Yahoo Search Marketing Increases Your Advertising Reach
September 14, 2008
Running an online business is a great way to make money and spend your time doing something you love. Advertising, of course, is crucial to a successful business, online or off. As an online business owner, when you use Yahoo Search Marketing, your advertising dollars will work far more effectively and bring you more visitors who become paying customers.
Traditional advertising, such as newspaper or radio advertising, or banner advertising on web sites, is impression-based. This means you pay for the number of “impressions” - the number of times your ad is displayed, in a banner ad, or the number of readers or listeners, with traditional advertising. Because Yahoo Search Marketing is not traditional marketing, it follows a very different payment structure.
The problem with traditional, impression-based advertising is you have to pay for the advertising whether anyone actually visits your site or not. As you can imagine, you can spend a lot of money on this type of advertising, and have no results to show for it. With Yahoo Search Marketing, you pay for results.
Yahoo Search Marketing is based on the pay-per-click model. This means that you place your ad on Yahoo, and only pay for the ad viewers who click through to your site. Even better, with Yahoo Search Marketing, you choose what you will pay for each click.
When you use Yahoo Search Marketing, you will choose the keywords you want to advertise on, and place a maximum bid, your maximum cost per click, on each keyword. This puts you in absolute control of your advertising, insuring that you only pay for visits to your web site from keyword-targeted ads.
The best thing about Yahoo Search Marketing is the sheer numbers of people who search on Yahoo. With an average of 2.3 billion (with a b) searches every month, Yahoo Search Marketing gives you an incredible reach in your advertising. Your advertising will be in front of people who are actively searching for your product, and you’ll pay only for clicks from interested customers.
With traditional advertising, you will have to pay whether or not you get any traffic, and you have no way of knowing if the people who visit your site are really interested, or what got their attention and directed them to your site. With Yahoo Search Marketing’s targeted pay-per-click model, you pay only for actual visitors to your site, and you can closely monitor what ads are bringing visitors.
What could be better than knowing you can reach exactly the customers you want, any time you want, by targeting exactly the keywords that fit your business and advertising to a potential 2.3 billion web site visitors? Yahoo Search Marketing puts your advertising on steroids by allowing you to reach huge numbers of people, pay only for results, and fine-tune your advertising whenever you need.
You’re running your business online because you know online marketing is effective. You want advertising just as effective as your business model. Yahoo Search Marketing delivers that kind of marketing, with the audience and the flexibility to make your marketing successful.
Tags: ask, twitter, yahoo, Google, delishio, ranking, live, seo
Get The Rankings You Want
September 14, 2008
Introduction
Where do you rank on the World Wide Web? It’s not enough to have a website; you have to get ranked on the first page to get noticed. Otherwise, holding your position at number 28,432 on Google isn’t going to do you much good. Check out some easy ways to improve your page rank and get yourself noticed.
Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) ensures that your website copy is written and structured in a way that improves chances that your website will be found when someone performs a search. For example, if your company sells insurance, you’d use words or phrases such as life insurance, insurance quote, insurance agent, or home insurance.
Content
Write articles that grab the interest of readers right now. Include case studies and whitepapers on your site that will give your visitors are reason to always come back. Or even check out what’s going on in the news and be there first to report changes that impact your industry. For example, if you sell mortgages, be the first one to report the drop in mortgage rates. You’ll generate a lot of traffic and increase your ranking. Remember, time is of the essence. If you find out something new and hot, you should write about before your competition does!
Search engine spiders are looking for sites that are periodically updated with rich content. Do not offer content that isn’t useful. Some people try to place content that is rich in keywords but doesn’t offer the oncoming traffic anything beneficial. Low traffic will equal lower rankings with top search engines. The idea behind rich content with specific keywords is that because you keep posting content, soon you will be ranked within the search engines for specific words. So, when I post articles about the different insurance rates and options, etc.; when an on-line visitor is searching for this info they will land on your site and may become potential clients.
Content must be used to provide new and interesting information that your reader wants to know about, offer helpful tips, or solve a problem. This content will get you link-backs which are excellent for driving traffic. You can also post articles through authentic submission sites, and that will also generate a lot of traffic. Many companies publish with different online magazines etc., not only to prove their expertise but also to gain more traffic linking to their sites.
Offer resources
Offer resources that will help your reader. For instance, if you are an insurance agent, and you want to attract new clients, offer a comparison chart of all the insurance agencies in the area so your user can make an objective decision. At first, it seems like the insurance company is driving business away that way. Not so. If you offer your users resources that benefit them, they will come back for more when they are searching again.
Link it up
Linking to other websites is a great way to increase your page ranking. Linking to other websites raises credibility in the eyes of the search engines. Who should you link to? Provide links to websites that offer a similar product or service as you do, or websites that are industry related. A spa can link to its beauty suppliers, for example. Ask them if they will provide a link to your website, and remember to offer to link to theirs in return. You can also submit articles to directories or credible article submission websites to gain links. Good articles and resources will get you bookmarked and potentially linked to by other users.
Include a site map
Generate a site map that links to every page in your site. Search engines like pages that can be accessed easily, so make sure your important pages remain in the first or second level.
Make changes
Every month or two go back and update or make changes to your website. If you let it become stale, the search engines will toss you out like yesterdays news. Update it to generate new interest. Another great way is to add a daily blog. This will ensure that your content is updated daily and stays fresh.
Live bookmarks
Updates happen all the time. A live bookmark keeps track of updates and lets you know that information has changed, rather than you checking to see if websites have made additions. By providing live bookmarks, you are increasing your traffic and ranking because people will come back to you sooner, and more often.
RSS Feeds
Create an RSS Feed. RSS or Rich Site Syndication is a file format used by publishers to make their content available to others in a format that is universal. RSS is a way to publish content and update it in real time. This gives the user the opportunity access information through an RSS reader.
Targeted headlines
A clear, targeted headline will nudge your ranking a little higher. Use large text and words that relate to your website. For example, if you are a content developer, you could write a headline like: “Ten Quick Tips For Killer Copy.”
Tags: PR, search engine news, Google, twitter, wordpress, ranking, pagerank, delishio
You Can\’t Ask Jeeves Anymore
September 13, 2008
The new http://Ask.com search engine, minus Jeeves the butler, has a simple home page design along the lines of Google, with an unadorned list of major options along the right side. That list is headlined ‘Search Tools’ and includes:
* Web
* Images
* News
* Maps & Directions
* Local
* Weather
* Encyclopedia
* Ask for Kids
* Dictionary
* Blogs & Feeds
The main search feature (Web) turns up the usual list of keyword-inspired responses. An innovative touch in this section provides suggested phrases (clickable) to either narrow or expand your search. That’s an impressive concept, if it works well. It is all too easy to be led into the wilderness with search results; Ask is offering some tools to help short circuit that problem. The image section is similar to other search engines.
The News section shows signs of being a shallow concoction, in need of a full time editorial staff and perhaps some original content. For example, under world news there are three headlines that are nearly identical from three different news feeds – Reuters, CBS and MSNBC. The notion of defining a news story as “found” is a little disconcerting. As is problematic with many similar news searches, a click on one story originating from the Los Angeles Times led to a page demanding that you register as an L.A. Times subscriber (free) in order to read the story. Though frustrating, this can’t be entirely laid at the feet of http://Ask.com.
Their Local search is a well done and convenient feature. Enter a product or service (e.g. “tires”) and a zip code into a search bar, and Ask will bring up a list of local businesses that provide the product, addresses, phone numbers, websites if available, and a map to the location. Also included is an estimate of the distance between your zip code and the business establishment.
The Encyclopedia button will take you either to Wikipedia, or to a standard Ask search response, or both: the search results headed by a Wikipedia listing. Like the News page, this feature is a cobbled together approach to a service prominently displayed on Ask’s home page.
Ask for Kids is a well executed feature, although its news resources button takes you (or your child) to a menu of other sources, such as Yahooligan News, Time for Kids and CNN for Students. There is a search bar on the kid’s page that seems to work well. A random search for “dinosaurs” brought up referrals and links to several educational pages on dinosaurs and a drop down menu of dinosaurs by species inviting further research. A well designed feature.
Entering a term for search on the Dictionary page gets you an actual dictionary definition of the word at the top, followed by a standard list of search responses. If the definition feature is thorough, this feature functions just as well as going to an online dictionary such as Merriam Webster. The Dictionary option is a new and positive addition to search page design.
Their Weather button was baffled by my zip code, showing no returns. However the search results below listed a response to the zip code on http://weather.com. If Ask intends to offer a weather service, it should be as effective as the sites that come up on its search mechanism.
The Map service offers street, aerial and regional maps, which is a nice selection. However a random entry of my zip code brought up a map of a location in Poland. I’ve had this problem before with Google, so Ask may be getting their address data from similar sources. You have the option of entering two locations and asking for a map and driving instructions, as you would on other major search engines.
Overall, http://Ask.com is a standard search engine with some new features, some of which work well and some of which need further refinement.
Tags: Google, search engine news, page rank, blogger, delishio, marketing, google, twitter
Optimization For The Yahoo Search Engine
September 13, 2008
Most companies today take advantage of the internet as a major marketing and information dissemination tool. To maximize the use of the internet, companies rely on search engine optimization (SEO) to ensure that their websites and web pages muster enough traffic. Although search engine optimization aims to have websites at the top of almost all search engine result pages (SERPs), it’s quite common to see search engine optimization focusing on major search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo.
— Giant Search Engines Targeting —
It is hard to do search engine optimization resulting to a good ranking in almost all search engines since every search engine relies on different basis and categories on ranking sites. In other words, different search engines make use of different algorithms to determine every site’s importance. Criteria that search engines set for result ranking vary from search engine to search engine. As a result most SEO service providers opt to maximize sites for search engines that can provide the most ideal volume of traffic.
— Google-centric SEO is Short-Sighted SEO —
Most SEO’s would basically focus their efforts to maximize websites relative to Google because it is the most commonly used search engine. But if you take a closer look into the matter, you will conclude that disregarding the searches done through Yahoo could mean a considerable amount of lost traffic. Although Yahoo does not process as much searches as Google, it still consists a good fraction of the searches done on the internet.
— Balancing Google and Yahoo SEO —
Both Yahoo and Google depend on keyword density to rank a website. The only difference is that to optimize your site with the Yahoo search engine, a higher keyword frequency is required. Keyword density is more important a factor for Yahoo than it is for Google; although you don’t need to use the same word or group of words to attain the ideal keyword density. Yahoo will consider synonyms and other word variants that are of the same or related meaning to the given keyword to make up the keyword density calculation. Even the plural from of the keyword is still counted when considering keyword density.
Taking the keyword factor into consideration, though, Google and Yahoo possess a very different approach in keyword density. Since Yahoo is very much keyword-based, you may fear that stuffing your site with too many keywords would endanger your site ranking with Google. However, this is not really the case.
It is true that Google may turn its back on your site because of overwhelming keyword count. But as stated above, your site does not need to contain the same keyword form to attain the keyword density for Yahoo. Taking advantage of the fact that Yahoo counts synonyms, plural forms and variants in assessing keyword density, your site could justify both Yahoo’s and Google’s keyword requirement.
— Yahoo SEO Special —
Content is very important to attain a good ranking with the Yahoo search engine. This refers to both quantity and quality of your site’s contents. Be mindful of relevance of your site’s contents to a given keyword and at the same time make sure that your site is full of it. Adding relevant contents from time to time would also be a good strategy to take the top spots with the Yahoo search engine results pages.
Aside from content, format should not be taken for granted if you want to have Yahoo on your side. Unlike Google’s web spiders, Yahoo’s bot doesn’t dig deeper into your sites pages to index them. It is therefore very necessary for you to create a very good site map to guide this very lazy animal!
And lastly, even though Yahoo is very much into your site’s content when it comes to ranking in the SERPs, don’t forget that inbound links are still very important. Aside from making sure that your site does well with Google when it comes to links, Yahoo will also need the help it gets from inbound links to index your pages.
Tags: Google, pligg, msn, ranking, keywords, delishio, twitter, blogging
Submitting Article, PR and Blog – Fuelling Your Website Traffic, SEO and Page Rank Improvement
September 12, 2008
Journalism and writing was all the historical time good way to become known in your industry, product expert, or simply popular. Internet is also similar in this sense – it is media, not paper, but electronic, but still similar. The fact that internet space is so cheap and at the same time available for worldwide auditoria – it opens unlimited opportunities for writing and publishing your articles, press releases, weblogs, internet news with photos and videos. Be creative and share your knowledge and your site will find the way to become popular. Let’s review suggestions and guidelines:
1. News Genre. You should understand the rules of the genre: article, PR, blog and news have different criteria, especially for editors to pick the relevant work for being selected for publishing
2. Article: here you need to be expert in what you are writing about. Article doesn’t allow you to go emotional or guessing about something that is well known. Article is objective knowledge. Article is typically syndicated by media portals, and it allows you to place link back to your web site into about author section
3. Press Release. Here you are writing on behalf of your company, being in essence official spokesman. You will see more restrictions, comparing to article up to the point that company should stay behind every promise or announcement in your press release
4. Blog or weblog. Here you can let your emotions to get exit and critique something, expressing your own opinion
5. Internet News. These publications are typically left to newspaper and magazine staff journalists, however you can try this genre in some of the liberal media portal or publication directories
Tags: blogger, Google, stumble upon, PR, delishio, ranking, ask, search engine news
The Google Ranking Secret That is Hiding in Plain Sight
September 11, 2008
Billions of people are surfing cyberspace, many of them wanting to spend money conveniently. If you have something to sell, how can you ensure they will find you before your competitors? The answer is simple - you need to make friends with the search engines and give the search engines what they want. The good news for you is, 95% of your competitors ignore this secret that is hidden in plain sight because it’s too easy. What is the secret hiding in plain sight? Search engines want fresh, quality content! They have always wanted fresh, quality content. They are in business to serve the masses so they are brutally picky about who makes it to the first page of search results. Yes, getting backlinks from quality websites is a factor but it means nothing without quality content.
One of my websites is relatively new. It has a Google PR3. That might seem an envious position. Using my Google Page Rank, I applied to one of those sites that pays for reviews. I was rejected. Why? Very little traffic. My site is generating a measly 300 unique visitors a month (May 2008). I just do not have enough quality content on that site as yet to make it attractive to sponsors.
So, you see, Page Rank is not always an indication of traffic. It simply means I have a number of back links from high quality sites. Google sees back links as votes. The more back links, the more votes, the higher the Page Rank. Quality content, on the other hand, is the secret to generating traffic. Not only that, quality is what leaves you there for years to come. Even if your site goes down, your quality content will still be found on the internet highway!
Quality content consists of profitable keywords and some solid information for your visitors. Don’t make the mistake of producing content loaded with all sizzle and no steak. Your visitors can’t eat sizzle. They need steak in the form of solid information they can use.
Concentrate on gathering every ‘profitable’ keyword, whether long tail or short and use them to craft your money terms which ultimately lets you rank high for very highly competitive keywords. Searches that are in the 5 figures a day.
Long tail are keywords of more than 2 words (less people searching) and a short tail is 2 or less words (more people searching). Remember long tail keywords are ONLY typed in by a searcher IF they can’t find what they are looking for using short tail keyword phrases. If you provide solutions for short tail keyword searches then people won’t leave your site to search on long tail keywords.
This is the secret hidden in plain sight that 95% of your competition is ignoring. They break away from the simple rules and try something extensively different and difficult because the simple methods seem too good to be true to work. That’s their mistake that you can use to your advantage!
Stay away from fads. Save your money and make good use of your valuable time and effort doing what has always worked.
The boss of search engines is still Google. Follow what Google wants and you WILL be rewarded. It takes just as much time to cheat the search engines as it does to apply solid, honest techniques. The trickster will see his efforts vanish within 3 months. You will still be around making money.
The simple methods are here to stay and you need to never worry about algorithm changes as you will have the right structured site, with the right set of keywords and the right content that search engines will love. Whether you want to profit from Adsense, affiliates, your own product or service, these strategies will outperform 99% of all your competitors
Want to get ranked on Google within 60 minutes? No hocus pocus … just plain and simple? Do what I do every other day - submit articles to article directories. When we submit to article directories, the good ones with PR 6 and above, we automatically get their pulling power when Google spiders visits their site. Since Google regularly visits high PR sites, they re-cache (re-index) the entire page. So, when you post an article on a high PR site, the chances are that you could extract Google spiders from the high PR site to yours.
For example: you post an article to a directory site, Google visits it, crawls it and follows the links. Since you have a new keyword optimized article, Google will catch you on that page. So basically you can practically have your page cached within 60 minutes, depending on when Google is visiting.
Send out your content to these high PR (articles directory) sites and get indexed faster than ever and watch the traffic start flowing.
Jim DeSantis
Tags: social media, stumble upon, search engine news, PR, keywords, search ranking, yahoo, msn
Out of Google Sandbox and Some Page Rank Results
September 11, 2008
Today, on April 30 2008, we are getting our first google pagerank, and it is surprisingly high: 4
Let us give you some statistics and analytics
Statistics:
Website: http://www.pegasplanet.com
Google Unique phrases “Pegas Planet” 4350
Site registration: 01/13/08
Links returned by link: www.pegasplanet.com – 2170
Analytics. We believe that at this time google sandbox period is 3 months and 15 days. Several days ago we negotiated with www.albaspectrum.com with pagerank of 5 to place on its first page link back to Pegas Planet, so potentially our quick rise from zero to 4 was related to Alba Spectrum website power of five
We believe that we published around 120 articles, PR, blogs and news, where we supported half of them with photos and in some cases video rollicks on our website. Plus these materials were posted to around ten media portals from where they were syndicated and as you see the number of links back to our website indicates about 20 times syndication multiplier
About Pegas Planet. We are high school student managed articles, press release, video news and internet blog submission site
Tags: google, stumble upon, social media, marketing, PR, ranking, seo, keywords
World’s Top Search Engines
September 11, 2008
Search engines are the most important source of new web site visitors. Almost 50 percent of site visits begin at the search engine and a lot of traffic is generated. Search engines are the path makers between the web pages and the web users. Any new visitor to a particular website comes through a search engines whether it is Google, Yahoo, MSN or any other search engine. About 80 percent of people, going online planning to shop for something or subscribe for any of the services start with any of the major search engine. Some of the major search engines serving World Wide Web are as follows:
Google is the most prominent one all across the globe and its empire is still expanding. It is believed to be the most trusted source of information similar to any of the government agency. More than a dozen domains by Google we are able to perform each and every daily task, business related queries or any nook and comer of our life. Google has an omnipresent existence.
Yahoo
The second major search engine to receive search queries. Yahoo is specialized receiving more business related queries as it is specialized providing business oriented results. Yahoo uses a combination of web crawlers compiled and indexed results to rank the websites that are registered on their search engine. Services offered by Yahoo are Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Maps and Driving Directions, and Yahoo! Messenger.
MSN
It is believed to be the third most popular internet biggies on the web. MSN messenger is the most successful web application to hit the internet over the last decade. Optimization for MSN is equally important when it comes to website SEO. IT has major emphasis on using on page optimization techniques.
Dogpile
It compiles all the major search engines result in to one. It gives us a piled web results from all the major search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo. Known as meta search, Dogpile powers all the leading search engines together in one search box to deliver the best combined results.
MetaCrawler
MetaCrawler says, “Search the search engines” it means it provides the best results from the combined pool of the world’s leading search engines. MetaCrawler uses innovative metasearch technology to search major search engines like Google, Yahoo! Search, MSN Search, Ask Jeeves, About, MIVA, LookSmart and more.
AltaVista
AltaVista is committed to provide advance Internet search with new technologies and features designed to improve the search experience for consumers. It is known for delivering Internet’s first Web index, first multilingual search capabilities on the Internet first Internet search engine to launch Image, Audio, and Video search capabilities.
There are other search engines like LookSmart, WebSearch, Ask, LiveSearch and others which are continuously supplying immense information to the internet community.
How about if you are able to get all these major search engines result on a single screen? Searchboth.com is now launching website providing all the major search engine results at the once. One can compare two major search engines displayed results without opening multiple browsers. Yahoo and Google are the default results displayed but one can chose the other search desired search engine.
Tags: marketing, twitter, blogger, blogging, autoprimemedia, ranking, page rank, pagerank
Yahoo Search Marketing and Easy Keyword Targeting
September 10, 2008
Wouldn’t it be great if you could pay for advertising based only on your results, choose the people you advertise to, and customize your ads for each group of people who might see them? If you’re using newspaper, radio or other traditional media, you just can’t do this kind of targeting and customizing. But with Yahoo Search Marketing, targeting the people you want with the ads they want is built right in.
Yahoo Search Marketing allows you to display ads on search results pages when people search for your keywords. You choose the keywords, and you determine how much you will pay for each click. You only pay if someone clicks on your ad and visits your site, and you are in complete control of your keywords, your ad, and your budget. Traditional advertising can’t offer this; Yahoo Search Marketing can.
The first thing you’ll need to do when you set up your advertising campaign is choose keywords. Yahoo Search Marketing helps you choose keywords and keyword phrases based on your web site and suggestions you enter. You choose your maximum bid for each keyword, and you can set up different ads for different keywords to improve your targeting. You are in complete control at all times.
One great feature of Yahoo Search Marketing is that it makes local advertising on the Internet very easy and affordable. You can choose geographical areas you want to advertise to, and Yahoo sends your ads only to their visitors in those areas. This means that you will not get clicks from people who can’t do business with you; your ads will be targeted to your local area and bring in local visitors who can, and will, use your products or services.
Traditional advertising has always been a game of chance. You pay your money and you takes your chances, and you hope that the right people will see your ads at the right time and act on them. With newspaper and broadcast ads, there simply is no way to make sure that you’re advertising to people who want what you offer, when they’re considering a purchase. Yahoo Search Marketing can do all of that and more.
You see, when you advertise on search engine results pages, you are literally advertising to people who are ready to make a decision and a purchase. They’ve searched for your keywords, so you know they’re looking for you. They just don’t know it yet. And you’re paying only for actual visitors to your web site, so you know you’re not paying for “junk traffic,” people who aren’t even interested in what you’re offering. And you control the budget, so you know exactly how much you’re spending on marketing, and you can increase or decrease your budget at any time.
Yahoo Search Marketing has been improving their search platform for quite some time now. The system they have created is somewhat different than Google Adwords, however it does show promise and handles a decent amount of website traffic to make YSM worthwile looking at. In my eyes, Yahoo Search Marketing is a proven winner!
Tags: PR, blogger, wordpress, autoprimemedia, marketing, yahoo, blogging, search ranking
How to Protect Your Search Engine Rankings
September 10, 2008
The good news is that search engines have figured this out, and are now on guard for “spam” pages and sites that have increased their rankings by artificial methods. When a search engines tracks down such a site, that site is demoted in ranking or completely removed from the search engine’s index.
The bad news is that some high quality, completely above-board sites are being mistaken for these web page criminals. Your page may be in danger of being caught up in the “spam” net and tossed from a search engine’s index, even though you have done nothing to deserve such harsh treatment. But there are things you can do - and things you should be sure NOT to do - which will prevent this kind of misperception.
Link popularity is mostly based on the quality of sites you are linked to. Google pioneered this criteria for assigning website ranking, and virtually all search engines on the Internet now use it. There are legitimate ways to go about increasing your link popularity, but at the same time, you must be scrupulously careful about which sites you choose to link to. Google frequently imposes penalties on sites that have linked to other sites solely for the purpose of artificially boosting their link popularity. They have actually labeled these links “bad neighborhoods.”
You can raise a toast to the fact that you cannot be penalized when a bad neighborhood links to your site; penalty happens only when you are the one sending out the link to a bad neighborhood. But you must check, and double-check, all the links that are active on your links page to make sure you haven’t linked to a bad neighborhood.
The first thing to check out is whether or not the pages you have linked to have been penalized. The most direct way to do this is to download the Google toolbar at
http://toolbar.google.com. You will then see that most pages are given a “Page rank” which is represented by a sliding green scale on the Google toolbar.
Do not link to any site that shows no green at all on the scale. This is especially important when the scale is completely grey. It is more than likely that these pages have been penalized. If you are linked to these pages, you may catch their penalty, and like the flu, it may be difficult to recover from the infection.
There is no need to be afraid of linking to sites whose scale shows only a tiny sliver of green on their scale. These sites have not been penalized, and their links may grow in value and popularity. However, do make sure that you closely monitor these kind of links to ascertain that at some point they do not sustain a penalty once you have linked up to them from your links page.
Another evil trick that illicit webmasters use to artificially boost their link popularity is the use of hidden text. Search engines usually use the words on web pages as a factor in forming their rankings, which means that if the text on your page contains your keywords, you have more of an opportunity to increase your search engine ranking than a page that does not contain text inclusive of keywords.
Some webmasters have gotten around this formula by hiding their keywords in such a way so that they are invisible to any visitors to their site. For example, they have used the keywords but made them the same color as the background color of the page, such as a plethora of white keywords on a white background. You cannot see these words with the human eye - but the eye of search engine spider can spot them easily! A spider is the program search engines use to index web pages, and when it sees these invisible words, it goes back and boosts that page’s link ranking.
Webmasters may be brilliant and sometimes devious, but search engines have figured these tricks out. As soon as a search engine perceive the use of hidden text - splat! the page is penalized.
The downside of this is that sometimes the spider is a bit overzealous and will penalize a page by mistake. For example, if the background color of your page is grey, and you have placed grey text inside a black box, the spider will only take note of the grey text and assume you are employing hidden text. To avoid any risk of false penalty, simply direct your webmaster not to assign the same color to text as the background color of the page - ever!
Another potential problem that can result in a penalty is called “keyword stuffing.” It is important to have your keywords appear in the text on your page, but sometimes you can go a little overboard in your enthusiasm to please those spiders. A search engine uses what is called “Key Phrase Density” to determine if a site is trying to artificially boost their ranking. This is the ratio of keywords to the rest of the words on the page. Search engines assign a limit to the number of times you can use a keyword before it decides you have overdone it and penalizes your site.
This ratio is quite high, so it is difficult to surpass without sounding as if you are stuttering - unless your keyword is part of your company name. If this is the case, it is easy for keyword density to soar. So, if your keyword is “renters insurance,” be sure you don’t use this phrase in every sentence. Carefully edit the text on your site so that the copy flows naturally and the keyword is not repeated incessantly. A good rule of thumb is your keyword should never appear in more than half the sentences on the page.
The final potential risk factor is known as “cloaking.” To those of you who are diligent Trekkies, this concept should be easy to understand. For the rest of you? Cloaking is when the server directs a visitor to one page and a search engine spider to a different page. The page the spider sees is “cloaked” because it is invisible to regular traffic, and deliberately set-up to raise the site’s search engine ranking. A cloaked page tries to feed the spider everything it needs to rocket that page’s ranking to the top of the list.
It is natural that search engines have responded to this act of deception with extreme enmity, imposing steep penalties on these sites. The problem on your end is that sometimes pages are cloaked for legitimate reasons, such as prevention against the theft of code, often referred to as “page jacking.” This kind of shielding is unnecessary these days due to the use of “off page” elements, such as link popularity, that cannot be stolen.
To be on the safe side, be sure that your webmaster is aware that absolutely no cloaking is acceptable. Make sure the webmaster understands that cloaking of any kind will put your website at great risk.
Just as you must be diligent in increasing your link popularity and your ranking, you must be equally diligent to avoid being unfairly penalized. So be sure to monitor your site closely and avoid any appearance of artificially boosting your rankings.
Tags: msn, page rank, pligg, PR, autoprimemedia, blogger, marketing, ask




