17 Jul 09 SEO SIMPLIFIED: SEO Myth Buster – II
The post titled, SEO SIMPLIFIED: SEO Myth-Buster, turned me not just into an SEO myth buster, but, it made me an SEO myth hunter too. In this article, we will be continuing our myth busting journey from where we left in the last article. This will be a concluding article on the most common SEO myths, so let’s begin debunking some more myths.
Myth 6: My Website is too big to be optimized my me
Last night, I woke up with a dream to make a castle tomorrow for myself, my would-be wife and my family. The very next day, I went out, collected the material needed and built the beautiful mansion. Amazing, isn’t it? Well, not exactly. Did you believe the story? The point is not whether I can afford to build a mansion or not, the point is whether I can build it in a day or not. I cannot, even if I have all the money and resources of this world. Rome wasn’t build in a day, and nor will your website.
Start with optimizing the most important page of your website, and then follow the path led during the brainstorming (planning) for the website. Start doing this, as early as you can, and always keep in mind that each and every page of your website is a doorway through which your visitor can enter your house (website) or leave it. Hence, make the doorway as inviting as you possibly can make, and keep your home as pleasing to stay as humanly possible.
Myth 7: Meta tags are elixir.
Once upon a time, meta tags were very important, they were jewel of SEO crown, but that time is long gone. Blame it on spam, meta tags are losing their importance in search engine optimization process. I am not saying that meta tags are not important at all. All I am saying is, meta tags are no more “the thing”. Meta tags are still an important part of SEO but not the most important thing.
Myth 8: Black Hat SEO will pay my bills
People believe using doorway page (for Google), keyword stuffing, cloaked content, hidden texts, etc. are the best way to get search engine ranking spikes. Forget about its being “the best way”, let me break the bad news, this is not even a way to go. Black Hat SEO never pays!
Myth 9: I am superstar, I do not need SEO
Well, if you are a superstar then definitely you do not need to optimize your site, but first let me know, you are a superstar in what capacity?
If you think you became a star on the Internet and you do not need SEO anymore because you are already featuring on the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN SERPs then let me remind you of the God’s word, “Organic”. The listing that you got is organic in nature, and as soon as you stop working on keeping it that way, your website will slip down the drain, and some unknown kid on the block will flash his crown.
Myth 10: I can make my place felt in any SERP just in days
You cannot do that, even if you are a real superstar. Search Engine Optimization might sound cool (you bet it is) and fun to do exercise, but believe me it is not no-sweat job. You will have to burn the metaphorical mid-night oil to make the search engines work for you. The amount of time it will take to reach on the cover page (the first page) of SERP depends upon the nature, competition and search volume of the keywords your site is optimized for, and the effort you put in to bring it forward.
Tags: Black Hat, Debunking, Doorway Page, Elixir, google, Jewel, Journey, Meta Tags, Money, Myth Buster, Myths, Rome, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Spikes, Texts
04 Jul 09 SEO SIMPLIFIED: What exactly is Black Hat SEO – I?
In the last two articles, we have been talking about Black Hat SEO, and about the techniques that are out-and-out classified as Black Hat SEO techniques. The thing we are going to talk about in this article will tell you that there is no such thing as absolute Black Hat SEO technique, at least not in theory. Black Hat SEO may mean one thing to one group of people while something else to another group of people depending upon the SEO school of thought they subscribe to. In the course of next two articles we will try to analyze what these SEO schools of thoughts are. Let’s begin with The Search Engine Policy Approach, and we will also cover The Unnatural Ranking Approach in this article.
The Search Engine Policy Approach
The SEO professionals who follow this approach to classify an SEO practice into either Black Hat or White Hat believe that the SEO technique used by a website should be in sync with the policies and guidelines set by search engines, at least by the ones set by major search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN.
For an untrained pair of eyes, this approach looks harmless, and more real than any other approach, but there is a slight problem with this approach. And the problem lies in the difference between policies and guidelines set by different search engines, which essentially means, you cannot optimize your website for all the search engines at once. You will need to ask yourself, which search engine you want your website to be optimized for? For example: if you put doorway page (Read about Doorway page here), Yahoo will not have any problem with that, but Google is not friendly to doorway pages. It, instead, suggest using 301 redirects.
The Unnatural Ranking Approach
The subscribers of this school of SEO thought has gone too far in professing that any SEO practice that unnaturally boosts the webpage ranking should be considered Black Hat SEO practice. On the surface this sounds good, but if we scratch the surface even with a coin, the real picture starts emerging.
There are two problems with this school of thought:
- The definition of “unnaturally high” is too vague to be accepted by everyone.
- According to this approach, every SEO practice is Black Hat. Think this over to the end and you will realize the truth behind this claim. This approach of thinking makes all the H1, H2, H3, Alt tags of your website Black Hat.
With this thought , I am concluding this article, and in the next article, we will discuss about The Visitors Value Approach and The Property Right Approach of SEO classification.
Tags: Absolute, Black Hat, Black White, Classified, Doorway Page, Doorway Pages, google, Major Search Engines, Msn, Policy Approach, Problem With This Approach, School Of Thought, search engine, Search Engines Google, SEO, Subscribers, Sync, yahoo
28 Jun 09 SEO SIMPLIFIED: Black Hat SEO Techniques
Taking our discussion on Black Hat SEO forward, in this article we shall focus on the techniques that have been denounced categorically as Black Hat SEO techniques by the SEO community as well as search engines, and which you should never use when optimizing your website.
Keyword Stuffing
This one is the first in the list of certified Black Hat SEO techniques. If you stuff your article with too many keywords, or put a list of keywords and nothing else in your webpage then your site will surely get penalized by the search engines. For more details, read How to use keywords in content.
Text Cloaking
Text cloaking means hiding the website’s text behind the background. This is done by making the text and the background color same. It is often used by spammy websites to hide the list of keywords from the visitors but keep it visible to the search engine spiders. In some cases the website also uses different texts for search engines and different text for visitors. In this case, the text written for the search engine ranking purpose is cloaked.
Doorway Pages
A doorway page is another failed Black Hat SEO attempt to fool the search engine. A doorway page is just like any other HTML page optimized for a couple of keywords or key phrases, but unlike other HTML pages, it is not visible to the visitors. Only the target search engines and their spiders, for which the page is designed, can see this page. When a user clicks on the doorway page in SERP (search engine result page), he or she is redirected to another page, the real website or webpage for which this doorway page was constructed. This activity is undertaken with an intention to artificially boost the traffic to the website.
Tags: Attempt, Background Color, Black Hat, Black Stuff, Doorway Page, Doorway Pages, Focus, Html Pages, Intention, Optimizing Your Website, Phrases, Search Engine Result, Search Engine Spiders, Search Engines, SEO, Target Search, Texts, traffic
Gossimer in the News
- Gossimer Puts Indian Domain Extensions Up for Sale February 21, 2010Gossimer, the fastest growing domain name registration and web hosting company has announced a sale on Indian domain extensions. During the promotion period, domains ending with .in will be offered at discounted price. [PR.com] […]
- Gossimer Unveils a New & Improved Payment System February 14, 2010The Melbourne-based (Florida) web hosting and domain name registration company Gossimer has announced the inclusion of three more payment options in its system. From today the customers and the web hosting resellers can use AlertPay, WebMoney, and Liberty Reserve to pay for the domain registration as well as web hosting services. Gossimer already offered Pay […]
- Gossimer Has Opened Its Treasure Chest for Webhost Resellers January 16, 2010Gossimer, the fast growing domain name registration and web hosting company has yet again opened its door of their reseller program. This program offers a comprehensive web hosting product portfolio for resellers and resellers of Gossimer’s resellers. [PR.com] […]
- Gossimer Invites Customers to Try Digital Certificates for Free January 2, 2010Gossimer, the fastest growing domain name registration and web hosting company is offering 21 days free trial on digital certificates. This trail will allow webmasters to understand the role Https plays in building visitors’ confidence in their website. [PR.com] […]
- Gossimer Announces Special Domain Name Registration Deals December 25, 2009Gossimer, the fastest growing domain name registration and web hosting company has announced a special deal on 12 top domain extensions and that includes some CTLDs as well. This promotion is available on the registration of new domain names, and you can register as many domains as you want. [PR.com] […]
- Gossimer Announced a Transfer-in Domain Promotion to Allow Customers to Consolidate Their Domains Into One Account November 7, 2009Save money on domain name transfer to Gossimer. Gossimer is currently running an attractive promotion on domain transfer-in that will save a lot of money for the domain portfolio builder. You can transfer as many domains as you wish under this promotion. [PR.com] […]
- Gossimer Became Reseller of the Month for October October 17, 2009October brings another piece of good news for Gossimer. The fastest growing web hosting and domain name registration company has been chosen as the Reseller of the month for October by ResellerClub. [PR.com] […]
- Gossimer Offers One Year Free Extension on Domain Transfer October 3, 2009Gossimer, the fastest growing domain name registration company, is offering one year free extension with every domain name transferred to its system. This service when coupled with other services puts Gossimer in the position of price leadership. The company offers the most economic rate for domain name registration and webhosting services. [PR.com] […]
- New Deals Make Gossimer Bigger, Better and Smarter October 1, 2009October is going to be hot with offers, extended support, and enhanced serviceability, as Gossimer has acquired HiTek Networks, and launched new and improved Support desk. The web hosting world is abuzz by the two important developments in Gossimer. [PR.com] […]
- Gossimer Offers Unlimited E-mails for $1 September 28, 2009Gossimer, the fastest growing domain name and webhosting company, has announced a no-upgrade “The Ultimate Email Plan” that will give the buyer an access to unlimited email accounts for just $1/month. [PR.com] […]
Gossimer Promotions and Announcements
- TechSupport Notifications February 28, 2010Technical support information and notifications […]
- PHP4 Discontinuation - 18th September September 7, 2009As announced earlier, PHP4 will not be supported on our Linux Hosting Servers from the 18th of September, 2009. Please pass on this information to your Customers and Resellers to ensure that they can update their websites to work with PHP5. […]
- .CN Launch - Coming Soon August 16, 2009We are glad to announce the launch of .CN - the most popular and fastest growing ccTLD worldwide. The .CN domain extension has seen an exemplary growth since its launch throughout the world. Earlier this year, .CN crossed over 13 million registrations to become the second most registered domain extension after .COM. Moreover, with China now representing the […]
- Live Chat Product Discontinuation - Moved to 18th August August 16, 2009Based on feedback that we received from several Resellers, we have decided to postpone the Live Chat discontinuation to the August of 18th, 2009 at 12:30 UTC. From the 18th of August, it will not be possible to purchase new Live Chat packages but exisiting packages will continue to function normally. […]
Support Notifications
- .ORG & .NAME Unavailability Notice: March 13, 2010 March 13, 2010Due to the scheduled maintenance at the .ORG Registry, the .ORG Production environment would be undergoing a planned downtime for maintenance, as per the following schedule: Maintenance Window Date - March 13, 2010 Time: 15:00 hrs - 19:00 hrs GMT/UTC Duration: 4 hours Affected Systems - Domain Name Registrations, Renewals, Transfers, Management on the Live i […]
- Scheduled Maintenance - Email Server March 11, 2010A hardware upgrade has been scheduled on one of our Email hosting servers. Maintenance Window * Date: March 11, 2010 * Start Time: 11:15 PM IST / 5:45 PM GMT * Estimated Duration: 30 Mins Packages hosted on the below mentioned IPs shall be affected: 70.87.28.129 70.87.29.17 70.87.29.156 70.87.29.23 70.87.28.130 70.87.29.18 70.87.29.157 70.87.29.21 70.87.29.2 […]
- Scheduled maintenance on our Windows Hosting Servers March 10, 2010There would be a scheduled maintenance on each of our Windows Hosting Servers to ensure that they are patched with the latest updates. Each server would be taken offline, anytime during the duration mentioned below. Batch 1: Start Time: Friday, March 12, 2010 19:00 GMT End Time: Saturday, March 13, 2010 17:00 GMT Batch 2: Start Time: Saturday, March [...] […]