias users against scrolling and effectively increase the incentive for higher positioning.
• Does Instant help or hurt the long tail of paid search? Some have wondered if watching the results change as you type would encourage users to keep typing as results get more and more targeted, or on the contrary encourage more to stop early and click on the first mildly relevant link.
• Does Instant help or hurt conversion rates? The stated goal of the product is to get people where they want to go faster. Does it also help them find more relevant ads?
• Does Instant impact some types of keywords more than others?
Findings
Question #1: Overall traffic. Initially following the Google Instant launch we did see a small spike in Google impressions and clicks, both from week to week and relative to our traffic levels on Bing and Yahoo. It should be noted that part of the week to week increase benefited from favorable comps to a slow Labor Day weekend, while, even at it’s peak following the launch, Google’s traffic share just slightly cracked two percentage points above its 30 day average.
We’re not sure whether the media coverage around the Instant launch delivered a genuine lift in impressions and even click traffic or whether this blip is more related to roll-out glitches. Clearly whether Instant will garner Google even greater market share, or will ultimately be little more than an update to the suggest function remains to be seen.
Question #2: Top vs. bottom.
We haven’t seen a large shift in traffic composition between ads at the top of the page and those at the bottom for most advertisers.
We looked at a handful of our larger accounts and measured the baseline fraction of traffic that comes in from ads in the top 3 positions to see if that fraction has materially increased.
As the chart shows, the median shifts aren’t zero, but they aren’t huge either. The median advertiser saw a slight dip in the number of ads in the top 3 positions—likely unrelated to Google Instant—but a slight increase in the fraction of click traffic those high positioned ads represent. Very interestingly, the fraction of orders increased slightly more than the fraction of clicks, possibly indicating improved conversion; it is not crazy to suggest that the people who stop typing early to select an ad do so precisely because they’ve read the ad more carefully than the average searcher has done historically.
On the flip side, have we seen a relative decrease in the importance of ads in position 8 through 12? It bears mentioning that since these already account for a fairly small portion of the traffic for most advertisers, the percentage changes are easier to influence materially. For example, if these low positioned ads usually account for 5% of traffic and that drops to 4%, that shows up as a 20% decline in the table below.
Understanding the spikiness of this data set (particularly the order counts), this data isn’t alarming either.
Question #3: Head vs. tail. This is a bit more interesting. Here we picked an arbitrary number of clicks as defining a “head” term, and looked to see whether these head terms had become more or less important as a percentage of the whole.
The first observation is that the number of keywords meeting the definition of a head term increased for most advertisers. That could simply be a seasonal increase in traffic, but in two-thirds of the cases studied the increase in head ads was greater than could be explained by sheer traffic volume.
These ads did drive a larger fraction of the total clicks and sales for most advertisers in the week after Google Instant launched, but given the increase in the number of ads, this by itself doesn’t mean the tail has been significantly diminished.
Question #4: Conversion rates. Early, early indications are that conversion rates for head and tail may have improved as a result. Not ready to proclaim victory on this front just yet, and we’re not talking about a large change, but we’re seeing some indications that this could create a bit of a virtuous cycle.
Question #5: Keyword-level effects. While there may not be a sea-change in overall performance, there are some interesting keyword-level effects that can be tremendously important for some advertisers.
For example, we’ve noticed a huge shift with respect to treatment of singulars and plurals, with the more popular of the two seeming to become the default. For advertisers with tremendous volumes of business tied to a handful of terms, this can be a very big deal.
For several advertisers, ads running on competitor’s trademarks and domain names seem to have dropped off the map. This may be an Instant effect, or possibly a change to Quality Score algorithms. We haven’t studied this comprehensively enough to guess whether this is universal.
We’ve also noticed some odd effects on keywords that have other completely unrelated meanings. As an example: if you type in “toothpaste” all the results are geared towards “toothpaste for dinner” with no ads showing. This is true even after you’ve typed the whole word with a space after it. When you hit “enter” the ads for toothpaste appear.
The reverse of this is what Glenn Edelman of Wine Enthusiast refers to as “short typing.” You’re looking for “Wine Enthusiast” and you get to “Wine En” and see the results you want. You reflexively hit enter and Google now brings back results for “wine en” which turn out to be different. We’re not sure this is a large enough effect to worry about, but if it is, please refer to it as “short typing” and credit Glenn!
We strongly encourage everyone to do a keyword level report from the period before Google Instant launched and compare it to a similar report for the period after. Use a vlookup to match the traffic volume on the keyword after, to the traffic volume on the top keywords before and vice-versa. The results are fascinating!
Conclusions
At this point, we don’t see cause for massive alarm for most advertisers in paid search. I’d love to see more data from the SEO community to see if the impact is more pronounced there.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Paid Search Ads:-Tips & Tricks For Creative Ad Copywriting
Tips & Tricks For Creative Ad Copywriting
Create simple, enticing ads. What makes your product or service stand out from your competitors? Highlight these key differentiating points in your ad. Be sure to describe any unique features or promotions you offer.
Include prices and promotions. The more information about your product that a user can gain from your ad text, the better. For example, if a user sees the price of a product and still clicks the ad, you know they’re interested in a potential purchase at that price. If they don’t like the price, they won’t click your ad, and you save yourself the cost of that click.
Use a strong call-to-action.
Your ad should convey a call-to-action along with the benefits of your product or service. A call-to-action encourages users to click on your ad and ensures they understand exactly what you expect them to do when they reach your landing page. Some call-to-action phrases are Buy, Purchase, Call today, Order, Browse, Sign up, and Get a quote; while ‘find’ and ’search’ may be accurate verbs, they imply that the user is still in the research mode, and may not encourage the user to perform the action you’d most like them to take.
Include one of your keywords in your ad text.
Find the best performing keyword in your ad group and include it in your ad text, especially in the title. Whenever a user types that keyword and sees your ad, the keyword phrase will appear in bold font within your ad on Google. This helps draw the user’s attention to your ad and shows users that your ad relates to their search.
Choose the best destination URL. Review the website you’re advertising and find the specific page that has the information or product described in your ad. If users do not find what is promised as soon as they arrive, they are more likely to leave your website. Be sure that any promotions and particular products mentioned in your ad are visible on your landing page.
Test multiple ads in each ad group.
Experiment with different offers and call-to-action phrases to see what’s most effective for your advertising goals. Our system automatically rotates ads within an ad group and shows the better-performing ad more often.
Remember the intent!
You should have a pretty good idea of where in the buying cycle searchers are using specific keywords. Are they at the top of the funnel or ready to buy at the bottom? Make sure your address user intent in your creative. If they’re just looking for information, your ad should reflect that—you’ll have a quite different ad for people ready to buy and simply browsing for the best deal.
Stand out from the crowd.
If all of your competitors are touting price, try a different tactic such as listing the benefits from your product/service or some awards you may have won. Eyeballs are drawn to differences on the search result page, not similarities.
If you’re all about price, stay on top of your competitors.
If your entire strategy revolves around an offer, such as a percentage off or a low cost deal, then you must monitor your keyword landscape closely. If your bid is at $20, someone might come in at $19.99 and make off with your customers.
Include local terms for your top markets.
If you’re a local business, this is a no-brainer. Make sure someone who is nearby realizes that you are too. It immediately creates a trust factor if they know they can drive out to see you. For national (or international) advertisers, you can let potential customers know that you have a focus in their area and that you are addressing their specific needs. Make sure, however, to back this up on the landing page. Many large advertisers split up their campaigns by region, state or even DMA. That can mean a lot of unique landing pages, but the increased conversion rate due to the relevancy factory may justify the cost.
“Official site” is golden.
If you are indeed the official site for your product or service, using the words official site works really well. I haven’t seen any research for it, but I’ve used this tactic time and again for clients, and it’s never let me down.
“Free shipping” also is a crowd pleaser. This is something you definitely need to test, but it seems to work really well as a general marketing technique, especially on the internet where shipping costs sometimes negate the benefit of ordering direct. But don’t go this route unless you have done the math that free shipping won’t be too costly for you either.
Use www. in your display url.:
Including “www” in the display URL tends to boost clickthrough rates. 80.6% of the ads in our database also included it, leading us to believe that this is a general rule. If you are among the nearly 20% of advertisers who are not including “www” in your URL, you should consider testing it.”
Use language that turns away the “wrong” users.
Not every paid search click is a valuable one. Make sure to spot trends and tailor your ad copy accordingly. For example, if you sell car parts in bulk, and find that your ads are attracting users who just want to buy one or two individual parts, you may want to indicate that you only sell in large quantities. Remember, you pay per click, so getting the wrong users to not click your ads is as important as getting the right ones to do so.
Create simple, enticing ads. What makes your product or service stand out from your competitors? Highlight these key differentiating points in your ad. Be sure to describe any unique features or promotions you offer.
Include prices and promotions. The more information about your product that a user can gain from your ad text, the better. For example, if a user sees the price of a product and still clicks the ad, you know they’re interested in a potential purchase at that price. If they don’t like the price, they won’t click your ad, and you save yourself the cost of that click.
Use a strong call-to-action.
Your ad should convey a call-to-action along with the benefits of your product or service. A call-to-action encourages users to click on your ad and ensures they understand exactly what you expect them to do when they reach your landing page. Some call-to-action phrases are Buy, Purchase, Call today, Order, Browse, Sign up, and Get a quote; while ‘find’ and ’search’ may be accurate verbs, they imply that the user is still in the research mode, and may not encourage the user to perform the action you’d most like them to take.
Include one of your keywords in your ad text.
Find the best performing keyword in your ad group and include it in your ad text, especially in the title. Whenever a user types that keyword and sees your ad, the keyword phrase will appear in bold font within your ad on Google. This helps draw the user’s attention to your ad and shows users that your ad relates to their search.
Choose the best destination URL. Review the website you’re advertising and find the specific page that has the information or product described in your ad. If users do not find what is promised as soon as they arrive, they are more likely to leave your website. Be sure that any promotions and particular products mentioned in your ad are visible on your landing page.
Test multiple ads in each ad group.
Experiment with different offers and call-to-action phrases to see what’s most effective for your advertising goals. Our system automatically rotates ads within an ad group and shows the better-performing ad more often.
Remember the intent!
You should have a pretty good idea of where in the buying cycle searchers are using specific keywords. Are they at the top of the funnel or ready to buy at the bottom? Make sure your address user intent in your creative. If they’re just looking for information, your ad should reflect that—you’ll have a quite different ad for people ready to buy and simply browsing for the best deal.
Stand out from the crowd.
If all of your competitors are touting price, try a different tactic such as listing the benefits from your product/service or some awards you may have won. Eyeballs are drawn to differences on the search result page, not similarities.
If you’re all about price, stay on top of your competitors.
If your entire strategy revolves around an offer, such as a percentage off or a low cost deal, then you must monitor your keyword landscape closely. If your bid is at $20, someone might come in at $19.99 and make off with your customers.
Include local terms for your top markets.
If you’re a local business, this is a no-brainer. Make sure someone who is nearby realizes that you are too. It immediately creates a trust factor if they know they can drive out to see you. For national (or international) advertisers, you can let potential customers know that you have a focus in their area and that you are addressing their specific needs. Make sure, however, to back this up on the landing page. Many large advertisers split up their campaigns by region, state or even DMA. That can mean a lot of unique landing pages, but the increased conversion rate due to the relevancy factory may justify the cost.
“Official site” is golden.
If you are indeed the official site for your product or service, using the words official site works really well. I haven’t seen any research for it, but I’ve used this tactic time and again for clients, and it’s never let me down.
“Free shipping” also is a crowd pleaser. This is something you definitely need to test, but it seems to work really well as a general marketing technique, especially on the internet where shipping costs sometimes negate the benefit of ordering direct. But don’t go this route unless you have done the math that free shipping won’t be too costly for you either.
Use www. in your display url.:
Including “www” in the display URL tends to boost clickthrough rates. 80.6% of the ads in our database also included it, leading us to believe that this is a general rule. If you are among the nearly 20% of advertisers who are not including “www” in your URL, you should consider testing it.”
Use language that turns away the “wrong” users.
Not every paid search click is a valuable one. Make sure to spot trends and tailor your ad copy accordingly. For example, if you sell car parts in bulk, and find that your ads are attracting users who just want to buy one or two individual parts, you may want to indicate that you only sell in large quantities. Remember, you pay per click, so getting the wrong users to not click your ads is as important as getting the right ones to do so.
Link Building Best Practices - A Guide to Effective Link Building Methods
Link building is the process of building backlinks to your site. The more backlinks (links from other sites to your site) a site has, the higher it ranks on the search engines. Link building therefore is a mission of all money makíng webmasters.
Link building methods have changed from time to time and a specific method that worked yesterday may not work today. This is due to changes in the industry over time and in some cases extreme abuse. If a specific link building method has been abused too much, then that method will not work anymore.
It is therefore very important to know which link building method works today so that you can spend your time in a most productive way.
There are many link building methods out there today that work with some working better than others. Below are some of the today’s popular links building methods:
Article Submission:-
If you are reading this article, then you know that you can publish your article in article directories. Not only do you gain backlinks to your site from your published articles (see bottom of this article), you will get some traffic as a bonus. Think of you reading this article. There might be many reading your published articles as well.
Article submission is a great way of building backlinks as it provides you with 100% relevant contextual backlinks that Google loves.
Directory submission used to work lot better before, but it is still a popular link building method that still works if done properly. How many directories are out there as of this date is anyone’s guess but one thing is certain: that most of the directories aren’t worth submitting to.
Google considers a Yahoo Directory link as a quality backlink so if you can afford and justify the cost, it is worth submítting to Yahoo Directory. Yahoo charges $300 for a yearly submission and there is no assurance that your site will be approved!
Directory Submission:-
DMOZ is another directory that is worth submitting to and can provide great benefit in your SEO campaign. It may take months to get the approval from DMOZ and the chance of getting approved is pretty slim. A lot of small directories use the DMOZ directory categories so getting listed with DMOZ would mean getting bonus listings on many other web directories.
Another good directory to submit to is the BOTW dírectory that costs $99 for a yearly submission and $299 for a permanent listing.
Other than the above, you should look for quality directories where you can submit your site. You can judge the quality of the directories by analyzing the number of sites listed, number of backlinks the directory has, PR, age of the directory, etc.
Social Bookmarking:-
Social bookmarking worked like charm only a few months ago. If bookmarked on authority and quality bookmarking sites like Digg, Mixx, Propeller, etc, then you can still make good use of social bookmarking. Other than backlinks, social bookmarking also offers you some bonus traffic depending on where you submit to. If you can manage to put together or collect a good bookmarking site líst, then social bookmarking can still be a useful link building method.
Blog Commenting:-
This is a link building method where lots of spamming has already been done so to make the best of it, you need to work a little harder here. It is best to find quality blogs related to your category and make on-topic relevant comments. Not only do your comments add value to the blogpost, you now have a greater chance of getting your comment approved and your comments have greater chance of staying on those blogposts.
Press Releases:-
Submitting to press release sites can get you some backlinks as well. It is however hard to put together a líst of good press release sites that are worth submitting to. If a good líst can be managed, then this method can give some quality relevant backlinks as well.
Social Media and Web 2.0 Pages:-
There are a lot of quality social media and Web 2.0 sites where you can publish your articles for backlinks. You should write articles that are relevant to your site and publish them on these social media and Web 2.0 sites with your keywords hyperlinked to your site. Some of the authority sites are Squidoo, Hubpages, Blogger, Wordpress.com, etc.
Social media and Web 2.0 links are very popular these days because they work great. They give quality, relevant contextual backlinks that Google and other major search engines love. There are lots of other link building methods out there, but if you can utilize the above ones to their fullest potential, there is no need for any other methods.
Link building methods have changed from time to time and a specific method that worked yesterday may not work today. This is due to changes in the industry over time and in some cases extreme abuse. If a specific link building method has been abused too much, then that method will not work anymore.
It is therefore very important to know which link building method works today so that you can spend your time in a most productive way.
There are many link building methods out there today that work with some working better than others. Below are some of the today’s popular links building methods:
Article Submission:-
If you are reading this article, then you know that you can publish your article in article directories. Not only do you gain backlinks to your site from your published articles (see bottom of this article), you will get some traffic as a bonus. Think of you reading this article. There might be many reading your published articles as well.
Article submission is a great way of building backlinks as it provides you with 100% relevant contextual backlinks that Google loves.
Directory submission used to work lot better before, but it is still a popular link building method that still works if done properly. How many directories are out there as of this date is anyone’s guess but one thing is certain: that most of the directories aren’t worth submitting to.
Google considers a Yahoo Directory link as a quality backlink so if you can afford and justify the cost, it is worth submítting to Yahoo Directory. Yahoo charges $300 for a yearly submission and there is no assurance that your site will be approved!
Directory Submission:-
DMOZ is another directory that is worth submitting to and can provide great benefit in your SEO campaign. It may take months to get the approval from DMOZ and the chance of getting approved is pretty slim. A lot of small directories use the DMOZ directory categories so getting listed with DMOZ would mean getting bonus listings on many other web directories.
Another good directory to submit to is the BOTW dírectory that costs $99 for a yearly submission and $299 for a permanent listing.
Other than the above, you should look for quality directories where you can submit your site. You can judge the quality of the directories by analyzing the number of sites listed, number of backlinks the directory has, PR, age of the directory, etc.
Social Bookmarking:-
Social bookmarking worked like charm only a few months ago. If bookmarked on authority and quality bookmarking sites like Digg, Mixx, Propeller, etc, then you can still make good use of social bookmarking. Other than backlinks, social bookmarking also offers you some bonus traffic depending on where you submit to. If you can manage to put together or collect a good bookmarking site líst, then social bookmarking can still be a useful link building method.
Blog Commenting:-
This is a link building method where lots of spamming has already been done so to make the best of it, you need to work a little harder here. It is best to find quality blogs related to your category and make on-topic relevant comments. Not only do your comments add value to the blogpost, you now have a greater chance of getting your comment approved and your comments have greater chance of staying on those blogposts.
Press Releases:-
Submitting to press release sites can get you some backlinks as well. It is however hard to put together a líst of good press release sites that are worth submitting to. If a good líst can be managed, then this method can give some quality relevant backlinks as well.
Social Media and Web 2.0 Pages:-
There are a lot of quality social media and Web 2.0 sites where you can publish your articles for backlinks. You should write articles that are relevant to your site and publish them on these social media and Web 2.0 sites with your keywords hyperlinked to your site. Some of the authority sites are Squidoo, Hubpages, Blogger, Wordpress.com, etc.
Social media and Web 2.0 links are very popular these days because they work great. They give quality, relevant contextual backlinks that Google and other major search engines love. There are lots of other link building methods out there, but if you can utilize the above ones to their fullest potential, there is no need for any other methods.
SEO Worst Practices
SEO Worst Practices:-
1. Do you use pull-down boxes for navigation? Search engine spiders can’t fill out forms, even short ones with just one pull-down. Thus, they can’t get to the pages that follow. If you’re using pull-downs, make sure there is an alternate means of navigating to those pages that the spiders can use. Note this is not the same as a mouseover menu, where sub-choices show up upon hovering over the main navigation bar; that’s fine if done using CSS (rather than Javascript.)
2. Does your primary navigation require Flash, Java or Javascript? If you rely on search engine spiders executing Flash, Java or Javascript code in order to access links to deeper pages within your site, you’re taking a big risk. The search engines have a limited ability to deal with Flash, Java and Javascript. So the links may not be accessible to the spiders, or the link text may not get associated with the link. Semantically marked up HTML is always the most search engine friendly way to go.
3. Is your site done entirely in Flash or overly graphical with very little textual content? Text is always better than graphics or Flash animations for search engine rankings. Page titles and section headings should be text, not graphics. The main textual content of the page should ideally not be embedded within Flash. If it is, then have an alternative text version within div tags and use SWFObject to determine whether that text is displayed based on whether the visitor has the Flash plugin installed.
4. Is your home page a “splash page” or otherwise content-less? With most webites, as mentioned above, the home page is weighted by the search engines as the most important page on the site (i.e., given the highest PageRank score.) Thus, having no keyword-rich content on your home page is a missed opportunity.
5. Does your site employ frames? Search engines have problems crawling sites that use frames (i.e., where part of the page moves when you scroll but other parts stay stationary.) Google advises not using frames: “Frames tend to cause problems with search engines, bookmarks, emailing links and so on, because frames don’t fit the conceptual model of the Web (every page corresponds to a single URL.) “Furthermore, if a frame does get indexed, searchers clicking through to it from search results will often find an “orphaned page”: a frame without the content it framed, or content without the associated navigation links in the frame it was intended to display with. Often, they will simply find an error page.What about “iFrames”, you ask? iFrames are better than frames for a variety of reasons, but the content within an iframe on a page still won’t be indexed as part of that page’s content.
6. Do the URLs of your pages Include “cgi-bin” or numerous ampersands? As discussed, search engines are leery of dynamically generated pages. That’s because they can lead the search spider into an infinite loop called a “spider trap.” Certain characters (question marks, ampersands, equal signs) and “cgi-bin” in the URL are sure-fire tip-offs to the search engines that the page is dynamic and thus to proceed with caution. If the URLs have long, overly complex “query strings” (the part of the URL after the question mark), with a number of ampersands and equals signs (which signify that there are multiple variables in the query string), then your page is less likely to get included in the search engine’s index.
7. Do the URLs of your pages include session IDs or user IDs? If your answer to this question is yes, then consider this: search engine spiders like Googlebot don’t support cookies, and thus the spider will be assigned a new session ID or user ID on each page on your site that it visits. This is the proverbial “spider trap” waiting to happen. Search engine spiders may just skip over these pages. If such pages do get indexed, there will be multiple copies of the same pages each taking a share of the PageRank score, resulting in PageRank dilution and lowered rankings.If you’re not quite clear on why your PageRank scores will be diluted, think of it this way: Googlebot will find minimal links pointing to the exact version of a page with a particular session ID in its URL.
8. Do you unnecessarily spread your site across multiple domains? This is typically done for load balancing purposes. For example, the links on the JCPenney.com home page point off to www2.jcpenney.com, or www3.jcpenney.com, or www4.jcpenney.com and so on, depending on which server is the least busy. This dilutes PageRank in a way similar to how session IDs in the URL dilute PageRank.
9. Are your title tags the same on all pages? Far too many websites use a single title tag for the entire site. If your site falls into that group, you’re missing out on a lot of search engine traffic. Each page of your site should “sing” for one or several unique keyword themes. That “singing” is stifled when the page’s title tag doesn’t incorporate the particular keyword being targeted.
10. Do you have pop-ups on your site? Most search engines don’t index Javascript-based pop-ups, so the content within the pop-up will not get indexed. If that’s not good enough reason to stop using pop-ups, you should know that people hate them – with a passion. Also consider that untold millions of users have pop-up blockers installed. (The Google Toolbar and Yahoo Companion toolbar are pop-up blockers, too, in case you didn’t know.)
11. Do you have error pages in the search results (“session expired” etc.)? First impressions count . . . a lot! So make sure search engine users aren’t seeing error messages in your search listings. Hotmail took the cake in this regard, with a Google listing for its home page that, for years, began with: “Sign-In Access Error.” Not exactly a useful, compelling or brand-building search result for the user to see. Check to see if you have any error pages by querying Google, Yahoo and Bing for site:www.yourcompanyurl.com. Eliminate error pages from the search engine’s index by serving up the proper status code in the HTTP header (see below) and/or by including a meta robots noindex tag in the HTML.
12. Does your “file not found” error page return a 200 status code? This is a corollary to the tip immediately above. Before the content of a page is served up by your Web server, a HTTP header is sent, which includes a status code. A status code of 200 is what’s usually sent, meaning that the page is “OK.” A status code of 404 means that the requested URL was not found. Obviously, a file not found error page should return a 404 status code, not a 200. You can verify whether this is the case using a server header checker and then into the form input a bogus URL at your domain, such as http://www.yourcompanyurl.com/blahblah. An additional, and even more serious, consequence of a 200 being returned with URLs that are clearly bogus/non-existent is that your site will look less trustworthy by Google (Google does check for this).Note that there are other error status codes that may be more appropriate to return than a 404 in certain circumstances, like a 403 if the page is restricted or 500 if the server is overloaded and temporarily unavailable; a 200 (or a 301 or 302 redirect that points to a 200) should never be returned, regardless of the error, to ensure the URL with the error does not end up in the search results.
13. Do you use “click here” or other superfluous copy for your hyperlink text? Wanting to rank tops for the words “click here,” eh? Try some more relevant keywords instead. Remember, Google associates the link text with the page you are linking to, so make that anchor text count.
14. Do you have superfluous text like “Welcome To” at the beginning of your title tags? No one wants to be top ranked for the word “welcome” (except maybe the Welcome Inn chain!) so remove those superfluous words from your title tags!
15. Do you unnecessarily employ redirects, or are they the wrong type? A redirect is where the URL changes automatically while the page is still loading in the user’s browser. Temporary (status code of 302) redirects — as opposed to permanent (301) ones — can cost you valuable PageRank. That’s because temporary redirects don’t pass PageRank to the destination URL. Links that go through a click-through tracker first tend to use temporary redirects. Don’t redirect visitors when they first enter your site at the home page; but if you must, at least employ a 301 redirect. Whether 301 or 302, if you can easily avoid using a redirect altogether, then do that. If you must have a redirect, avoid having a bunch of redirects in a row; if that’s not possible, then ensure that there are only 301s in that chain. Most importantly, avoid selectively redirecting human visitors (but not spiders) immediately as they enter your site from a search engine, as that can be deemed a “sneaky redirect” and can get you penalized or banned.
16. Do you have any hidden or small text meant only for the search engines? It may be tempting to obscure your keywords from visitors by using tiny text that is too small for humans to see, or as text that is the same color as the page background. However, the search engines are on to that trick.
17. Do you engage in “keyword stuffing”? Putting the same keyword everywhere, such as in every ALT attribute, is just asking for trouble. Don’t go overboard with repeating keywords or adding a meta keywords tag that’s hundreds of words long. (Why even have a meta keywords tag? They don’t help with SEO, they only help educate your competitors on which keywords you are targeting.) Google warns not to hide keywords in places that aren’t rendered, such as comment tags. A good rule of thumb to operate under: if you’d feel uncomfortable showing to a Google employee what you’re doing, you shouldn’t be doing it.
18. Do you have pages targeted to obviously irrelevant keywords? Just because “britney spears” is a popular search term doesn’t mean it’s right for you to be targeting it. Relevancy is the name of the game. Why would you want to be number one for “britney spears” anyway? The bounce rate for such traffic would be terrible.
19. Do you repeatedly submit your site to the engines? At best this is unnecessary. At worst this could flag your site as spam, since spammers have historically submitted their sites to the engines through the submission form (usually multiple times, using automated tools, and without consideration for whether the site is already indexed). You shouldn’t have to submit your site to the engines; their spiders should find you on their own — assuming you have some links pointing to your site. And if you don’t, you have bigger issues: like the fact your site is completely devoid of PageRank, trust and authority. If you’re going to submit your site to a search engine, search for your site first to make sure it’s not already in the search engine’s index and only submit it manually if it’s not in the index. Note this warning doesn’t apply to participating in the Sitemaps program; it’s absolutely fine to provide the engines with a comprehensive Sitemaps XML file on an ongoing basis (learn more about this program at Sitemaps.org).
20. Do you incorporate your competitors’ brand names in your meta tags? Unless you have their express permission, this is a good way to end up at the wrong end of a lawsuit.
21. Do you have duplicate pages with minimal or no changes? The search engines won’t appreciate you purposefully creating duplicate content to occupy more than your fair share of available positions in the search results. Note that a dynamic (database-driven) website inadvertently offering duplicate versions of pages to the spiders at multiple URLs is not a spam tactic, as it is a common occurrence for dynamic websites (even Google’s own Googlestore.com suffers from this), but it is something you would want to minimize due to the PageRank dilution effects.
22. Does your content read like “spamglish”? Crafting pages filled with nonsensical, keyword-rich gibberish is a great way to get penalized or banned by search engines.
23. Do you have “doorway pages” on your site? Doorway pages are pages designed solely for search engines that aren’t useful or interesting to human visitors. Doorway pages typically aren’t linked to much from other sites or much from your own site. The search engines strongly discourage the use of this tactic, quite understandably.
24. Do you have machine-generated pages on your site? Such pages are usually devoid of meaningful content. There are tools that churn out keyword-rich doorway pages for you, automatically. Yuck! Don’t do it; the search engines can spot such doorway pages.
25. Are you “pagejacking”?” Pagejacking” refers to hijacking or stealing high-ranking pages from other sites and placing them on your site with few or no changes. Often, this tactic is combined with cloaking so as to hide the victimized site’s content from search engine users. The tactic has evolved over the years; for example “auto-blogs” are completely pagejacked content (lifted from RSS feeds). Pagejacking is a big no-no! Not only is it very unethical, it’s illegal; and the consequences can be severe.
26. Are you “cloaking”? “Cloaking” is the tactic of detecting search engine spiders when they visit and varying the content specifically for the spiders in order to improve rankings. If you are in any way selectively modifying the page content, this is nothing less than a bait-and-switch. Search engines have undercover spiders that masquerade as regular visitors to detect such unscrupulous behavior. (Note that cleaning up search engine unfriendly URLs selectively for spiders, like Yahoo.com does on their home page by dropping their ylt tracking parameter from all their links, is a legitimate tactic.)
27. Are you submitting to FFA (“Free For All”) links pages and link farms? Search engines don’t think highly of link farms and such, and may penalize you or ban you for participating on them. How can you tell link farms and directories apart from each other? Link farms are poorly organized, have many more links per page, and have minimal editorial control.
28. Are you buying expired domains with high PageRank scores to use as link targets? Google underwent a major algorithm change a while back to thwart this tactic. Now, when domains expire, their PageRank scores are reset to 0, regardless of how many links point to the site.
29. Are you presenting a country selector as your home page to Googlebot? Global corporations sometimes present first-time visitors with a list of countries and/or languages to choose from upon entry to their site. An example of this is at EMC.com. This becomes a “worst practice” when this country list is represented to the search engines as the home page. Happily, EMC had done their homework on SEO and is detecting the spiders and waving them on. In other words, Googlebot doesn’t have to select a country before entry. You can confirm this to be the case yourself: do a Google search a “cache:www.emc.com” and you will see the EMC’s U.S. home page.
1. Do you use pull-down boxes for navigation? Search engine spiders can’t fill out forms, even short ones with just one pull-down. Thus, they can’t get to the pages that follow. If you’re using pull-downs, make sure there is an alternate means of navigating to those pages that the spiders can use. Note this is not the same as a mouseover menu, where sub-choices show up upon hovering over the main navigation bar; that’s fine if done using CSS (rather than Javascript.)
2. Does your primary navigation require Flash, Java or Javascript? If you rely on search engine spiders executing Flash, Java or Javascript code in order to access links to deeper pages within your site, you’re taking a big risk. The search engines have a limited ability to deal with Flash, Java and Javascript. So the links may not be accessible to the spiders, or the link text may not get associated with the link. Semantically marked up HTML is always the most search engine friendly way to go.
3. Is your site done entirely in Flash or overly graphical with very little textual content? Text is always better than graphics or Flash animations for search engine rankings. Page titles and section headings should be text, not graphics. The main textual content of the page should ideally not be embedded within Flash. If it is, then have an alternative text version within div tags and use SWFObject to determine whether that text is displayed based on whether the visitor has the Flash plugin installed.
4. Is your home page a “splash page” or otherwise content-less? With most webites, as mentioned above, the home page is weighted by the search engines as the most important page on the site (i.e., given the highest PageRank score.) Thus, having no keyword-rich content on your home page is a missed opportunity.
5. Does your site employ frames? Search engines have problems crawling sites that use frames (i.e., where part of the page moves when you scroll but other parts stay stationary.) Google advises not using frames: “Frames tend to cause problems with search engines, bookmarks, emailing links and so on, because frames don’t fit the conceptual model of the Web (every page corresponds to a single URL.) “Furthermore, if a frame does get indexed, searchers clicking through to it from search results will often find an “orphaned page”: a frame without the content it framed, or content without the associated navigation links in the frame it was intended to display with. Often, they will simply find an error page.What about “iFrames”, you ask? iFrames are better than frames for a variety of reasons, but the content within an iframe on a page still won’t be indexed as part of that page’s content.
6. Do the URLs of your pages Include “cgi-bin” or numerous ampersands? As discussed, search engines are leery of dynamically generated pages. That’s because they can lead the search spider into an infinite loop called a “spider trap.” Certain characters (question marks, ampersands, equal signs) and “cgi-bin” in the URL are sure-fire tip-offs to the search engines that the page is dynamic and thus to proceed with caution. If the URLs have long, overly complex “query strings” (the part of the URL after the question mark), with a number of ampersands and equals signs (which signify that there are multiple variables in the query string), then your page is less likely to get included in the search engine’s index.
7. Do the URLs of your pages include session IDs or user IDs? If your answer to this question is yes, then consider this: search engine spiders like Googlebot don’t support cookies, and thus the spider will be assigned a new session ID or user ID on each page on your site that it visits. This is the proverbial “spider trap” waiting to happen. Search engine spiders may just skip over these pages. If such pages do get indexed, there will be multiple copies of the same pages each taking a share of the PageRank score, resulting in PageRank dilution and lowered rankings.If you’re not quite clear on why your PageRank scores will be diluted, think of it this way: Googlebot will find minimal links pointing to the exact version of a page with a particular session ID in its URL.
8. Do you unnecessarily spread your site across multiple domains? This is typically done for load balancing purposes. For example, the links on the JCPenney.com home page point off to www2.jcpenney.com, or www3.jcpenney.com, or www4.jcpenney.com and so on, depending on which server is the least busy. This dilutes PageRank in a way similar to how session IDs in the URL dilute PageRank.
9. Are your title tags the same on all pages? Far too many websites use a single title tag for the entire site. If your site falls into that group, you’re missing out on a lot of search engine traffic. Each page of your site should “sing” for one or several unique keyword themes. That “singing” is stifled when the page’s title tag doesn’t incorporate the particular keyword being targeted.
10. Do you have pop-ups on your site? Most search engines don’t index Javascript-based pop-ups, so the content within the pop-up will not get indexed. If that’s not good enough reason to stop using pop-ups, you should know that people hate them – with a passion. Also consider that untold millions of users have pop-up blockers installed. (The Google Toolbar and Yahoo Companion toolbar are pop-up blockers, too, in case you didn’t know.)
11. Do you have error pages in the search results (“session expired” etc.)? First impressions count . . . a lot! So make sure search engine users aren’t seeing error messages in your search listings. Hotmail took the cake in this regard, with a Google listing for its home page that, for years, began with: “Sign-In Access Error.” Not exactly a useful, compelling or brand-building search result for the user to see. Check to see if you have any error pages by querying Google, Yahoo and Bing for site:www.yourcompanyurl.com. Eliminate error pages from the search engine’s index by serving up the proper status code in the HTTP header (see below) and/or by including a meta robots noindex tag in the HTML.
12. Does your “file not found” error page return a 200 status code? This is a corollary to the tip immediately above. Before the content of a page is served up by your Web server, a HTTP header is sent, which includes a status code. A status code of 200 is what’s usually sent, meaning that the page is “OK.” A status code of 404 means that the requested URL was not found. Obviously, a file not found error page should return a 404 status code, not a 200. You can verify whether this is the case using a server header checker and then into the form input a bogus URL at your domain, such as http://www.yourcompanyurl.com/blahblah. An additional, and even more serious, consequence of a 200 being returned with URLs that are clearly bogus/non-existent is that your site will look less trustworthy by Google (Google does check for this).Note that there are other error status codes that may be more appropriate to return than a 404 in certain circumstances, like a 403 if the page is restricted or 500 if the server is overloaded and temporarily unavailable; a 200 (or a 301 or 302 redirect that points to a 200) should never be returned, regardless of the error, to ensure the URL with the error does not end up in the search results.
13. Do you use “click here” or other superfluous copy for your hyperlink text? Wanting to rank tops for the words “click here,” eh? Try some more relevant keywords instead. Remember, Google associates the link text with the page you are linking to, so make that anchor text count.
14. Do you have superfluous text like “Welcome To” at the beginning of your title tags? No one wants to be top ranked for the word “welcome” (except maybe the Welcome Inn chain!) so remove those superfluous words from your title tags!
15. Do you unnecessarily employ redirects, or are they the wrong type? A redirect is where the URL changes automatically while the page is still loading in the user’s browser. Temporary (status code of 302) redirects — as opposed to permanent (301) ones — can cost you valuable PageRank. That’s because temporary redirects don’t pass PageRank to the destination URL. Links that go through a click-through tracker first tend to use temporary redirects. Don’t redirect visitors when they first enter your site at the home page; but if you must, at least employ a 301 redirect. Whether 301 or 302, if you can easily avoid using a redirect altogether, then do that. If you must have a redirect, avoid having a bunch of redirects in a row; if that’s not possible, then ensure that there are only 301s in that chain. Most importantly, avoid selectively redirecting human visitors (but not spiders) immediately as they enter your site from a search engine, as that can be deemed a “sneaky redirect” and can get you penalized or banned.
16. Do you have any hidden or small text meant only for the search engines? It may be tempting to obscure your keywords from visitors by using tiny text that is too small for humans to see, or as text that is the same color as the page background. However, the search engines are on to that trick.
17. Do you engage in “keyword stuffing”? Putting the same keyword everywhere, such as in every ALT attribute, is just asking for trouble. Don’t go overboard with repeating keywords or adding a meta keywords tag that’s hundreds of words long. (Why even have a meta keywords tag? They don’t help with SEO, they only help educate your competitors on which keywords you are targeting.) Google warns not to hide keywords in places that aren’t rendered, such as comment tags. A good rule of thumb to operate under: if you’d feel uncomfortable showing to a Google employee what you’re doing, you shouldn’t be doing it.
18. Do you have pages targeted to obviously irrelevant keywords? Just because “britney spears” is a popular search term doesn’t mean it’s right for you to be targeting it. Relevancy is the name of the game. Why would you want to be number one for “britney spears” anyway? The bounce rate for such traffic would be terrible.
19. Do you repeatedly submit your site to the engines? At best this is unnecessary. At worst this could flag your site as spam, since spammers have historically submitted their sites to the engines through the submission form (usually multiple times, using automated tools, and without consideration for whether the site is already indexed). You shouldn’t have to submit your site to the engines; their spiders should find you on their own — assuming you have some links pointing to your site. And if you don’t, you have bigger issues: like the fact your site is completely devoid of PageRank, trust and authority. If you’re going to submit your site to a search engine, search for your site first to make sure it’s not already in the search engine’s index and only submit it manually if it’s not in the index. Note this warning doesn’t apply to participating in the Sitemaps program; it’s absolutely fine to provide the engines with a comprehensive Sitemaps XML file on an ongoing basis (learn more about this program at Sitemaps.org).
20. Do you incorporate your competitors’ brand names in your meta tags? Unless you have their express permission, this is a good way to end up at the wrong end of a lawsuit.
21. Do you have duplicate pages with minimal or no changes? The search engines won’t appreciate you purposefully creating duplicate content to occupy more than your fair share of available positions in the search results. Note that a dynamic (database-driven) website inadvertently offering duplicate versions of pages to the spiders at multiple URLs is not a spam tactic, as it is a common occurrence for dynamic websites (even Google’s own Googlestore.com suffers from this), but it is something you would want to minimize due to the PageRank dilution effects.
22. Does your content read like “spamglish”? Crafting pages filled with nonsensical, keyword-rich gibberish is a great way to get penalized or banned by search engines.
23. Do you have “doorway pages” on your site? Doorway pages are pages designed solely for search engines that aren’t useful or interesting to human visitors. Doorway pages typically aren’t linked to much from other sites or much from your own site. The search engines strongly discourage the use of this tactic, quite understandably.
24. Do you have machine-generated pages on your site? Such pages are usually devoid of meaningful content. There are tools that churn out keyword-rich doorway pages for you, automatically. Yuck! Don’t do it; the search engines can spot such doorway pages.
25. Are you “pagejacking”?” Pagejacking” refers to hijacking or stealing high-ranking pages from other sites and placing them on your site with few or no changes. Often, this tactic is combined with cloaking so as to hide the victimized site’s content from search engine users. The tactic has evolved over the years; for example “auto-blogs” are completely pagejacked content (lifted from RSS feeds). Pagejacking is a big no-no! Not only is it very unethical, it’s illegal; and the consequences can be severe.
26. Are you “cloaking”? “Cloaking” is the tactic of detecting search engine spiders when they visit and varying the content specifically for the spiders in order to improve rankings. If you are in any way selectively modifying the page content, this is nothing less than a bait-and-switch. Search engines have undercover spiders that masquerade as regular visitors to detect such unscrupulous behavior. (Note that cleaning up search engine unfriendly URLs selectively for spiders, like Yahoo.com does on their home page by dropping their ylt tracking parameter from all their links, is a legitimate tactic.)
27. Are you submitting to FFA (“Free For All”) links pages and link farms? Search engines don’t think highly of link farms and such, and may penalize you or ban you for participating on them. How can you tell link farms and directories apart from each other? Link farms are poorly organized, have many more links per page, and have minimal editorial control.
28. Are you buying expired domains with high PageRank scores to use as link targets? Google underwent a major algorithm change a while back to thwart this tactic. Now, when domains expire, their PageRank scores are reset to 0, regardless of how many links point to the site.
29. Are you presenting a country selector as your home page to Googlebot? Global corporations sometimes present first-time visitors with a list of countries and/or languages to choose from upon entry to their site. An example of this is at EMC.com. This becomes a “worst practice” when this country list is represented to the search engines as the home page. Happily, EMC had done their homework on SEO and is detecting the spiders and waving them on. In other words, Googlebot doesn’t have to select a country before entry. You can confirm this to be the case yourself: do a Google search a “cache:www.emc.com” and you will see the EMC’s U.S. home page.
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