Search Engine Optimization - Part 5
Article ID: KB101556
There is no silver bullet that will catapult your site to the top
of the first page on a search engine query – at least not safely.
However, there are some techniques that can improve your ranking
with minimal effort and little risk of being banned from a search
engine for "spamdexing". Unfortunately, as rapidly as new tricks are
developed by creative webmasters, the search engine programmers
develop countermeasures that defeat or even penalize the more
aggressive positioning efforts. To get the latest update check the
monthly
Unfair Advantages Book.
It is common knowledge that the old "same color font as
background trick" no longer works, and neither does hiding keywords
in comment tags: <!--keywords--> In fact, at this time, both of
these techniques are being penalized at all search engines. A good
general rule is: if you can't see it on the page and it isn't part
of the <meta>, <title>, or in the image tag "alt" attribute forget
it! You will only lower your ranking, or in certain circumstances
generate an outright ban for your domain for up to six months.
Enough with the warnings... let's see what works and what doesn’t.
Repeating Keywords over and over on most search engines
will cause your pages to be penalized or rejected by the search
engines – don’t do it.
The best way to "stuff" keywords today requires that you work
them into regular sentences as much as possible, increasing
the frequency to the point that your keywords and phrases blend to
create the desired "keyword density mix". Heather Lloyd-Martin,
President of SuccessWorks, has written a great article,
How to Write a Keyword-Rich Home Page the Search Engines Will Love.
You can test your keyword density using the free tool at
JimWorld.
Semi-Invisible Text can be used successfully to increase
your keyword density and unlike "invisible" text it will not get you
banned. To make your text less visible you can change one of your
colors slightly and make it invisible to the viewer without alerting
the search engine that the text is not visible. As an example, set
your white background color to <BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> then make your
text slightly off white by using <font color="#FEFEFE">. Remember,
the same "repeating keywords" rules apply.
The <ALT> Tag can be effectively used to make your images
increase your keyword density. Here's how.
Always include the ALT="A list of my keywords" in
your <IMG SRC="image"> tags. Here's an example:
<IMG SRC="pixelmill.gif" Alt="Microsoft, Downloads, Graphics,
Power Point, PowerPoint, themes, FrontPage, Office, Webmaster, web
page designs, tutorials, templates, Power Point templates, Office
XP, Web Site Builder" height=116 width=537>
Additionally you can use the above technique with "invisible"
images. Make a one pixel by one pixel .gif that is the same color as
your background and use the <ALT="keywords"> idea. At this time only
Lycos, AltaVista and Google will index using the <ALT="keywords">
tag.
If you are in an extremely competitive arena there are some very
sophisticated techniques available for generating top search engine
placement, for example, search engines can be identified when they
attempt to index your site and "special" pages can be served that
have been specifically tuned for that particular engine. This
"feeding" system requires some sophisticated server side programming
and is best outsourced to professionals.
If you think you need this type of promotion please e-mail:
food@se-news.com with the word
Food contained in the subject line.
I’ll be back next month with an article on how you can analyze
your completion’s efforts in order to improve your sites search
engine placement.
Next: Competitive Market Intelligence
Contributors
Greg Snow:
Greg is the CEO of Advantrics LLC, which is the parent company
for PixelMill and
Vivid Office. Greg has an
incredible background in FrontPage Development and Research, and
keeps up to date with the latest Search Engine News. He is the
author of the Search Engine article series from the PixelMill
newsletter.
Greg Snow, PixelMill Newsletter, Volume 2 - Issue 5 : 05/01/2002
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