Kenzolow.blogspot.com

Although Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) does fall into two distinct categories there is no ethical stance on SEO.
Don't let a search Engine Optimiser sell you that they have ethical ways of working when optimising your site. Either a technique works or is doesn't. Period.
As long as you know the risks, there is nothing wrong with "Black Hat" SEO. It is not illegal or immoral. The only downfall is that your site MAY get black listed.

People attempting to do SEO will invariably push the boundaries in trying to get their website to the top of the search engines. This article will briefly explain what to do and what not to do.

Search Engine Optimisation has two areas of functionality. White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO.

White Hat SEO – is typically working within the search engines guidelines, by working within the Search Engines guidelines your site should be safe and won't face the chance of being banned or de-indexed by the search Engines.
This involves on-page optimisation and link building. There are many, many different types of on-page optimisation and link building that are deemed acceptable and there are many that are seem as unacceptable. The easiest way to explain what you can and can't do is by starting with what you can't do. That falls under the "Black-Hat" banner.

Black Hat SEO - is working outside the Search Engines guidelines, while there are many a grey area, I will list the definitive actions you should avoid if you don't want to put your website at risk.

Hidden or Partially hidden text - This is making your copy the same colour as your back round.

Cloaking - This is showing search engines on page in visitors another. This is a risk but effective way of boosting your ranking.

Keyword Stuffing – This involves stuffing keywords into the picture descriptions or Meta Tags.

Participating in Link Farms - This is where thousands of unrelated sites link to one another.

Of late, Outsourcing has taken the business world by storm. And why not undertake this process for any business when one can only have many advantages after undertaking this process for their business. For those who are involved with online business, they know what it takes to catch the attention of search engines and this is why they are very particular about the SEO or search engine optimization strategy that they undertake for their business. However, we also know that anyone who is in the field of online marketing is not an individual who has knowledge about all the nuances related to SEO. This is one of the major reasons why outsourcing SEO is a good option for such business undertakings.

SEO is the work of a specialist and you cannot thrust such an important task of your business to just any individual. Outsourcing SEO will provide you with many options and one of them is that you will be able to hire the services of trained professionals to help you in your SEO work. If you have an online business site, undoubtedly you will want to promote this site on the web and outsourcing SEO is one of the most affordable means to do this for your site. If you have not undertaken outsourcing SEO services for your company, chances are there you will not be able to hire the services of trainer professionals as their services are quite expensive.

Outsourcing SEO can take care of many aspects related to your business and one of the most crucial things is that the process can help you in freeing up the internal resources of your business. When you undertake outsourcing SEO for your business, you will hand over the working of your company to a third party and this is the reason why you must decide carefully if you really want to undertake this process and how beneficial this will be for you. then prerogative lies in your hand as since you are the business owner you are in the best potion to decide if outsourcing SEO will be beneficial for your business or not.

Another reason why you must get highly trained professionals to do the work is that it is very important to study the existing market. And if you do not have expertise in this area, there is no way that the campaign can turn out to be successful. SEO requires different things to be done and finding out what strategies will best suit a business is also the work of an expert. Just make sure that the firm from which you are hiring the outsourcing SEO services has the experience of handling this work if you want to succeed in this venture.

Outsourcing SEO has been successfully undertaken by several businesses and there is no reason why you cannot implement this for your business. The purpose of all business is to earn profit and if a business process like outsourcing SEO can help out these businesses then there is no reason not to undertake this

If you're going to sell any type of product or service online, you're eventually going to have to optimize your Web site for the Search Engines, in order to boost traffic and sales.

Many years ago, it was quite easy to draw effective traffic, as a good content-driven site, with good products, was enough to get a Web site ranked highly in the Search Engines. The competition has increased one thousand times over since then, with billions of Web sites existing online now, making for some very stiff competition in the area of Search Engine placement and rankings.

This increase in competition has given rise to many different styles, and many different methods of Web site optimization. Optimization is simply the method of making a Web site "Search Engine friendly", by using methods of enhancement that will increase rankings and placement by placing the Web site higher in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages).

Everything from software to increase rankings and placement, to Search Engine Management and Marketing Firms exist, with many online merchants becoming confused about what or "whom" to use and how to effectively use the various services to increase rankings and placement.

The real battle seems to exist between those that favor "Organic SEO" as opposed to those that prefer "Non-Organic SEO". The term "organic" itself is defined by Webster's Dictionary as: instrumental; acting as instruments of nature or of art to a certain destined function or end (Webster's: 1913: 3).

"Organic SEO", also called "Natural SEO", is the most time consuming, and the most tedious method of optimization for placement and rankings. However, it is prone to longevity of results, as it has a focus on content, meta-tag enhancement using proper descriptions, keyword enhanced copy within the appropriate specified densities of the Search Engines, and link exchanges. In addition, keyword dense reports, articles, and other content materials are usually added in a routine fashion to a site to maintain the densities necessary and increase rankings and placement.

"Organic SEO", if done properly in a step-by-step approach, can literally promote increased traffic and rankings for years. It can also contain overall marketing costs, as the use of PPC (Pay Per Click), is not needed as much with this method. The main drawbacks with this type of SEO, however, are the length of time it takes to properly implement all the steps necessary, and the length of time it takes the Search Engines to thoroughly spider and index a site that has implemented "Organic SEO".

"Non-Organic SEO", also called "Artificial SEO", can take many forms, and can use some "Organic SEO" coupled with other techniques. These techniques can include software generated keyword enhanced pages, some methods of re-directs, whereby traffic is shunted off from other sites, with their permissions, and software generated doorway pages and meta-tag descriptions. There are many different techniques that can be employed including rather controversial ones such as hidden text loaded with keywords, and tiny text.

Overall, "Non-Organic" SEO methods are quite popular, as it is a much quicker means to rankings and placement. Links might be purchased from "link farms" which are simply services that specialize in the promotion of links to others.

Although "Non-Organic SEO" can speed up rankings and placement initially, care needs to be given when using any of these methods. If keyword dense pages are automatically generated en masse, the Search Engines might view large sites, with large numbers of such pages as "Search Engine Spammers" and a risk of being banned does exist. In addition, pages may initially place very high, only to drop lower rather quickly, as the Search Engines still place a great emphasis on good content, which is not usually the focus of the "Non-Organic" type of SEO.

All in all, it really depends upon the overall purpose of a site, and the longevity of results desired by a Web master/site owner. It also depends upon how quickly results and sales are needed. For some seasonal sites, such as holiday-theme sites that only remain up for a few weeks or months, then the quicker method of "Non-Organic SEO" can be quite effective. On the other hand, if a Web master/site owner promotes a product or service to which they are committed for years, or perhaps a lifetime, then "Organic SEO" would definitely be the better choice of optimization method.

No matter which type of SEO methods are chosen or implemented, an ongoing campaign of optimization does need to exist, as the parameters that are used for the rankings and placement by the Search Engines, change frequently, and research into current methods needs to be done routinely.

As the old saying goes, "Different strokes for different folks", really applies to Search Engine Optimization and rankings and placement. The whole Search Engine Optimization process is really more "art than science", and continues to change daily.

Some call it a question of ethics; others just call it business. The discussion is raging online and in marketing conferences around the world, but what exactly are black hat SEO and white hat SEO, anyway?

White hat SEO is the angelic version of optimization, that is, it employs only techniques as recommended - or at least, not barred - by search engines and their ever-changing guidelines. Typically, results in the form of more traffic and higher profits take anywhere from three months to a year. With this type of SEO, there is no fear of your site being banned by search engines.

Black hat SEO, on the other hand, is the impatient fraternal twin of white hat SEO. It utilizes techniques specifically banned by search engines like hidden text and hidden links. Some call this spam. Others call it business savvy. Whatever you call it, if the search engine gurus figure out your game then the gig is up and you're blackballed. That means that you could type the name of your company and your name and business address into the search box and your site still won't come up.

It basically breaks down like this: White hat SEO focuses on marketing and the text on a site, updating with keyword rich, informative articles that benefit their clients and build a solid following over time. Black hat SEO focuses on technology and IT tricks to get a ton of traffic right away.

The important thing to consider is what your goal is. Do you want high traffic or do you want high sales? With black hat SEO, you may get immediate results as far as visitors to your site but do these visitors want to buy what you have to offer? If not, who cares if they end up on your site? White hat SEO is more interested in targeted traffic, attracting the kind of visitors to your site who are actually looking for you and are ready to buy your products or services. Over time, your traffic and sales rise together as you build up a following through word of mouth and repeat customers.

So what's all the fuss about? Mostly, the rules. White hat SEO follows them meticulously. Black hat SEO follows the numbers instead. Those who take the time to research and follow the rules are irritated by those who achieve high search engine rankings without taking the same pains. However, black hat SEO proponents point out that search engine requests are hardly laws and therefore doing what they like is far from illegal. It's in this discussion that the white hat and black hat merge to become a grey hat.

In fact, white hat fanatics might charge that those who write articles specifically to utilize keyword repetition are manipulating the system and are dabbling in black hat SEO. The less fanatical may point to links as a grey area. Search engines don't want links on a site purely to drive traffic. However, if links are related to the content on the site, then that's okay. But what about those sites where there are paid links that have nothing whatsoever to do with the content of the site they grace? Paid links as advertisements are white hat. Paid links purely for driving traffic, black hat. True motivation of the webmaster? Grey hat.

When it comes down to it, everyone who utilizes search engines in hopes of gaining top rankings are going to use optimization in order to climb to the top of those rankings. If motivation is the only concern, then it is an issue of politics that need not take up your time. Just know that if you use technology, link farms, and other banned resources that are designed purely to drive traffic and you get caught, you will be blacklisted from the search engine. If it's worth the risk to you, then do what you have to do. The choice is yours.

Some call it a question of ethics; others just call it business. The discussion is raging online and in marketing conferences around the world, but what exactly are black hat SEO and white hat SEO, anyway?

White hat SEO is the angelic version of optimization, that is, it employs only techniques as recommended - or at least, not barred - by search engines and their ever-changing guidelines. Typically, results in the form of more traffic and higher profits take anywhere from three months to a year. With this type of SEO, there is no fear of your site being banned by search engines.

Black hat SEO, on the other hand, is the impatient fraternal twin of white hat SEO. It utilizes techniques specifically banned by search engines like hidden text and hidden links. Some call this spam. Others call it business savvy. Whatever you call it, if the search engine gurus figure out your game then the gig is up and you're blackballed. That means that you could type the name of your company and your name and business address into the search box and your site still won't come up.

It basically breaks down like this: White hat SEO focuses on marketing and the text on a site, updating with keyword rich, informative articles that benefit their clients and build a solid following over time. Black hat SEO focuses on technology and IT tricks to get a ton of traffic right away.

The important thing to consider is what your goal is. Do you want high traffic or do you want high sales? With black hat SEO, you may get immediate results as far as visitors to your site but do these visitors want to buy what you have to offer? If not, who cares if they end up on your site? White hat SEO is more interested in targeted traffic, attracting the kind of visitors to your site who are actually looking for you and are ready to buy your products or services. Over time, your traffic and sales rise together as you build up a following through word of mouth and repeat customers.

So what's all the fuss about? Mostly, the rules. White hat SEO follows them meticulously. Black hat SEO follows the numbers instead. Those who take the time to research and follow the rules are irritated by those who achieve high search engine rankings without taking the same pains. However, black hat SEO proponents point out that search engine requests are hardly laws and therefore doing what they like is far from illegal. It's in this discussion that the white hat and black hat merge to become a grey hat.

In fact, white hat fanatics might charge that those who write articles specifically to utilize keyword repetition are manipulating the system and are dabbling in black hat SEO. The less fanatical may point to links as a grey area. Search engines don't want links on a site purely to drive traffic. However, if links are related to the content on the site, then that's okay. But what about those sites where there are paid links that have nothing whatsoever to do with the content of the site they grace? Paid links as advertisements are white hat. Paid links purely for driving traffic, black hat. True motivation of the webmaster? Grey hat.

When it comes down to it, everyone who utilizes search engines in hopes of gaining top rankings are going to use optimization in order to climb to the top of those rankings. If motivation is the only concern, then it is an issue of politics that need not take up your time. Just know that if you use technology, link farms, and other banned resources that are designed purely to drive traffic and you get caught, you will be blacklisted from the search engine. If it's worth the risk to you, then do what you have to do. The choice is yours.

If you are interested in trying to make money from your blog, you probably want to know how you can best optimize your blog for great search engine results. After all, most people stumble upon blogs when doing a search for something. If you use these optimization tips effectively, it may be your blog more people are drawn to. So, check these tips out and experiment with your own blog. Note what has the best results and stay with it. Change the other things around a bit until you get the results out of them that you want.

Simple Content

Many experts say that the best way to optimize your blog is to keep everything very simple. You can choose one quality content topic and make it your base. Then from there you can use variations of the topic in order to keep everything going. This may seem like a broad and useless tip, but once you get into blogging more and more, you understand how important it is.

Put More Out There

If you are trying to get more of a presence on search engines, be sure that you have something to show. The more content you have, the more likely you are to show up on a search engine. Bigger sites always do better than smaller sites. It is simply a numbers game. Search engines will see your site in a different manner, depending on how much content you have. The more content you have, the more there is a chance there will be that someone will stumble onto your site.

Ask Search Engines for Help

Few people know that you can actually submit your site to search engines. Submit your site's URL and ask to be put into the index. This can take a while, but if they do list you in the index, you will see a larger increase in traffic. Beware however of a service that asks for money in exchange for getting your sites into search engines. These can be a little misleading at times. There are ways to do this without needing to pay anyone at all.

Keyword Pay

A great idea for optimization is to identify the most popular keywords. By doing this, you are essentially targeting the keywords that people most often search for. When you do this, you have an edge over the competition. When you know exactly what the people are looking for, you can give them just that. Once you have a list of keywords, simply create articles that use these keywords. By creating these articles, you are putting yourself out there to be found. When someone does a search for those keywords, your blog just might pop up on their screen. Be careful not to use the keyword so much that your article does not make sense however.

Daily Updates

If you really want the best optimization, you should update it daily at the least. The more you update it, the more often search engines will index your blog. Therefore, you will want to be sure your blog is always fresh. Adding new information is the best way to update your blog. The more new information you have, the better off you will be! Just be sure that when you do update, it is for a good reason. You should always remember that content can have a purpose, but it should always be quality content. If you compromise content, you are only allowing yourself to strip the creativity from your project. If you are happy with doing that, by all means go ahead. However, as a writer, you will have a certain responsibility to web surfers. Unless you want everything on the web to be useless, do your part!

Use these tips to help optimize your blog and get the most from search engines. The more you post and use these tips, the more results you will see. If you earn your living from the number of clicks your blog or your ads get, this will essentially mean more money for you. You can use all of them or some of them. Experiment with them to see what works best for you and your blog. Put these tips to use and watch your results rise today!

Here we are, in the midst of some serious keyword research. We have gone ahead and created a nice list of keywords we've found people to be typing into search engines. So now what? Do we choose three to four of them.. five to eight? How many keywords should we be targeting? Initial instinct may say either one of the above ranges is appropriate, but let's ignore our instincts for a minute and give it some more thought.

For this discussion, let's assume our site sells women's clothing. We have our list and we see that the top 5 searched for keywords are:

women's clothing - 9,282 women's clothing shop - 3,885 plus size women's clothing - 638 women's sport clothing - 420 women's clothing catalog - 322

(Numbers shown are approximate searches per day provided by Overture)

For our purposes, four out of the five keywords listed relate well to what we are trying to sell. Our clothing is general women's clothing so we can remove plus size women's clothing from the list. So, here we have four keywords that are very relevant to our sites topic, receive lots of searches and everything looks just peachy.

So what's the hitch? Well, unless your store name is Macy's, Wal-Mart or some other big name clothing retailer, you've got many problems if your strategy is to only target these four phrases. The biggest one being the amazing amount of competition you will be facing to achieve top rankings for these words, but that's not what we're talking about here. Keyword competition is only one aspect of selecting good keywords. The aspect we're focusing on today is very simple in concept but for some reason many people/site owners don't get it or choose to neglect it.

First, let's get some perspective here. The five keywords listed above, after doing some quick math, bring in an approximate total of 15,000 searches per day according to Overture's numbers.

9,282 3,885 638 420 + 322 -------- 14,547 total searches per day

That's a lot of potential traffic, IF you rank highly for EACH one of those phrases. I can tell you now that if you spend the next 2 years tailoring your website for those phrases alone you'll be lucky to exist in the top 40 results for all of them when the 2 years is up. That's a lot of time and work for mediocre results that will bring maybe .01% of those searches to your site. If we know anything by now about search habits it's that users don't like to stray much farther than page one then they move on to a new search term. Which just so happens to tie in perfectly with the concept we're about to explain.

Search habits show that a user may initially type "women's clothing" into a search engine to find what they are looking for. Once the search is complete and the results are displayed, they will probably click to a few of the top 5 ranking websites as well as some of the paid listings. What the user generally ends up realizing after this process, is that the results being shown are entirely too vague in nature to find exactly what they are looking for. So what do they do next? They narrow down their search of course. Instead of women's clothing they now type in something like "women's tank tops".

What's this? They're not searching for women's clothing anymore? Of course they are, but instead of such a broad term as women's clothing they search for more specific items to get better, more relevant search results. This process continues until they find exactly what they are looking for (pink women's tank top with silver sequins) or give up trying. So, with this knowledge in mind, let's move on to the concept at hand.

When it comes to your website, what is it that you are actually trying to sell? Is it women's clothing? Yes. But is that all? I should hope not. In addition to the overall theme of women's clothing, you might have women's tank tops, women's jeans, skirts, shirts, accessories and many other individual products and categories that exist in the realm of women's clothing. This is where we get into the 'more keywords' is better idea. Every product, category and more importantly, page in your website should be targeting something different. If you have a category for women's jeans, that page should target women's jeans and two or three other variations of that search term. If you have a product within the women's jeans category name seven jeans A pocket style, that page should be targeting keywords consistent with seven jeans A pocket style. The goal here is to get specific with our keywords where appropriate.

Now, you may say, "But when I do my keyword research it shows hardly any searches for seven jeans A pocket style, so why would I target that keyword?" Well, regardless of what those numbers say one can never know for sure every search queried in the search engines.. So be honest with yourself and think, "If I wanted a pair of these jeans, what would I type in to Google?" Me, personally, I'd search for seven jeans A pocket style or A pocket seven jeans, etc. And chances are my site will rank much higher for that more specific/less competitive keyword than it would for something as competitive as women's clothing.

Now, take this concept and apply it to all of your categories/products/pages and, depending on your inventory, you'll begin to see why you should be targeting possibly hundreds of keywords at a time instead of three or four site wide.

To give us further reason to apply this method to our website, let's look back to the previous numbers mentioned above. We saw approximately 15,000 searches a day for the top five women's clothing searches performed according to Overture. How does at best, a few searches a day for these very specific terms even compare? I'll show you.

Using our search term suggestion tool we see approximately 10 searches a day performed for seven A pocket jeans, 45 searches a day for earl jeans and similar numbers down the line for all of our specific products and categories.

In the essence of time, let's say on average our specific keywords get about 20 searches a day each, and we have a list of 120 specific keywords based on our products and categories.

So again, we'll do some quick math. 20 searches per day X 120 keywords = 2,400 searches per day

We can see from these numbers that with high rankings for our specific keywords we could potentially see 2,400 searches a day coming to our site. This is by no means 15,000 but the truth is, you can eventually equal that number of total searches by expanding your keyword base over time and get much more targeted traffic in the process. I'll take 2,400 targeted visitors to my site over 15,000 general searches any day. Remember, the users searching for women's clothing usually end up modifying their search to something more specific anyway. So much of that traffic generated by a search for women's clothing ends up in a quick visit then a quick click on the back button. Whereas a user typing in seven jeans A pocket style clicks to your site and sees exactly what they are looking for.. That type of traffic is much more likely to end up in a sale, which is the ultimate goal for all of us.

If we lock down all of our specific products and categories with high rankings in the search engines we are ensuring that most of the traffic generated by our optimization efforts is highly targeted to what our site offers.

Women's clothing is a great theme for your site, and should be optimized for (we will go over how to do this in another article).. But as far as sales, rankings and overall targeted traffic is concerned, we need to spread our reach well beyond women's clothing to all areas of women's clothing. Make sense? .