Home > Resources > Internet Marketing 101

Internet Marketing - Avoid Getting Banned by Search Engines

How to Avoid Getting Banned by Search Engines!

[  ... about social bookmarking ]

Last article, we reviewed how Web site marketing is more than just getting ranked first for certain keywords by search engines. Rankings are important but Web marketing is also about getting the right visitors to your site, providing the right content for your visitors, and achieving the results you need and require.

What would you rather have? ...100 of the 'right' people visit your Web site and 20 buy on-line or 1,000 'wrong' visitors find your site, look at the front page for 5 seconds, and then leave?

Search engines - the "Big 3"

Well ranked sites for the right keywords are still very important for many Web sites. Over the years, Web developers and marketers have developed 'tricks' to manipulate search engines so that search engine results improve

Some search engine marketers are always looking for 'tricks' to enable Web sites to rank higher. To me, this is similar to tax lawyers looking for legal loopholes and tricks to reduce taxes. Some search engine marketers study search engines to find tricks or techniques of any manner that will help with a Web site’s rankings. Others tend to focus on just providing strong content on well designed Web sites. Custom Fit Online tends to prefer the latter approach.

Here is a short list of some 'tricks' to avoid at all costs because they just don't work.

Keyword Spamming, Stuffing and Spamdexing This involves repeating keywords over and over in the text - often at the top of the page or at the bottom of a page in small letters. Sometimes this involves keywords in META tags or page titles. Search engines hate this technique. Avoid it at all costs.

Invisible or Semi-visible Text Some designers sneak in text on pages making text the same colour as a Web page’s background. Some times the colour is close to the background colour. Web visitors can’t see the text but search engines will find it. Again, stay away from this trick - search engines hate it!

Point, Doorway, Hallway & Information Pages These are defined as any page that is optimized to score well on one or more search engines for specific keywords or phrases and it linked to one of the main pages within our Web site. Often such a page may contain a picture, then a few keywords or keyword phrases. The theory is that developing such pages will result in a high 'keyword density' ranking by search engines thereby helping rankings. However, search engines are aggressively weeding these pages out of the databases. Use this technique at your peril.

Redirect Pages: Meta & JavaScript Refresh Pages If you click on a link and notice a page loading that automatically loads another page (without any required action by you) you have encountered a 'redirect page'. Some Web developers use this technique to load a highly search engine optimized page. The bottom line is that most search engines will not accept a submitted page that contains a redirect.

Hidden Links This technique involves placing hidden links (very tiny or invisible text links) on a home page knowing that search engine spiders will find them and index the source code. Once again, this is a technique that search engines hate. It’s much better to build a site map to accomplish the same objective. A site map is a page that lists links of all your Web pages on one page. (See www.customfitonline.com/sitemap.htm for an example). Search engines recommend using site maps.

Use of 'Automated' Submission Services Never use a search engine optimization or submit service that promises you a top ranking by optimizing your page and submitting (and resubmitting) your site to thousands of search engines. We have yet to find a service like this that really works, and many will use some or many of the techniques listed above, which can actually hurt, rather than help your site to rank well. We don’t even think it’s necessary to submit Web sites to major search engines. Their automated 'spider' software will typically find your Web site automatically- providing a few Web sites link to yours. (We do submit to directories such as www.dmoz.org, dir.yahoo.com, etc. Very crudely put, a search engine finds Web sites using automated software, whereas a directory has human editors review, evaluate and build an index).

There are may other techniques used by some Web developers and marketers. However, it’s important to remember the objectives of the major search engines. They want to provide the best overall results for keyword searches. They tend to frown upon or even hate techniques that try to overly manipulate rankings. The search engines are always reviewing 'tricks' and other techniques and often respond by banning Web site and developers that push it too far.

Search engines do LOVE Web sites with great content (text and information), clean design, and solid programming. Our experience is that if you avoid 'tricking' the search engines and focus on developing excellent content you will have greater long term success with rankings. Keep this in mind when you are developing or marketing your Web site.

Each of these objectives will determine how you build, maintain and market your Web site.

Bookmark This Page | Print This Page

10 Steps to Improve Site Performance | Selecting Keywords & Phrases

LEARN MORE:

WHITE PAPER - How to Choose the Right Search Marketing Consultant
3 Ways to Supercharge Your Website Results