» SEO Tips

Typos can be good!

Alan — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:48:58 +0000

A few days ago we stumbled on a number one position on Google for one of our sites. More by good luck than planning in this case, the number one position was for a phrase very relevant to the site in question – but it was a typo – and a VERY common misspelling…

Should you find this at any time – don’t fix it – this is a good thing. Your site will no doubt have your search terms duplicated elsewhere, so no need to worry.

Don’t be afraid also to include common misspellings within you keywords and descriptions. Find a really common one and it can work very well for you…

Adbeans – an alternative to Google AdSense

Alan — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 18:59:47 +0000

Just recently we’ve started adding some ads (in addition to AdSense) to a couple of our sites through AdBeans. They approached us with a particular site in mind – we were hitting an audience they wanted.

It’s a nice little system for generating a bit of extra income from your website.

As opposed to AdSense, Adbeans the monthly value of the ads for your website based on a number of criteria, and then sell the space on your behalf. All you need to do is add a bit of code – or if you are using blog software it can usually be added with a download. We had a few problems on one of our sites – but their support was fantastic! The ads are easily made to fit your site content – if you look to the bottom of the left column you can see the ads that appear on this site.

You decide how many ads to show and on what pages – and you can also veto any specific ads if you feel they are not right for your site. Not that we have needed to – the ads assigned to our account appear to have been well selected.

Let´s be honest the AdBeans website isn’t great – it sort of looks a bit unfinished – but the emphasis is on functinality rather than promotion. But take our word for it – their system works fine once you are registered and is bringing us a nice little side income.

Your not going to make a fortune using them – but it is guaranteed income rather than pay per click. The big difference is AdBeans is not their just, or maybe in some cases not at all for the click through. It is their to support the SEO activities of their clients – it’s about creating quality inbound links.

It is certainly worth signing up to AdBeans to see what it can do for you.

Interested in finding out about other affiliate programs? Take a look at the affiliate marketing category.

Black Hat SEO

Elle — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:38:23 +0000

It is suggested that the terms “Black Hat” and “White Hat” originates back to the early Western movies… where the bad guys wore black hats – and the good guys wore… yes you’ve guessed it, white hats.

As with most things, if there’s a faster or easier way of achieving something… then people will want to try it – that’s what Black Hat SEO is. I’ll happily microwave scrambled eggs rather than take the time in the saucepan, and then have that joy of scraping off cooked egg! But this Black Hat methodology goes back to when Search Engines were a lot less sophisticated than they are today.

Black Hat SEO is Search Engine Optimisation using methods that can whizz you up the rankings in the short term… but that risk you being blacklisted by Search Engines in the longer term. We at Gandy-Draper choose not to use these methods on our clients’ websites.

Building a site with Black Hat
A website that is built around blackhat methods will be generated from an expansive keyword list, and may use cloaking and re-directs to show something different to Search Engines that a human user would not be able to see.

Promoting a site with Black Hat
This would include forum spamming, blog spamming, mass social bookmarking, social networking exploitation and masses of RSS submissions.

Hidden Content
For example, it used to be common practise to place white text onto a white background, filling it with content that a normal person wouldn’t see, but that Search Engines could pick up.

Link Farming.
Unfortunately we still see this all too often. Link farming is when a website has oodles and oodles of irrelevant links – sometimes reaching into many many pages. The site owner has heard “links are good” and thinks that by getting hundreds or even thousands onto his site without regard for relevancy that this can help. That really is naive, but don’t take our word for it – Google has its own views here too.

Meta Keyword Stuffing.
This is when the website has its key words literally stuffed over and over again into its headers. It’s overkill for search engines, and has been basically ignored since the late ’90s.

Doorway Pages.
These are pages that are specifically built to target a number of phrases, which when clicked upon, send you in a different direction – which they know by viewing your IP address. These are also known as Gateway pages, Portal pages and Entry pages.

Scraping
This is a site (also known as “Made for Adsense” site) which continuously scrapes results from Search Engines in order to drive traffic to its own pages. These sites are generally either chock-full of advertising, or of redirects to other websites.

Buying Expired Domains
It is common knowledge that Search Engines prefer more established sites, than brand new ones. So people buy recently expired sites… and pop their content on… hoping to be taken more seriously. Unfortunately for these people – Google automatically resets its cache when a domain expires.

So what’s the upshot then?
With most of this, it’s the scale upon which it’s done rather than what is actually being carried out that makes it blackhat. Many site owners will comment in a forum, post their link on MySpace or Facebook, or on a blog in order to get their backlink – but it’s when it is done without providing quality information, that it is considered spamming or blackhat. This risks you being banned or blacklisted from these sites.

Anyway… We’d rather not take the risks with our own sites, and any of our clients. We would however encourage all Black Hat Experts to carry on – after all… it teaches Google the newer tricks… and make sure that those with quality content and well designed sites will get the recognition they deserve. The Black Hatters can take the gamble, and we’ll stay within the safety net.