Ten Controversial Search Engine Optimization Techniques

1. Duplicate Pages

In general, search engines ignore duplicate pages. In extreme cases, they may ban a site.

2. Invisible Text

Search engines consider the use of text that is the same color as the background color as spam. So stay clear of using invisible text.

3. Keywords In Comment Tags

Hardly any, if any, of the major search engines index comment tags, so don't waste time adding them for optimization purposes.

4. Keywords In Hidden Value Tags

Keywords in hidden value tags are considered spam by all of the major search engines, so don't waste time with this practice.

5. Keywords In Style Tags

Very few search engines index the content of Link Farms And Link Exchange Programs

Search engines consider link farms and link exchange programs as spam, as they have only one purpose - to artificially inflate a site's link popularity, by exchanging links with other participants.

Do not confuse link farms and link exchange programs with reciprocal linking. Reciprocal linking is the exchange of links with individual sites, and certainly an accepted technique for improving your site's link popularity.

7. Links Only Pages

I recommend adding text descriptions to link pages and site maps. Some search engines have been known to kick out links only pages.

8. Meta Refresh Tags

In general, meta refresh tags set for under 30 seconds are considered as spam by search engines. As such, most search engine optimizers use JavaScript redirects.

Are you confused? I certainly am!

So to be on the safe side, I suggest sticking with JavaScript redirects, until there is conclusive proof that search engines accept meta refresh tags.

9. Tiny Text

Many of the major search engines consider tiny text (i.e. font size 1) as spam. Some use of tiny text is fine. Search engines don't like web pages that use a lot of tiny text. The reason is because some webmasters have used it to fool search engines by "hiding" dozens of keywords in a web page.

10. Cloaking

Cloaking is the practice of serving search engine optimized pages to search engine spiders, while at the same time serving un-optimized pages to site visitors.

Cloaking is one of the most controversial strategies in search engine optimization. Major search engines publicly state that they consider all cloaking to be spam. However, many professional search engine optimizers have been using cloaking for years, with much success.

Until there is conclusive proof that search engines do indeed ban sites that use cloaking, I suggest you take care if you decide to use cloaking.

About SEO

Search engine optimization or SEO has been one of the major and useful tools in web marketing. Today, it plays a big role and will continue to be so in the future especially with a stiffer competition for online visibility. Its main function of improving traffic to websites through search engines is what makes it a standout among the other web marketing tools available on the internet.

Through the years, the SEO process has continually experienced upgrades to suit the advancing needs of web users. And this trend is just fitting because of the growth of the technology industry and the sprouting of SEO companies. Various additional tools have popped out to enhance SEO results and surely, more will come out in the coming years. There are so many free downloadable software today that web owners can rely on if they lack funds while companies who can afford can turn to the paid tools. As SEO campaigns become more effective, SEO firms are also adjusting to technology by adapting to new formats of search results. Of course, you have noticed that apart from the plain-text content, other forms of media like images, video and audio or the podcasts are now included in search engine result pages. The common goal here is to achieve the targeted visibility and eventually more traffic volume to websites. For the past ten years since the SEO technology attained its popularity, strategies in applying quality SEO has also improved although the basics are still the same. For one, the SEO process has become more personalized in an effort to be more effective. For example, Google is now providing varied search results to users depending on their location. If a web user searches for information within its locality, he or she can readily get results by clicking his own country. In addition, search engines are faster in detecting the speed at which a website obtains links. If your site is new and instantly shows a big amount of high PageRank pages, search engines will think that you are mainly dependent on link buying or link renting and will not give you a high ranking for those links.

Undoubtedly, Google remains the most popular search engine in most countries. It sticks to its rules including privacy policy which have become more rigid and continues to draw more users because of its being unbiased in its search results and SEO process. And despite the fraudulent moves taken by some people against this famous search engine, Google always comes out with a good solution. For more than a year now, Google has acknowledged a hacking technique aimed at destroying a websiteג€™s ranking. The technique is known as proxy hacking. Proxies are actually servers that function s a relay for internet requests. These web proxies enable people to surf the internet in an anonymous manner by forwarding their requests for content and delivering the requested content to web users. It is just like sending mail to another person by coursing it through the post office without any return address or information from the sender. A final tip: always be updated on the latest trends in search engine optimization. Do this by visiting forums and blogs on a regular basis and subscribing to some worthy SEO ezine or newsfeeds. Donג€™t be left behind because you will surely be missing a lot if you wonג€™t do your homework.

Page speed tool family

Page Speed is an open-source project started at Google to help developers optimize their web pages by applying web performance best practices. Page Speed started as an open-source Firefox/Firebug add-on and is now deployed in third-party products such as Webpagetest.org, Show Slow and Google Webmaster Tools.

Page Speed tool family

Page Speed is a family of tools for optimizing the performance of web pages.

• The Page Speed Firefox/Firebug add-on allows you to evaluate the performance of your web pages and to get suggestions on how to improve them.
• The mod_pagespeed Apache module automatically rewrites pages and resources to improve their performance.

The Page Speed extension runs performance tests based on a set of best practices known to reduce page load time.
mod_pagespeed, the Apache module automatically optimizes resources on a web page.

E-mail marketing

E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fund-raising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:

• sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers, to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,
• sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately,
• adding advertisements to e-mails sent by other companies to their customers, and
• sending e-mails over the Internet, as e-mail did and does exist outside the Internet (e.g., network e-mail and FIDO).

Advantages

E-mail marketing (on the Internet) is popular with companies for several reasons:

• An exact return on investment can be tracked ("track to basket") and has proven to be high when done properly. E-mail marketing is often reported as second only to search marketing as the most effective online marketing tactic.^[2]
• Advertisers can reach substantial numbers of e-mail subscribers who have opted in (i.e., consented) to receive e-mail communications on subjects of interest to them.
• Over half of Internet users check or send e-mail on a typical day.^[3]
• E-mail is popular with digital marketers, rising an estimated 15% in 2009 to £292m in the UK.^[4]
• E-mail allows marketers to reach out to consumers with personalized, relevant, dynamic messages.
• Transactional e-mails allow businesses to respond automatically to important consumer events like purchases or shop-cart abandonment.

Disadvantages

A report issued by the e-mail services company Return Path, as of mid-2008 e-mail deliverability is still an issue for legitimate marketers. According to the report, legitimate e-mail servers averaged a delivery rate of 56%; twenty percent of the messages were rejected, and eight percent were filtered.^[5]

Companies considering the use of an e-mail marketing program must make sure that their program does not violate spam laws such as the United States' Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM),^[6] the European Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, or their Internet service provider's acceptable use policy.

Source : wikipedia

Market your business on the internet

If you are not already marketing your business on the web, then you really need to start. Just about every business out there could benefit from internet marketing. It is very affordable to advertise your company on the internet, and it gives you the the chance to reach a much broader audience.The value of online marketing is just one of many reasons why lots of business owners are moving their advertising efforts online. Advertising online is extremely affordable, especially when you think of how many potential clients a business can reach with a good online advertising campaign. Most methods of online promotion are very affordable and a lot of them are totally free. One excellent way to advertise your company online for free, is to participate in forums related to your business, and having a link to your site in your signature that is displayed below your posts. Just be sure to be respectful and post informative posts so you earn the respect of the other forum users.The sheer size of the potential target audience is an excellent reason for any company to start marketing online. Chances are, you have a good idea of what your target audience is, and when advertising offline, you are forced to focus on these people. However, there may be many other groups of people who would be interested in your service or product, who would never find you offline. By advertising on the internet, you are able to reach a much larger audience, potentially open your business up to new markets.In addition, there may be members of your core target audience from around the world who would not have found your business off line. By moving online, you are no longer a local company, but a worldwide enterprise!Not only does the internet drastically broaden your reach, but it also increases your effective business hours. While your company might only be open Monday through Friday from 9 to 5, your website is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a week. Your business hours are now more than quadrupled, but without paying additional employees.If you run a business, and do not have a strong online presence, then you really need to begin learning more about online marketing. It is vital in this age of technology, and if your competitors are advertising on the internet, they are gaining a distinct advantage over you, and are becoming more appealing to potential customers. Before they dominate your market, it's time to market your business on the internet so you can keep up with the competition.

What is Viral Marketing?

Viral marketing is a marketing strategy that relies on individuals rather than traditional campaigns to pass along a message to others. It usually refers to marketing on the Internet. Viral marketing is so named because of the tendency for messages to use "hosts" to spread themselves rapidly, like a biological virus.

The term "viral marketing" first became prominent when used to describe a marketing campaign for the e-mail service Hotmail.com. When the company launched, every outgoing message contained an advertisement for Hotmail and a link to its website at the bottom of the e-mail. As people e-mailed their friends and colleagues, they were also advertising the service. Recipients could simply click on the link and sign themselves up, and as they e-mailed friends from their new account, the message spread within existing social networks and was passed along with little effort from the company.

This example demonstrates all the key elements of viral marketing. Its cost to the advertiser is minimal. Instead, it takes advantage of existing resources by making everyone who uses the product an involuntary spokesperson. It exploits common behaviors, such as sending an e-mail.

Viral marketing uses communications networks that are already in place. In the case of Hotmail, it implies endorsement from a friend. People who received an e-mail from a friend using the service learned that the product works and that their friends use it. And most importantly, viral marketing offers the ability to spread a message exponentially faster and to more people than conventional third-party ad campaigns.

There are different types of viral marketing, all using the same fundamental principles. Pass-along messages encourage users to send them along to others, such as e-mails with instructions to forward at the bottom or humorous video clips. Incentive-driven messages offer rewards in exchange for providing e-mail addresses. Undercover viral marketing presents messages in an unusual page or false news item without any direct incitement to pass it along, in the hopes that word-of-mouth will spread the message. Gossip or buzz marketing seeks to get people talking about something by creating controversy.

Viral marketing has come under criticism from consumers, privacy advocates, and marketing pundits because of concern over unsolicited e-mails. The best campaigns, however, use the principles of viral marketing tactfully to avoid negative reactions and ensure a high pass-along rate - the number of recipients that will pass the message to others. Much like the common cold, effective viral marketing uses people to unwittingly transmit a message within their social network. It takes the concept of word-of-mouth and enhances it with the instant global communication afforded by the Internet.

PPC beat Long tail keywords

After most years of selling upon a internet, we have come to comprehend which a most creative selling plan is PPC advertising. Adwords Pay Per Click however has it’s drawbacks. If you have been new marketing with really small believe of keywords, you mount a possibility of losing a lot of money. It is utterly a plea perplexing to contest for same keywords with a some-more knowledge marketers who have a income to outbid their competitors. That is a reason we indicate expanding your horizons by regulating prolonged tail keywords for improved formula with PPC.

Long tail keywords have been shady treasures which most home commercial operation entrepreneurs mostly fail to notice. A lengthened tail keyword is a password as against to a singular word. Instead of regulating a keyword related to topic, you can put together to have a prolonged tail keyword such as how to get topic. Long tail keywords have been really in effect since not all people simply dig for a singular word, in actuality most internet searches will be a mixed word search.

Living in renouned make make use of of prolonged tail keyword word in your PPC ad campaign, regulating keyword collection such as Google AdWords Keyword Tool and SEO Book. These supports have been now used for working out a volume of a competitors to a stream buzzword. You will additionally be means to find out how most searches per month for any keyword word is created. In further to assisting you win a Keyword Tool PPC promotion costs for a due series of keyword phrases to urge your campaign.

Using prolonged tail keyword not usually assistance me to beat a price of PPC promotion though it additionally assistance me to get front page chain with my blogs and articles. Long tail keywords has been obliged for branch my PPC campaigns in to an online income creation machine. Before you give up upon regulating Pay Per Click promotion we indicate you cruise regulating prolonged tail keywords in your campaign.

It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like SEO for Xmas Time

While the weather outside may be frightful, launching new SEO campaigns for the Holidays can be incredibly delightful. And like any other marketing campaigns, competition for keywords can be fierce. Here are a few tips on how to get your site ready for the Holidays.

Cater Campaigns around Special Offers

Speak to your affiliate manager to find out about the Holiday promotions they have going on. Once you know what you have that you can market that is going to be competitive, you can begin to research keywords to use and create content around those things.

Do Your Research

It should come as no surprise that Holiday search terms are very competitive. Competition for phrases like “Christmas gifts” is high, and with some terms, getting even more generic ups the ante just that much more. So, how does one beat those Christmas keyword blues? Specialize your keyword phrases, but be very specialized. Phrases like “unique Christmas gifts” face even tougher competition, but if you were to get even more specialized, then the competition is lessened. The bottom line here is that the research is key to your Holiday campaigns. Find out where you can compete, and go for it.

Embrace the Seasonal Flu Virus and Get Viral

Not every video will, or even can go viral. If you can get your video to do so, you have staged a major coup. And even if you can’t, people love helpful videos. Product reviews and helpful tips will help you create buzz, and if you have these videos embedded on your site, you have a chance to engage your audience for a little while longer than you would with text.

Provide Value

The name of the game, no matter what time of year it is, is still relevance and uniqueness. Provide surfers with something that they’re not going to find somewhere else. Give them a really good reason to read your content. A really big reason for people to read content during the Holidays is savings. Use terms like discount, sale, or savings in your copy along with the keywords that you are optimizing for. You should, however, never forget that content is king, and always will be.

Get Meta

If you are using Meta Keywords, all you are doing is telling your competition what keywords you are after. It has been quite a while since search engines have looked at this at all. What they do look for, and what your potential visitors will see, is the Meta Description. This gives you 150 characters to reach your audience. Use the keywords you have optimized the page for in this description, and make sure that you are using copy that convinces people to click. This is your first introduction to surfers, and first impressions are everything. Make sure you’re giving the searchers what the searchers want.

Get Social

If you’re not using social media as a way to reach out to your potential customers, the only question at this point is, why not? This is an excellent way to grab your customers’ attention and keep them engaged. And if you can provide special sales or incentives for people to follow you via social media venues, then you are sure to find that people will be even more likely to sign up.

Google Ad Planner

A new free tool called Google Ad Planner to potentially increase its already widespread influence.

It’s a research and media planning tool that connects advertisers and publishers. When using Google Ad Planner, simply enter demographics and sites associated with your target audience, and the tool will return information about sites (both on and off the Google content network) that your audience is likely to visit. You can drill down further to get more detail like demographics and related searches for a particular site, or you can get aggregate statistics for the sites you’ve added to your media plan. Using Google Ad Planner, you can quickly create media plans and export to a .csv file, which can be opened in most spreadsheet applications.

So, with Google Ad Planner, you can:

• Define audiences by demographics and interests.
• Search for websites relevant to your audience.
• Access aggregated statistics on the number of unique visitors, page views, and other data for millions of websites from over 40 countries.
• Create lists of websites where you’d like to advertise and store them in a media plan.
• Generate aggregated website statistics for your media plan.

The Google Ad Planner account interface consists of:

• An audience definition tool, where you define your audience by language, age, and other criteria.
• A list of sites matching your criteria. The site list includes traffic, reach, and other key data for each site to help you make informed decisions about where you might advertise. To make your research more efficient, Google Ad Planner automatically refreshes the site list when you enter, remove, or edit audience definition criteria.

With Google Ad Planner, you can choose to research sites only or create a media plan to save a list of your desired sites and placements for future use.

How does Google Ad Planner work with Google AdWords?

Google Ad Planner can help you identify appropriate sites to target through Google AdWords. First, filter your Google Ad Planner results to display sites in the Google content network and export the appropriate list of sites to a .csv file.

You can then take any of the following actions in your AdWords account:

• Create a Google AdWords placement-targeted campaign: Be sure to select the List URLs option, and copy and paste your sites from column A of your .csv file into your campaign when prompted.
• Edit an existing Google AdWords placement-targeted campaign: Be sure to select the List URLs option, and copy and paste your sites from column A of your .csv file into your campaign when prompted.
• Use Google AdWords Editor to add placements to your ad groups: You won’t need to create a new spreadsheet, because Google Ad Planner has already done it for you. Simply copy sites from your .csv file directly into AdWords Editor.

Excellent Firefox Plugins/ Add-one for SEO

Which browser do you use? Which is the best browser? These are some of the common question which many people asked me.

Well as a SEO specialist my answer is very obvious…”FIREFOX” , though all browsers are important for graphic & web designers as they have to check their design, work & functionality on each & every browser. They have to check the compatibility of the site on each.

Anyways..I really like FireFox because it has many great Plugings that makes my work easy & helps in quick SEO analysis.
If you are an expert or just starting to learn SEO, these Firefox plugins are great. I use the majority of these SEO Firefox plugins on a daily basis, if not more often.
Here’s a listing of the best plugins available for SEO work:

Mahalo Share: Share and recommend Web pages across many different services; recommend a link once and have it automatically posted to any of Twitter, del.icio.us, MySpace, Ma.gnolia, Jaiku, your Tumblr blog, Facebook, Pownce, StumbleUpon, Mahalo, Faves, or Google Bookmarks.

Clipmarks: Your clips are saved on clipmarks.com and can easily be syndicated to FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook or other sites. You can also post anything you clip directly to your blog (supports WordPress, Blogger, Typepad and more) or send it directly to friends or co-workers via email. Your clip collection is accessible from any computer with an internet connection, including your iPhone, Blackberry, or other mobile device.

SeoQuake: Seoquake is a Mozilla Firefox extension aimed primarily at helping web masters who deal with search engine optimization and internet promotion of web sites. General set of parameters consists of such parameters as:

Google PR (Google PageRank of current page)

Google Index (Number of indexed pages. Google version)

Google link (Number of links, pointed to the current page. Google version (Except links from concerned domain))

And similar parameters for many other search engines (Yahoo, MNS, Yandex, Rambler, Baidu) and some other miscellaneous parameters.

LinkChecker: Check the validity of links on any webpage.

SEOpen 0.8: Provides some basic tools to help with search engine optimization, including Google backlinks, yahoo backlinks, PageRank check, http header viewer, and more. All features are available by right-clicking on an open area of a web page, or by using the included toolbar.

Search Synchronizer 1.3.0.3: Synchronizes the firefox searchbox 16 default search engines, and the ability for you to add more!
So when you search for something from the google website, for example, the firefox searchbox shall automatically show that search. Works with:
-Google
-Yahoo
-MSN
-Ask.com
-and 12 others!

SearchStatus 1.25: Display the Google PageRank, Alexa rank and Compete ranking anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and more.

RankQuest SEO Toolbar 3.9.2: RankQuest SEO(Search Engine Optimization) Toolbar provides you quick access to more than 30 intuitive SEO tools. Alexa Rank and Page Rank provided by Alexa and Google respectively ensure the popularity of the site. Once you download and install the SEO Toolbar you are only one or two clicks away from carrying out most of your day to day SEO operations.

FireFTP 0.99.1: FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers.

About This Site 1.1: One-click access to web site metadata – traffic, related and linked pages, and more – added to the Tools menu and context menu.

Page validator 0.3.3: Validates a page using the W3C Markup Validation Service. This is a simple extension that will work only for online pages.

SEO Link Analysis 1.0.3: Adds display of PageRank, linktext and nofollow links to external links in Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo! Site Explorer and Microsoft Webmaster Portal

Google Global 2.0.1: Google Global allows users to see organic and paid Google search results as they appear in different countries, cities, regions, ZIP codes and IP addresses.

Google Pagerank Status 0.9.3: Display the google pagerank in your browser’s status bar.

Web Developer 1.1.6: Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.

StumbleUpon 3.23: With StumbleUpon you can also connect with friends and share your discoveries, meet people that have similar interests, and check out what other people are discovering.

Bookmark Duplicate Detector 0.6.4: Detects Duplicate Bookmarks when bookmarks are added and specify where the previous URL is. You can also search and delete duplicates URL already in your Bookmarks.

del.icio.us Complete 1.3: del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager. It allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others.

This extension is not only a sidebar it provides an excellent post dialog as well.
Social Media for Firefox : A submission on Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, or Delicious is sometimes a good candidate for submission to the others. This add-on makes saves you the time of checking if an item has already been submitted by showing vote counts right on the home pages of these social bookmarking sites.

In addition, vote counts are shown in the Firefox status bar as you move from page to page again saving you the trouble of going through the bookmarking process if someone has beat you to it.

Compete.com: The Compete Toolbar automatically creates three alerts for every web site you visit:

Trust Scores: help you experience a safer web by warning you of potentially malicious (spyware, phishing) web sites

Site Profiles: tell you how popular the web site is, its rank, and how fast it is growing

Deal Light: automatically lights up if there are any special promotions or coupons that can save you money on the web site.

I am sure these plugins will increase your SEO efficiency.