Black Hat SEO – Short term gain, long term pain

Black hat SEO may get you instant results but at the risk of your website being dropped from the Search Engine indexes or being banned altogether…

Black hat SEO uses techniques and strategies which do not comply with guidelines set down by Search Engines and may even be illegal cyber-activities such as directing visitors to malicious websites*.

Black hat SEO can achieve high rankings but it is a high-risk strategy and at the drop of a hat, your website can be banned or penalised by Search Engines.

White hat SEO is designed to be a longer term strategy designed to drive quality traffic to your website to increase your conversion rates. We explain some of the risks of employing black hat SEO.

What is black hat SEO exactly?

Search Engines may be a free tool readily available to web surfers but they are in the business of supplying high quality and relevant information and set strict guidelines to websites who want to be included in their search results. Black Hat Search Engine Optimisation is defined as techniques used to manipulate Search Engine results in an unethical manner. Some of the differences in SEO techniques employed by black hat SEO and white hat SEO companies include:

Black hat SEO	White hat SEO
Keyword stuffing: Saturating a page with long lists of keywords not closely connected with your copy on the page or using keywords unnaturally in the copy or out of context to try and manipulate Search Engine results.	Keyword placement: Using keywords naturally or seamlessly throughout the copy of the text.
Cloaking: This is a black hat SEO technique which shows Search Engine spiders a highly optimised site not meant for human readers, while directing real visitors to an entirely different site. The cloaking is usually combined with doorway pages (see below).	Meta descriptions: Creating descriptions for Search Engines to use as summary text (beneath the title) which accurately reflect the content on the page traffic is being directed to.
Doorway Pages: This is a page designed purely for Search Engines to trick them into indexing the site higher. Doorway pages contain no valuable content for human readers.	Landing pages: Creating keyword rich landing pages that are engaging and compelling for the reader.
Invisible text: This is putting keyword-stuffed text in the same colour as the background so it is invisible to human readers but not to Search Engines.	Theme-focused content: Create relevant, natural content which engages human visitors and is Search Engine friendly.
Auto-generated pages: using a script or software program to create thousands of keyword-stuffed pages with content of no value to human readers.	Original content: Writing unique content for the website which is refreshed regularly. This may include new web pages, blog articles, adding case studies and testimonials to the website and so forth.
Link farms: This is the practice of buying links or paying websites to link back to your website in the hope of increasing your Search Engine ranking.	Link building strategies: Using ‘natural’ strategies of writing original, interesting content that other websites will link to and promoting quality and credible links from trustworthy companies who are related to your industry.

 
So if the hat fits … reporting black SEO hat activities is important to preserve the integrity of the Search Engines. It is also important to report sites using black hat SEO which are competing in your space – especially if they use malicious code and downloads and so forth. But don’t panic, more than likely they will not last long and your ranking will return.

Why you shouldn’t use a black hat SEO company?

Search Engines may not be able to pick up your black hat SEO activities straight away but your competitors can report you to Search Engines who take breaches of their guidelines very seriously. There are two consequences of breaching Search Engine guidelines; being banned means your site is removed from the index completely and being penalised means having your rank reduced. Here are the consequences using a black hat SEO company:

• High bounce rates**: A high Search Engine ranking may drive traffic to your website but if they can’t find they are looking for, the pages are poorly designed and the content is badly written, they will just bounce off the page.
• Loss of revenue: If your website is penalised and drops in the Search Engine rankings or is banned altogether, there will be decreased traffic to your website which will lead to decreased online revenue.
• Potential redesign of website: A Search Engine ban can take years to recover from and it is very costly. You may need to rebuild your site on a whole new domain.
• Brand building: Link spamming and black hat SEO techniques may artificially increase your Search Engine ranking but your website will be linked to or associated with other websites that do not present a professional image.
• Reputation management: Legitimate, professional businesses and organisations do not want to be associated with SEO companies who provide services to cyber-criminals.

And why you should use a white hat SEO company…

It is true that black hat SEO can achieve high rankings but it is a fly by night and get rich quick strategy. Ever heard of the saying there’s no such thing as a free lunch? So while initially you may enjoy high Search Engine rankings which may drive traffic to your website, if your website is penalised, you may lose months or years of revenue while trying to reverse the process and get your website indexed again.

Using white hat SEO may take your website longer to rank in ‘organic’ web searches but SEO is a long term strategy and endeavour. Black hat SEO seeks to get results quickly by using high-risk techniques but solid, long-term results can be achieved easily by following Search Engine guidelines. Professional SEO companies are experienced, dependable and operate like any other reputable business. Leave black hat to the criminals and bottom-feeders of the online world.

Contact us and find out why white hat SEO is the new black. SEO Works uses white hat SEO and long-term, proven and dependable strategies to drive high quality and targeted traffic to your website that are more likely to buy or purchase your product and maximise your online revenue. Alternatively, find out more about the SEO packages and SEO services we offer.

* Malicious websites may contain spyware or viruses.

** The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who enter a site (or a page) and then leave immediately.

Latest SEO Developments – Search Engine Evolution

2010 is shaping up to be an interesting year for Search Engine Optimisation and the never ending quest for market domination. The first quarter is coming to a close and we have already seen some major developments with Search Engines technology. Here is our heads up on what to expect for the rest of 2010…

Binghoo – Microsoft and Yahoo join forces

It was announced mid last year (29 July 2009) that Microsoft and Yahoo are joining forces to take on the Search Engine giant Google. It is potentially going to be an 80/20 world for the Search Engines we predict as early as 2012 with Binghoo finally presenting some decent competition to Google in the Search Engine wars … but does combining two ordinary Search Engines make one good Search Engine – time will only tell. The real beneficiary of this relationship could be Ask.com who may stand a chance if the merger proves to be a bad move.

End to Site Explorer

The news is that the merger will see the end of Site Explorer. Sadly the portal to link information is likely not to be supported once Yahoo stops investing in maintaining their web index. Thankfully, SEOmoz have released their newly developed link popularity checker and backlink analysis tool aptly named Open Site Explorer.

Soft launch of Google Caffeine in the next few months

Google made an announcement late last year that the launch of a new Search Engine algorithm Google Caffeine would be launched early this year. According to reports, at this stage, it is only one data center and expected to roll out over the coming months.

Different to Google’s regular updates, our research has indicated that it will be a restructure of the calculations that Google uses to try and speed up the Google Search Engine and may not necessarily be a major change to the Google ranking algorithms. Google is unlikely to make a huge announcement that the algorithm has been changed.

Google Personalised Search is here to stay

Google Personalised Search launched in December 2009 is apparently here to stay. Personalised search uses your web searching and viewing history to deliver search results based on the things you’ve searched for on Google and the sites you’ve visited so you are served the search results that are most relevant to you.

Although the roll out in December received little attention, this is definitely shaping up to be a hot topic for 2010. However, Google’s follow up announcement about their extension of Personalised Search options to users who aren’t signed-in to their Google account created another round of buzz in the SEO industry.

Depending on how Google implements Personalised Search in the coming year, this may have a major impact on SEO and local businesses as Search Engine results are tailored to each user based on previous web history. However it is interesting to note that although Personalised Search was officially launched late last year, it has been in existence for a while now with people in different regions getting different Search Engine results based on locality.

The significance for SEO companies is that there should be a renewed focus on geo-marketing and link building activities. Social media networks and cross promotional opportunities and tactics will continue to gain more relevance in generating organic traffic to websites as well as concentrating on developing great content that will result in return visits to websites.

Google Personalised Search has yet to make a major impact on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPS) but both the SEO industry and businesses alike should see this is as a challenge and opportunity to develop websites that encourage brand loyalty, repeat purchasers and increased conversion rates.

The end of Real Time Search as we know it

On the other hand, Real Time Search is turning out to be a big fizzer. After only 1.5 weeks of launch, the Twitter real-time updates turning up in the Search Engines seems to have created more negative media attention than good. An eye tracking study of Real Time Search results done by OneUpWeb consisted of two key groups; consumers and information foragers. The study showed that:

• 73% had never heard of real-time results before participating in this study;
• consumer intent drives first fixations: the consumer group averaged 9 seconds to the view the real-time results, where as the information foragers took a full 14 seconds;
• only 55% of the participants could easily find the real-time results;
• the majority of the participants surveyed were indifferent to the real-time results.
• In an effort to get the jump on its Search Engine competitors, Google may have released Real Time Search too quickly. It is already turning up less and less for search queries and it probably won’t be long until the engineers at Google go back to the drawing board.

Google Buzz creates no buzz

Google Buzz was launched in early February this year. It is Google’s push into social media and is integrated with your existing Gmail account. An autosuggest feature nominates people to follow who are already connected to your account. Buzz appears as an extra tab in your Gmail inbox and allows you to post content and share files from Twitter, Picasa, Flickr and Google Reader.

After the initial launch, Google was forced to respond to public feedback and made some quick adjustments:

• The automatic following feature of your Gmail contacts was replaced with an auto suggestion feature.
• Google Buzz no longer connected with your public Picasa Web Albums and Google Reader shared items automatically.
• A Buzz tab was added to Gmail Settings so users could hide Buzz from Gmail or disable it completely.

It is yet to see whether Google Buzz will be able to take a chunk out of Facebook and Twitter’s market share or whether Google has left their run too late.

Launch of Google URL shortening service

Google have now launched an URL shortening service. The service is called the Google URL Shortener although it is currently only available for Google products and not for broader consumer use. This timely announcement was made only one day before bit.ly launched their PRO service. This will be a wait and see if Google can compete with bit.ly who has already gained a huge market share for their products.

At SEO Works, our SEO Experts are constantly doing research, reading blogs and websites, going to SEO conferences so we can keep abreast of changes in Search Engine Optimisation and provide you with the best SEO Services. Contact us if you are interested in Search Engine Optimisation and our SEO Consultants will help you increase your Search Engine visibility, increase your conversion rate and maximise your return on investment.

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation – Tourist Guides

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation – NSW Tourist Guides

New England North West is the ideal tourist website giving easy access to accommodation, tourist information, attractions and events…

Visit the New England North West region on your next holiday or weekend getaway and discover the real rural Australia…

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If you are in the tourism and accommodation industry, then you too can benefit from turning up on the 1st page of Google for your targeted keywords such as “NSW Accommodation” or “NSW Holiday Destination”, like this page did for your search…and just like New England North West does for their keywords. Contact SEO Works to discover how we can help you to gain more leads, conversions & revenues through online marketing.

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About New England North West – NSW Tourism & Accommodation Guide

New England North West is your ideal NSW holiday destination with an excellent range of accommodation to suit all budget types.

With 13 areas within the New England North West region to visit, you will find all the information you need through the New England North West website including:

• NSW Accommodation
• Conference & Event Venues
• New England North West attractions
• Drives & Trails along the New England Highway
• NSW Tourist offices
• Region area such as Inverell, Glen Innes, Narrabri and Walcha

New England North West website also offers excellent accommodation deals and packages, day trips and tours as well as the latest news.

New England North West is your best tourist information guide to this big sky region. Visit New England North West today and explore this beautiful region. Discover opal towns, historic gold mining towns and rural Australian outback farms. Learn about Australia’s historic bushrangers and enjoy the natural beauty of this amazing region through the many national parks NSW.

SEO Works are proud to provide Search Engine Optimisation services to New England North West Tourism, helping them to achieve their online goals.

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This Business Profile is provided as a service to clients of our sister company SEO Works, a leading SEO company providing SEO Services and SEO Packages across a wide range of industry segments for their Google SEO needs. For your SEO Brisbane, SEO Sydney or SEO Melbourne requirements contact SEO Works today.

Best Practices for Your Google Local Business Centre Listing

Update: In mid-April Google announced that Google Local Business Centre Listings will be renamed Google Places which Google says will simplify the connection with Place Pages.  This reflects Google’s ongoing commitment to providing business owners with powerful yet easy-to-use tools to enhance the SEO of their website and reach the local market. As a part of the relaunch, Google has introduced more features to Google Places.  Read more about Google Places …

Ranking highly on Google Local Business Centre listings is an important part of your SEO strategy if you want to reach the local market. The Google Map and the first seven listings are becoming increasingly important as the listings are displayed before organic listings even start.

Here are some useful tips to show you to optimise your Google Local Business Centre listing and become part of the ‘7 most wanted’.

So what is a Google Local Business Centre Listing?

Google’s Local Business Centre listings are different to organic or pay-per-click listings. They typically only show up when the user searches for a service oriented business such as hairdressers or an electrician pre-empted or followed by the city for their search.

A large map from Google Maps appears alongside up to seven URLs with a phone number alongside each listing. Try doing a Google search ‘plumbers’, followed by your location and see what businesses appear in your locality.

Want a quick preview? Find out more about GLBC listings here:

How can I optimise my listing?

We have identified ten key ways to optimise and enhance your GLBC listing.

• Verify your Google Local Business Centre listing

Before you can start optimising your listing, you must verify ownership of the business. As part of the verification process, GLBC will send you a pin number via your mobile or post so you can authenticate your listing. When you receive your pin, enter it in your Local Business Centre under your new account details.

After the website has been verified, your Local Business Centre listing will go live and begin to show up in search results and you will be able to modify and update your listing.

• Make sure you have a 100% completion rate

A 100% completion rate is very important as Google gives a preference to businesses that have completed the full form and ticked all the boxes including opening times, what payment types you accept and inclusions of images and video. You can check your actual completion rate by looking at the top right of your screen, when logged in.

• Include the right category types

Try to include up to five industry types to categorise your business. For example if you own a hotel, you might choose categories like accommodation, resort and so forth to describe your business.

It is essential that your primary category is the most accurate description for your company and the one that your potential customers are most likely to search for. The remaining subsidiary categories should be used to account for all of your other service descriptions.

However finding all the categories that apply to your business can sometimes be difficult as Google only allows you to choose from a short-list of suggestions related to what you are typing in initially for the primary business.

Web design expert Mike Blumenthal released the beta version of a Google LBC Category Preview tool that allows you to search the entire database of Google Maps categories based on synonyms. It’s a great way to discover all the categories that might apply to your business.

It’s also important to do keyword research to find categories with good search volumes and monitor your competitor’s GLBC. If they are consistently appearing in the ‘lucky 7 pack’, do research to see what categories they are listing for their business.

• Include a detailed description of your business

You need to enter a 200 words or less description of your business. As Google does not encourage more than one listing for different services you provide per physical location, the description is where you can explain the different services your business offers. This is a good opportunity to include at least one of your target keyword(s) here but don’t stuff your listing or name with obvious keywords and keep the copy compelling and interesting for readers.

• Multiple listings on Google Local Business Centre

Multiple listings are only allowed by Google if you have multiple physical business locations. However, if you are a business who services several different areas but has only one physical address or if you provide several services per one location, you should only have one listing.

Represent your business exactly as it appears in the offline world. The name on Google Maps should match the business name, as should the address, phone number and website. Google Local Business Centre advises that a local number for your business is preferable to an 1800 or 1300 number listing.

Keep the physical address of your business up to date and standard across all the website presence such as your Google Local Business Centre listing, Yellow Pages and other directory listings, social networking websites, multiple websites, citations, and so forth.

• Include updated videos and photos

Improve your Google Local Business Centre Listing by adding a logo, video and as many photos as you can to improve your ranking. When adding a photo to your listing, keep in mind the following guidelines:

- Each photo must be smaller than 1MB.

- Each photo must be under 1024 x 1024 pixels.

- Photos must be in one of these formats: JPG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, BMP

Google is trialling a premium feature in the US where you can enhance the way your Google Local Business Centre Listing appears in Google Search Engine results by including a link to point customers directly to photos, videos, coupons, directions or menus that have been uploaded to the listing.

• Add citations to your listing

Find and keep growing your citations – these are growing increasingly important in Search Engine Optimisation. Citations are defined as “mentions” of your business name and address on other web pages, even if there is no link to your website. An example of a citation might be an online yellow pages directory or industry or business directory where your business is listed, but a link is not provided.

• Link back to the listing

Ask local community organisations who have websites such as industry associations, your local Chamber of Commerce, clients, suppliers or other relevant businesses to list your GLBC listing on their website and build your local network. Refer to our previous blog article on link building.

• Update your listing

Make it a point to update your listing regularly as Google always gives a preference to listings which have fresh and new content. This can include the following:

- new testimonials

- new photos

- new videos

- price lists and brochures

- sales and specials

- revised menus

- seasonal rates and

- coupon codes.

Google introduced a new coupon feature for the US market last year where mobile phone users can see a specially formatted coupon code that they can show retailers to redeem discounts. These are a just a few examples of ways you can refresh and update your content.

• Real time updates

Google has introduced a feature where you can post to your Place Page directly from the Local Business Centre dashboard. All you need to do is login, post an update and it will go live on your Place Page in just a few minutes. You can see an example of this on the Crowne Plaza Parramatta page.

Google has introduced a badge for listings that have been claimed in the Local Business Center. This helps users identify listings that have been updated and improved by their business owners, helping them to trust that the information about your business is as accurate as possible.

Open up your business to a whole new local audience by using these Google Local Business Centre listings best practice techniques. This will help your website rank higher in the listings, give you the competitive edge over local businesses and grow your local leads and online revenue.

*Sometimes referred to as Search Engine Optimization

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation – Trades Plumbers

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This Business Profile is provided as a service to clients of our sister company SEO Works, a leading SEO company providing SEO Services and SEO Packages across a wide range of industry segments for their Google SEO needs. For your SEO Brisbane, SEO Sydney or SEO Melbourne requirements contact SEO Works today.