A Review of SEO Tactics
Once upon a time...........Doorway pages were the biggest thing online – everyone used them, and they worked. Then Google caught on that people were just trying to trick them so they banned Doorway pages. That was a big shock to many whose sites were sitting at the top of the search engine results page but whose sites then plunged down the rankings.
Then reciprocal links were all the rage. Emails flew across the Internet; you link to me and I'’ll link to you. Everyone was fast creating an information network that was all interlinked. Great!
Until Google caught on that this wasn't a true representation of how popular your site was as webmasters were just creating software-generated “fake links”. That resulted in more mass droppage of sites from the search engine first pages.
So then webmasters concentrated on one-way links - getting websites to link to your website. It’s exactly what Google wants but the problem was people started buying a link from another website as they believed Google will see it as a viable one-way link to my site.
But Google soon realised there are sites with high PageRank out there, making a nice monthly income by linking to sites that have not earned a link – and therefore the spurious link issue was just perpetuated.
With all of the confusion about links, it is a constant source for debate.
Reciprocal links are OK, as long as they are relevant and from a high PR site.
One way links are a better way to go, but only if the link is relevant and from a high PR site. But how do you define high PR?
With all these questions, attention went back to a new and improved type of doorway page - one that includes links to other sites (resources) underneath text on your site.
This technique is actually legit and you are providing real value to people by having helpful links on your site. The search engines view those links with text as keyword rich, so they boost your rankings.
A very legitimate tactic, it made sense to the engines, and it was fairly easy to do. So ha’ve we finally found a way to create some great pages that Google will like?
The danger is that Google will see the Internet infiltrated with sites that are nothing but Resource pages churned out by software, with no real content to support them. That will end the Resource page hay day”.
What about blogs then? Anyone can create a free blog, and then blog and ping like mad. It drives the spiders to your blog when you ping as they follow links in your posts to your main site and next thing you know, you can control Googlebot, and Yahoo Slurp. With a few good posts, you can plan on the robots swinging by to pick up more pages in your site. Cool!
Until Google realises that people have programs doing auto-posts and auto-pings and blogs are not the most relevant or original content. Google wises up, and for those still trying to get away with automated blogging and pinging, you’ will be wasting your time.
The link debate rages on and people want rankings more than ever. What’s next?
1. RSS Feed – for a long time, noone knew what it stood for, but now everyone loves it. You can create content and send it out to the world to read with their preferred viewer. That truly is an opportunity to get your message out there.
You can also pull feeds into your site to bulk up content - a great scheme.
2. The Press Release and Article Syndication. Brand new idea and dressed to impress. It was fabulous -– write informative articles and submit them around the Internet. The benefit is two-fold: – each article will drive traffic to your site and the links within the article will count as links for your site.
The Press Release was a killer too. Write an informative, keyword rich press release and get it sent out to thousands of media outlets online. You could count on about 30 days worth of traffic enjoyment from one release. Plus press releases get picked up in the News engines and the regular engines too.
Great -– so what'’s the problem?
Too many people don'’t look at the big picture and the real reason behind Search Engine shift in their rules. People don'’t learn from these changes; they simply adjust their methods and move on until the next rule change.
If you really analyse the trends and understand what Google wants and why they do what they do, you wi’ll find a very common theme.
Google wants to deliver relevant results to people using their Search Engine.
They have no hidden agenda. They simply want to deliver the best and most relevant results in response to someone'’s search query. So what does that mean for you?
Content is KING!
In order to get good rankings, we need a popular site with great, informative content that is current.
Any current hot technique is only a fad. If you look at most of the techniques that are now banned”, they would have been OK and did work well in moderation. But instead they are abused and then died.
Look at blogging and pinging. It’s a great way to drive spiders and it makes sense. However no one wanted to commit to manually blogging and pinging. No one wanted to do it in a realistic way, so we bombarded the free blog servers and bots with all the automated blogs and pings, and we got ourselves where we are now. Another valuable technique; no longer any good to us.
In order to understand the abuse of a particular service, you need to understand how it benefits you, and you also need to understand the SPECIFICS of what the engines look for.
Perception: Articles provide links to your site. Google likes links. Score one point for you.
Reality: Google likes links that go to various pages on your site, with varying text used as the clickable part of your link (anchor text or hotspot). It is those specifics that people tend to ignore.
When you syndicate an article, you send the same article to multiple sources, sometimes even hundreds of sources. You send the exact same version to each source. That means each link goes to the same page on your site, and has the same anchor text.
Not exactly what Google had in mind!
It’s only a matter of time before Google starts dismissing links from articles as irrelevant.
Now: Articles provide a good source of content to enhance your site’s existing content.
The Future: It’s true, they do. However with all the “scraping” (stealing bits of content from sites online through an automated software and then posting them to your page as text) going on,– Google has had to develop a component in their algorithm that determines how old content is, and who was the first publisher of it. Therefore, content from articles is no longer beneficial to you.
Even worse, if you syndicate an article that you actually wrote yourself, you are potentially losing the credit for that article - unless you post it on your site first then wait until it is indexed so Google knows it belongs to you. You can then open it up for syndication to the world. Then if people use your content, you will still benefit as the creator of the original content.
Most people don’'t think of that. Sure, they think to post it on their site – but do they wait until its indexed? Not usually, and since article sites are so big and active, they are likely to be spidered first– and then the article site will get credit as the first source to use the content and therefore be recognised as the owner or creator.
What if you follow the rules, but others don'’t, and the strategy still gets used and abused?
That is possible - you just have to be flexible and go with the flow. The critical element is - Content will always be King!
Google will always rank highly websites that answer searcher's questions - that is the safest way to get a good ranking. Good luck!
