I Do Web Marketing

This post is going to cover a very important aspect of internet marketing. This will be helpful you to ensure your SEO provider is not doing any of these tactics. These tactics are often referred to as “black hat seo,” and should be avoided at all costs.

Overuse of Targeted Keywords
It is important to utilize your title, meta, and alt tags. It is important to utilize your keyword phrases throughout your content as well. However, overusing them or stuffing them into small locations in a repeated manner can be very damaging to your site. Search Engines will read this as exactly that, abuse.

Hidden Text
Tying into the targeted keywords, some developers will hide targeted keywords into their backgrounds. So, for example, if the background of a web page is white some developers will use white text in that background and fill up that space with their targeted keyword phrases. Search engines have extremely complex algorithms and can read this type of behavior for what it is.

Redirecting Domains
Having other domains that have no other purpose, but to redirect to your site is also a good way to have your site blacklisted by search engines. Don’t get me wrong, multiple domains relating to your niche market can be helpful if those web pages are established and not just automatically linking to your home page.

Cloaking
This involves changing what search engines are seeing versus what visitors see. There are still cloaking methods that are not yet traceable by search engines, but search engine algorithms are constantly changing and this tactic will eventually get you in trouble. Especially should a competitor find out what you are doing, they surely report this to search engines.

Duplicate Websites
This was an old method that was quite frequent in the early days of search engine optimization. Fresh and unique content is king. If you have multiple websites with the same content, this will get your site in trouble. Search engines or competitors will undoubtedly discover the tactics you are using.

Auto-Submission
Many link builders, article submitters, and press release distributors utilize automated software to handle the distribution aspect of these marketing methods. This can possibly lead to trouble down line if these directories feel they are being automated. These directories themselves can report your site to search engines in this case.

In conclusion, if you find that your SEO provider is utilizing any of these techniques than I highly suggest you cancel your agreement immediately with them. This will do more harm than good and you may never be able to recover from this.

The heart and soul of most marketing campaigns is in the link building aspect. Whenever another site links to yours, it is commonly referred to as a backlink. Why are backlinks so important? Well, search engines (Google in particular), take great value in the amount of links a web site has pointing to their domain. They view this as a way to measure how important your site is. So, if you have hundreds or thousands of web sites linking to your web site, then search engines feel like your site is relevant and has importance.

Now, having said that, not just any web site will do. You can’t go and create 1,000 domain names and just have them all link to your web site. Google has a complexing algorithm in place, to monitor where the links come from and your site could very well be penalized using that tactic. It is commonly referred to as “blackhat seo.” We will cover the difference between blackhat and whitehat seo in another post. Another thing you do not want your web site associated with is Free-For-All (FFA) link pages and link farms. These are looked upon very negatively by search engines, and again you will be punished. When I say punished, I mean you will no longer show up in any searches. It will almost be as if your web site does not exist.

Being blacklisted by search engines can be catastrophic for an internet business. This is why it is important that you understand the link building techniques, and if you are using an internet marketing firm, ensure that your links are being built correctly.

There are several quality web site directories out there. One of the best is www.dmoz.org. I say they are one of the best, because that web site in particular has a Google Page Rank of 8. Pages are given page rank based on their web site. A page rank is based on a scale of 0 to 10. A page rank of 0 is common for new web sites, or sites with very little web presence. So for a site to have a page rank of 8, it shows they have several backlinks (4 million plus for dmoz.org), and have been around for a long time. Search engines put more validity into web sites that have been around for more than a year, and do not feel that it is a spam type of web site in that case. So, the point of all of this is, you want to try and find web site directories that you can submit your web site too. However, you want to try and find web site directories that have a higher page rank than your own web site. As you probably guessed, that is also part of the google algorithm. They factor in the quality of the web sites you are linking from.

Another method to link building is to find web sites in your same market niche. Try to contact the webmaster and see if there is a way your site can be listed from their web site. In many cases, they may request a link back to their own web site. Might not be a bad thing to consider, and these are referred to as reciprocal links.

Another good way to build links is by submitting content to blogs or forums. Always include links in your signature, and only post relevant content or replies. Do not just post one line responses with links back to your site. This will be considered SPAM on most forums, and would lead to your account being deleted and your posts being removed.

I hope this has helped to shed some light on the link building process. These are the steps which we take to ensure our link building campaigns are successful at Novel Concept Studio.

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.