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In the online media, the topic that is most discussed is search engine optimization. For an expert, understanding the technicalities involved with it is a cakewalk. But this is not true in the case of a beginner. Lots of new words are added to the search engine dictionary and finding out what means what calls for great attention and research. If you find difficult to squeeze time for making in-depth research, here are the terms that are used most frequently in the online world of search engine optimization.

Meta Tags: One among the determining factors of the page ranking of a site, meta tags deserves more attention. These tags are a must if you want the search engines to list your site more accurately in their indexes. The meta tag elements are placed in the head section of a HTML document and are often visible to the users.

Keyword density: This term refers to how often a keyword is used in the website. Keyword density is the part of basic SEO.

Pay Per Click: This is an advertising model, where the advertisers have to pay only when the visitors actually click an advertisement to the advertiser’s website. This way, website owners can buy better positions in the search engine results. Yahoo! and Google are two among the leading players in the pay per click industry. Though Google is not a pay per click search engine, it do offers PPC advertisements in text boxes to the right side of the search results.

Inbound links: More often, you would have come across this terminology. Playing an important role in search engine marketing, inbound links bring visitors to your site from other websites.

Outbound links: This is also a common terminology in the SEO world. An outbound link is a link from your site to another website.

Link popularity: Link popularity and inbound links go hand in hand. This is a measure of determining how many sites link back to you. It is said that you can increase the traffic to your website by increasing the inbound links.

Spiders: No, not that Peter Parker kind of spider, a spider in a search engine is a program that automatically fetches web pages and feeds them to the search engines. This program crawls all over the web and hence the name. Wikipedia definition says that a webcrawler (spider) is ‘a program or automated script which browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner’.

SERP: This is not a hard-to-digest search engine jargon. SERP refers to Search Engine Result Pages. When it comes to search engine page ranking, it is advised that you give high priority to the first 30 results.

Anchor text: You would have seen this terminology in forums were topics on optimizing images in a webpage are discussed. An anchor text refers to the visible text for a hyperlink.

Doorway pages: Doorway pages or gateway pages are an all-time favorite of the Black-Hat SEO experts. These pages are chiefly created for spamming the index of search engine. This is done by inserting results for particular keywords chiefly for the purpose of taking you to a different page i.e. when you click a doorway page from the search engine result listings, you will be redirected to another page with a fast meta refresh command.

Affiliate marketing:A higher level search engine promotion, affiliate marketing refers to a marketing program where the advertisers pay an affiliate for directing potential traffic to their site.

For Black-Hat SEO practitioners search engine optimization is a war. They try every nasty trick to get into the search engine listings; however, they end up getting blacklisted by them. Short-cuts are fun to follow, if and only if they take us to the right destination. Black-Hat SEO strategies often fail to take you in the right path and bring back the rank of ‘search engine spammer’ to your website!

If you are a new entrant to the online world of search engine and search engine optimization, it is advised that you have a fair idea about Black-Hat SEO and what factors make your site a ‘black-hat breeding ground’. Here are the notorious Black-Hat techniques you should avoid:

• Keyword stuffing
• Invisible text
• Doorway pages

Keyword Stuffing: Keywords are a must for search engines, agreed. But packing your site with an endless list of keywords could make it rank high as a search engine spammer! If you have pretty good idea about the online habits of internet users, it won’t be a tough task to uncover the keywords used by your potential customers. On the other hand, for those who are new to the concept of optimizing the web pages, tools like Overture Keyword Selector Tool, Google Keyword Tool and Wordtracker will be the right pick.

Invisible Text: If you thought you can get in to the search engine listing by hiding text all over your website, you are doing a big mistake. If search engines had a hate list, invisible text could have been the first entry to it. There is no denying the fact that placing invisible text could multiply your search results. But, remember that this is a short term gain and if the search engines detect this strategy in your site, be ready to say goodbye to your site.

Doorway Pages: Wondering what a doorway page is? Well, these are standalone pages created to serve as doorways to your site. You would come across numerous SEO firms that rely on doorway pages for search engine marketing and some of them go to the next level by offering software to create such pages. If you are keen on short-term gains, you can rely on these firms. On the other hand, if long term gains and increased business conversions are your focus, it is better that you keep away from this filthy Black-Hat SEO strategy. Doorway pages provide no secret entry to the search engines, rely on other ethical SEO strategies and take your website to the top of the search results.

Link Farms And Bad Neighborhoods Could Spell Disaster:

Yes, bad neighborhoods could drag your site to the status of a search engine spammer. If you have outbound links to websites with bad reputation, chances are high that the search engines penalize you for the backdoor entry. More often, search engine firms rely on link farms in generating the link popularity of the site. Here again, this approach is efficient as a short-term goal, the long-term gain of this approach will be the rank as a search engine spammer. There is no point in keeping hundreds of links in your website. It is advised that you keep the links in a page to the minimum, lower the better. Also, when you participate in a link farm, the links that you obtain to your site will be from totally irrelevant sites. Building link popularity is a long-term process and you can succeed in this, if and only if you link to relevant sites.

The offers provided by Black-Hat SEO firms will be too tempting to take up. Yes, you can have the confidence of guaranteed results with these firms; in addition, you can gain the rank of search engine spammer as a long-term gain.

Organic SEO is gaining fast popularity these days. If you have heard of SEO, you certainly would have heard about organic SEO. If you haven’t heard about the latter, read on to know what it is and what benefits it has to offer.

Gone are the days when driving more traffic to the site was simple and easier! Today, the teeming number of websites doubled the competition in the genre of search engine placements and rankings. With this came many back-door optimization strategies. Though the ‘non-organic approach’ speeds up initial ranking of the site, this strategy could earn your site the rank of ‘search engine spammer’. Yes, using the non-organic approach runs a higher chance of getting your site banned by the search engines. This is where organic SEO comes into a role.

The organic approach keeps your site in the search engine results for a longer time. Wondering how? Simple, this approach feeds the search engines what they want – relevancy! Search engines love relevant content and take such a site to the top of the listings. Organic SEO gives high priority to including keyword rich content in high value regions like anchor text, headings, titles, meta tags and meta descriptions. In short, keyword rich content is the key behind organic search engine optimization. Another contributing factor to the growth of organic SEO is link popularity. You can boost the link popularity of your site by acquiring links that point to your website. The benefits of ‘non-organic’ or ‘black hat’ strategies pale in comparison with that of organic SEO! If you are looking for long term benefits at low costs, organic SEO is the right choice for you.

The advantages of organic SEO promises higher return on investment. Yes, studies reveal that searchers prefer to click on natural search engine results rather the paid ones. In addition, the link building strategy of this approach keeps your site in the top search listings for a longer period. However, you cannot turn a deaf ear to the downside of organic SEO. The main weakness of this approach is that you will have to wait for a longer time to see the result of your natural search engine optimization campaign. Well, if it is worth the wait, why not give it a try?

To make the long story short, whichever approach you choose, an ongoing optimization campaign is a must. The ranking and placement strategies set by the search engines keep changing, thus you can retain the top listing if and only if your site is updated with these revisions.

If you are planning to bring your website to the top of the search listing via spamming, you are playing a risky game! Yes, the website you have created is the result of your hard-earned money and is built on your dreams of a successful eBusiness. And do you want all these dreams to shatter just because you tried a ‘back-door’ entry to the search engines?

Let us begin with the definition of search engine spam. Different people define spam in different ways. When Tim Mayer, VP, Web Search for Overture, considers spam as “pages created deliberately to trick the search engine into offering inappropriate, redundant, or poor-quality search results”, others claim it to be ‘the unethical way to cheat search engines’. All these definitions points at one fact – search engine spamming is a short-cut to disaster! Many people fall prey to the search engine spam techniques without their knowledge. Having an understanding about the black-hat strategies could keep you from being blacklisted by the search engines. Here we will discuss about the methods that multiplies the chances of a site to get listed as a ‘Spam’.

Strict No-No’s

Here is a quick-checklist to find whether your site has the spamming ingredients:

• Invisible text (Text that is of the same color as background)
• Irrelevant keywords
• Improper use of headings (For instance, <h1> - <h6> should not be used within paragraphs)
• Usage of doorway pages or mirror sites
• Stuffing the pages with keywords
• Duplicate content

Above mentioned are the primary contributors to search engine spamming. Now we will move our focus to the secondary contributors. More often it is the unethical or non-organic strategies adopted by the SEO firms that pushes your treasured website to the ‘spammer pit’. Terms like ‘instant link popularity’ and ‘incredulous link framing’ are good to hear, but before you go by their words make sure to check the following:

• A wide majority of the SEO firms create free-for-all (FFA) websites just for the purpose of linking to each other. But the truth is that these sites serve as spam magnets instead of improving the page ranking of the site. By taking your website to participate in a link-farm, you are increasing the chances of getting your site penalized by the search engines.
  

• If the SEO firm claims to offer ‘instant link popularity’, make sure to check which method they are adopting to achieve the same. Remember, the most legitimate way to build the link popularity of a site is through the major directories.
  

• Cloaking – this is a practice of providing different content or URLs to users and search engines. If the search engine finds out that your site serves different content to search engines than to users, your site will be penalized or banned.

• Make sure to check with the firm whether they have the permission to perform automated submission and queries.

You can also refer the guidelines set by popular search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines suggests, ‘submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites’. MSN’s Guidelines for Successful Indexing says that adding a sitemap allows MSNBot to locate all your pages easily. It is advised that you stick to the suggestions of these connoisseurs to save your website from getting blacklisted.

In short, Search Engine Optimization is not a mystery science. It is built on algorithms and pure common sense, if you want to impress the search engines, take the front door instead of battling for the back-door approach!