Search Engine Optimisation :: Frequently Asked Questions

SEO FAQ Page 3

1.    What does SEO stand for?

2.    Why doesn't my site rank well for the keywords I target?

3.    How do I start?

4.    How do I optimise the site copy? Where do I place my keywords?

5.    How do I build links pointing to my site?

6.    How do I optimise the <title> tag contents?

7.    What are meta-tags? Are they really important for SEO purposes?

11.    How soon will the search engines find my site?

12.    My site used to rank well for my targeted key phrases but today I found out it lost the rankings. Am I banned? What have I done?

13.    Such and such a site ranks #1 for my targeted keywords, but it's no better than mine - why?

14.    I've read a lot about SEO. I've applied all the SEO advice I've read about to my site but it still doesn't show in the TOP 10. Why? I'm desperate. Is Google evil? Help!

15.    Are reciprocal links considered spam? Are they counted towards my link popularity? Aren't they ruining the business image of my site?

16.    Why is it believed that all the directory submissions should be done manually? There are so many auto-submission programs around - and manual submission will take a lot of time, won't it?

17.    How do I create a spider-friendly site map?

18.    Do spiders follow image links?

19.    Do spiders crawl dynamic sites?

20.    Do I hurt my rankings by linking to other sites?

21.    What is the "Google sandbox effect"? Can it be avoided?

What is search engine spam? Why is it a bad idea? Is there a SE spam classification?

Search engine spam is a common name for all the deceptive techniques that are aimed at an artificial increase in the relevancy of a page to keywords frequently searched for but that have little or no relevancy to a site's theme.

Search engine spam includes:

• Keyword stuffing (unnecessary repetition of keywords, obviously for search engines only).
• Invisible text (the same colour for the background and text itself) - often used to hide keyword stuffing.
• Link stuffing (with keywords in the anchor text - to a level where usability is killed totally); unnecessary repetitions of the same link.
• Hidden links (to doorway pages or other sites in exchange for the same favour - to avoid them being seen or visited by humans).
• Doorway pages - an acknowledged industry name for pages filled with keywords according to a template and linked from some page on the site using a hidden link (in most cases image-based, a spacer.gif or other graphics). Doorways can also be placed on a separate domain - and to hide their ugliness from human visitors they get redirected to the target site using JavaScript or meta-redirect.
• Cloaking - feeding the spiders content different from what humans will see using IP delivery or user-agent delivery. The spiders get recognised by their IP addresses or user-agents, and an over-optimised page is shown to them to rank highly for certain terms. Sometimes unscrupulous webmasters plagiarise someone's content - and also cloak it to hide it from the real author.
• Link farms, free for all schemes (FFAs) - complicated link exchange schemes where thousands of sites are linked to each other. Huge link pages containing hundreds of links are used for this purpose, and when visitors see such a page they leave it at once, disgusted, as links are presented without any attempt to add categories or even descriptions. They are not meant for human eyes, and nobody bothers to help you find any particular site here. The purpose is different - to increase the link popularity value of every participating site. But due to the number of links, the authority value any single site can possibly receive from such links is really tiny - but a danger of being banned for creating bad neighbourhood is enormous.
• Misuse of <h1>-<h6> tags when they are used to increase the weight of keywords within paragraphs. CSS, of course, is used to change their appearance and make them blend with the rest of the copy. This should not be done. These tags mean headers, so they should only be used to mark headers.
• Meta-tag stuffing, the second <title>, keyword-stuffed alt attributes in images that have nothing to do with images themselves - all these methods are, really, quite useless, but people still use them in the vain hope of improving rankings.
• Multi-domain spam. A lot of domains are registered, or subdomains are added to a main domain, with the sole purpose of increasing link popularity. An important point is overlooked: each domain used for this purpose should have certain authority of its own, in order to pass it to the main site. That means that actual work needed to promote such networks is many times bigger than would be needed for a single domain. And the so-called "sandbox effect" discussed below is introduced to complicate the life of multi-domain spammers and link farmers still more.

There is no need to spam the search engines. Good rankings can well be achieved without all those outrageous methods, and if you look at actual SERPs, you won't see so many spammy sites close to the top. Search engines are interested in producing good, relevant results, so they constantly improve their spam filters and ban sites that abuse their algorithms too obviously. It goes without saying that the resources and talents of their developers could have been better used.

Spammy techniques are bad for sites that use them. Usually, the quality of such sites is very low. They are bad for the Internet surfers who have to spend more time finding what they really need. Unscrupulous SEOs who use such methods to "optimise" their clients' sites often leave these clients with banned domain names and ruined businesses, which is, perhaps, the worst of it.

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What is Google Page Rank (PR)? What is all the fuss about? I see a lot of sites in the TOP 10 that show 0/10 Google PR - how is it possible?

Google PR (Page Rank) is an indicator of the page's link popularity calculated according to a complicated formula that utilises PR values of all the pages linking to the page in question. It doesn't evaluate such things as relevancy or link anchor text, and the formula, however complex it might be, is still not sophisticated enough to say everything about the link authority the site receives. It is, therefore, only one of the factors used when actual rankings of the page are calculated, and is by no means the most important one. There are many other factors to take into account, so if you analyse the sites ranking TOP 10 for particular keywords, you won't see pages with PR values going in descending order.

The Google PR value given in the Google toolbar is rather inaccurate, and only gives you a vague idea of the site's real link popularity. So, when choosing the best link partners for exchange, do not go by Google toolbar PR value. Analyse other factors such as relevancy, quality - and, of course, actual search engine rankings.

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How do I optimise the site's navigation for SEs? What is anchor text?

In order to optimise the navigation for the search engines, simply optimise it for your human visitors. Improve usability and make your navigation logical and link your keywords to pages where these concepts, services, or products are described in detail (if your site contains such pages, of course). Anchor text (the text of the link between <a> and </a> tags) should contain keywords: it increases their weight and helps you to achieve good rankings for your site. Unless you abuse the technique, it really improves usability. Do not link from your body copy to the same page that contains the text with the sole purpose of including keywords in the link: it looks ridiculous. No human visitor really needs this link; anything done only for spiders is bad SEO. But if you link the page to itself in a navigation block, it is a normal practice: navigation blocks are often spread across the whole site.

When your site grows and gets hard to navigate, add a site map. It is equally beneficial for humans and for spiders, provided it is done using plain spiderable HTML links with no JavaScript or drop-down boxes.

JavaScript-based links, as well as drop-downs, are very spider-unfriendly, so be sure to provide plain HTML links to all the pages within the site. Your site won't be spidered otherwise.

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Last Modified: 23.08.2007