ACtion Magazine - September/October 2013 - (Page 10)

Don’t waste your time Angie Kilbourne, AAM Keyword stuffing, doorway pages and sneaky redirects will get you nowhere with the search engines. 10 ACTION • September/October 2013 Chart Source: Search Engine Watch I speak with a number of small business owners about seeing. In other words, giving different results to different types website development, Internet marketing and search engine of page visitors is a no-no in the eyes of Google and Bing. optimization (SEO), and it’s alarming how many of these 4. Sneaky redirects are used on pages to automatically business owners think they can circumvent Google’s and Bing’s detect search engine bots and provide them with one set of page ranking algorithms and standards to get to the top of PAGE content or metadata, but will redirect human visitors to a totally ONE. Let me explain the sobering truth: different page with different, undesired or SEO work takes time, and using tactics unexpected content. The search engines to “beat” the system can get your search treat these like cloaking practices. Read and understand Google’s engine ranking reduced — or worse, get 5. Selling links will get your ranking your website banned completely from the dropped, as well as your sponsor’s. If you and Bing’s Webmaster search pages. are posting linked content to your site and guidelines to save yourself a What’s most disturbing is that these have received anything in exchange for that business owners don’t even understand link — money, product, gifts, etc. — you trip to SEO jail. that what they are doing is wrong in any must add a no-follow attribute to your link way. They’ve heard others talking about tag (rel=”nofollow”). Leaving it off will how they got to Page One and think these tactics or maneuvers get you and your sponsor into hot water. A large number of are standard practices among the industry. Still not sure what I’m bloggers have recently found themselves dropped from search talking about? Let me spotlight some of these “SEO Don’ts” for engine results by not following this standard practice. you: Your best course of action is to first read and understand Google’s and Bing’s Webmaster guidelines, at www.google.com/ 1. Keyword stuffing encompasses a number of banned webmasters/ and www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster/, respectively. tactics, such as: Your business’s reputation is built on honesty and fairness to • Hidden text that is the same color as your Web page’s your customers. Make sure your website SEO practices reflect background. that same mission. ❆ • Lists of phone numbers, ZIP codes, cities or states that provide no substantial contribution to the site’s content except to boost page rank. • Repeating the same phrase over and over again in an unnatural manner: “We provide automotive air conditioning system repair and maintenance. If your automotive air conditioning system needs service or repair, please contact our automotive air conditioning system experts at …” 2. Doorway pages on a website have almost identical content, but include specific city or location names to boost rank in targeted locales. Another form of this practice is to purchase multiple domains that are similarly worded but include different city/ location names in the URLs. The domains are then all pointed to the same Web page. 3. Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content to human visitors vs. search engine bots. This can be achieved A June 2013 study by online ad network Chitika found that the number one Page by presenting static or Flash images to One rank in search engine results gets 33 percent of that keyword’s traffic. Second human visitors, while search engine bots position gets 18 percent. The study also found that being in the number one are given metadata or tag information that position of pages 2, 3 or 4 also provides more clicks than the remaining positions in no way refers to what people actually are on those pages. http://www.google.com/webmasters/ http://www.google.com/webmasters/ http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of ACtion Magazine - September/October 2013

ACtion Magazine - September/October 2013
Contents
Outlook
Freeze Frame
Virtual View
Leonard’s Law
Cooling Corner
Member Profile
News & Updates
Special Update on R-1234YF
Technician’s Operating Procedure
Emergency Business Plans
Association News
Quick Check
New Products & Services
Last Watch

ACtion Magazine - September/October 2013