Avoid These SEO Techniques or be Banned by Search Engines

In these days of web marketing and internet business, there is a constant war for top spots on search engines. Everybody starts a website and wants it to be right there at the top on Google for relevant keywords. This has led to some using greedy and dubious SEO techniques; however this can only do more harm than good. In fact, there are some SEO (black hat) techniques that will surely get your site banned by search engines.

Keyword Stuffing – One major black hat technique, this is about inserting too many keywords all over the webpage. See that you keep the Keywords density less than 5%, or be content with a sure-to-be-damned website.

Hiding Text – Using 1 px text that is visible only to Search engines but not to the readers will be treated as spamming; this is one sure way to get banned. This is no different from keyword stuffing, except that people won’t be able to read anything. Don’t do this; not worth it.

Using Doorway Pages – Some self-appointed SEO experts think they are too smart; they use WebPages for no other reason than to target one or two phrases or keywords. They code these pages in such a way that only spiders can see them, while the readers are routed to the actual site. Beware; such sites will be banned immediately on detection.

Cloaking Websites – Cloaking is another popular method used by hacky SEO service providers for making a site rank higher. Here, the web content offered to the search engine spider is different from what’s offered to the internet browser of the user.

Remember, the very purpose of Search engines is to provide useful info; not some crap that is crafted for getting non-natural search engine results. So avoid using black hat techniques for SEO at all costs, or else you may have to live with a Search Engine dead website.

Popular Search Engine Optimization Techniques

Getting more traffic for your website has a lot to do with how well your webpage is ready for Search engines to go through and understand. Just use the following steps and you too can have a search engine optimized website.

Content is King – Your website’s content should be worth reading. Without useful content, no other SEO technique will help.

Use Relevant and Attractive Titles – Having the right titles for your web pages, is very essential. The title is the one that search engines are going to use to understand your topic. Even if you have already succeeded in getting top listing on Google, you still need a good title to improve the click through rates.

Increase your Incoming Links – The number of links is directly proportional to the number of times your page is going to get crawled. You should also use appropriate anchor texts for the incoming links. One common way of getting incoming links is to link to relevant and popular websites; this will make your website known to them and there is a chance that you will get a reciprocal link.

Heading tags – Search engines searches are always interested in the important content on your web page. Using heading tags on your page will make crawlers assume that it is something important. Heading tags thus make the search engine’s job easier by presenting a summary of what the web page is about.

Meta Tags – Even if you have achieved getting top listings on searches, you need to use proper Meta tags to make people click on your website’s search listing. Google will use your Meta description for displaying info on your search listing. Thus, visitors will be attracted to visit your site if they find that the Meta description is relevant to their search query.

Use Optimal Keyword Density – Don’t cross the limit here. Avoid going more than 5% of the overall content; or it may look like spam.

Sitemaps – Using sitemaps for all your web pages will facilitate the robots to locate all the pages in your website and index them. This is how you help search engines to find content on your website

Difference between White Hat and Black Hat SEO

When it comes to white hat and black hat SEO, the name says it all! White hat SEO obviously complies with the set rules of promoting websites as dictated by the search engines. Whereas, black hat SEO is the process of exploiting and manipulating certain possibilities that are viewed seriously by the search engines. In fact, the very name SEO is considered devilish by many website owners! They argue that any attempt to manipulate the contents of a website to influence ranking is unfair and feel neither white hat nor black hat SEO is ethically good.

Even the allowed techniques of optimizing web pages to rank high in search engines evoke a mixed response from the website owners and webmasters. However, search engines are designed to work in that pattern so it leaves you with no other choice but to optimize your website for search engines. Interestingly the irony is all those who still argue against SEO have themselves optimized their own websites for search engines!

Most of the techniques in white hat SEO are also followed in black hat SEO but with subtle changes that are not legal as far as search engines are concerned. A few examples of black hat SEO techniques will enlighten you on the various tricks involved in black hat SEO. For instance, optimizing web pages with relevant keywords is purely a white hat SEO technique. On the contrary black hat optimization would use the same technique but in a different manner, i.e., by keyword stuffing, invisible text, and doorway pages. This certainly can fool the search engines but not every time. With machines getting smarter by the day search engines can detect such techniques. If your website had followed any of the black hat SEO techniques, it can be penalized or even banned by the search engines.

It is always wise to comply with the set rules while optimizing your website for search engines. If you are not confident about the techniques, you have at hand, do get assistance from professionals that can help you achieve your desired goals.

What Are the Facts of Onpage Optimization?

Onpage optimization is the process of manipulating key website components such as titles, contents, urls, image tags, and template codes to facilitate search engines to find and rank the website on top positions for search phrases. Onpage optimization is the only way to get top positions and high traffic for a keyword search in the major search engines. However, in order to obtain an authoritative position onpage optimization should be backed up by effective offpage optimization. Although it seems to be very simple at the first glance onpage optimization requires diverse skills to effectively manipulate contents to comply with the set rules and algorithms of major search engines. In fact it’s not just skin deep but it is much deeper than you think! The process of onpage optimization begins with a keyword research. Optimizing web content with keywords is not an easy process; it is not just about placing keywords at random but using it effectively in a natural way. Remember keyword stuffing is viewed seriously by Google. Every one of the page in the website need to be optimized for keywords in order to get a good pagerank and to rank for search results. Although manual optimization is good, using high quality SEO tools could be of great help to get a complete keyword optimization of your website. Using SEO content composers will help you in positioning keywords at the right place and also with proper keyword density in the website content or in your articles. Keyword research is the important process that determines the success of your website with the least of expenses. Choosing a highly competitive keyword will result in high cost of optimization project or even failure to reach the desired position. While obtaining backlinks from relevant and authority sites placing the keyword word as anchor text will get you the complete so called SEO juice that adds to the ranking of the websites.

Simple yet Useful SEO Techniques for Website Owners

Search engine optimization or SEO is the process of optimizing your website for search engines in order to rank for keywords. If you are an SEO guru this article will be of little use to you. However, if you are a new entrant, this is the place to begin! The first step in SEO is a keyword research. Even before you register your domain you need to select a niche that you are comfortable with and do a little bit of research on the keyword competition and popularity. Once you are confident that you can make your website rank for the selected keyword you can start building up your website. First register a domain name and do not forget to include the main keyword in the domain name.

Design Optimization

It is common to use website templates to host website these days. Website templates are available for free all over the internet yet remember that the semantic coding should seo friendly. Only paid templates come with proper SEO friendly codes and rank higher than website using free templates. The coding should be W3C compliant to get better results.

Optimize Your Title Tag

Title tag is the text displayed at the top of your website when viewed in a browser. You can edit this through the source file where you will find the title tag. Let your title tag be a short sentence with the main keyword in the sentence. This appears when in the search engines when there is a search for your keyword hence making it short would be the best way to get a click form the visitor.

Keywords in Meta Tags

Meta description of your website should state the objective of the website in a crystal clear manner with the main keyword in it. Don’t use the keyword more than twice. This too will appear in the search results displayed in search engines. It serves as a short summary of what the website is offering to the visitors. The content of the meta description should be error free and entice people into clicking your link. Meta keywords should contain all the keywords used in the webpage. Although only a few search engine today consider meta keywords as a valuable information, including meta keywords will boost your SEO.

Keywords in the Content

The content part of the website should contain relevant information to the title of the website. Include primary and secondary keyword liberally in the content. However, take care that the keyword density does not exceed 20% because anything above this mark will be considered as a spam. The perfect keyword density would be 8% on the whole. Remember that the content is not for search engines but for the human readers and try to make your keyword positioning as natural as possible.

URL Optimization

It is wise to optimize the URLs of your internal pages with keywords for better results. For example: http://www.yoursitename.com/keywords.html would enhance the search results for your secondary keywords as well. You can find a lot more of such SEO techniques in the internet.

Things to know while starting an Affiliate Website

Today, internet marketing has become a very popular industry worldwide.  This has made a lot of companies to start selling their products online through affiliate marketing agencies. A large number of affiliate agencies have come up and we also have a good figure for the number of affiliates earning money from the comfort of their homes by way of affiliate commissions.  Any one having a website can start earning money through affiliate programs. But there are also many who have failed in affiliate marketing because their websites were not properly designed. Also designing an affiliate website is a lot different from other websites as there are certain important factors to be considered.  Let us have a look at some of the ways of starting a successful affiliate website.  The first thing to do is to get a website up and running. To get accepted by the best affiliate companies it is necessary to have a proper working website. This website need not be hi-fi; a basic website will do the job. Never think about using free WebPages for affiliate marketing as it may not appear professional.  The next step is getting approved by the affiliate program. To get approved you should design the website in a way that it suits the theme of the product you are going to promote. Your site will be reviewed by the affiliate company based on how well it meets certain criteria of the company.  Use an attractive headline for your site. The headline is the first thing that a visitor is going to notice, so it should be able to attract the attention of the visitor.  Focus on targeted traffic. See that your web content targets traffic related to the niche of the product you are promoting. Suppose if you are selling hair loss pills, your site should have content related to how you can cure hair loss problems.   Get your site to rank higher for targeted keywords. This can only be achieved by using unique, relevant and useful content that is regularly updated. Also you need to follow search engine optimization principles like using the right keywords, submitting the site to search engines etc   Do not use “direct marketing” kind of slang in the content; instead the content should persuade the reader on clicking the ad links rather than forcing them to click.   Last but not the least; include a FAC section in your website. Providing such an option to clarify the doubts of visitors will not only make you site look more credible but also professional.   All you need to do to start a successful affiliate income generating website is to use the right approach suitable for affiliate programs. Along with a little bit of originality, you also need some patience as it can take some time for the site to become popular with respect to the targeted niche. Once this is achieved there is no looking back, you are sure to acquire success in your affiliate marketing efforts with a good income flowing in on a regular basis

How to Join a Good Affiliate Program

An affiliate program is one that pays you for posting ad banners and links on your website.  There are many affiliate programs on the internet, many of them come free. All you need to is signup with the affiliate program and you will be given banner or ad links to put up on your website, blog, newsletter etc. Whenever someone buys the affiliate product through your links you get a percentage as affiliate commission.

Why should you join an affiliate program? – Joining affiliate program is very easy thing to do. All you have to do is post a link or banner on your website or promote the affiliate product on your site using various internet marketing methods and you will be paid a share of the profits for every sales made through you. Joining affiliate programs can be a great and easy way of starting your own internet based business.

Choosing the right affiliate programs – Finding a good affiliate program for your website can be a really tough job. As there are scores of such programs available online it can be very confusing to choose the right one. Also you have many bogus affiliate companies who may cheat you after getting your signup fee. Hence you need to take your time before choosing the affiliate program. Here are some tips you can use to choose the right affiliate program.

Check the reputation of the affiliate program – Before joining the affiliate program you should refer affiliate marketer forums and check the reputation of the program. Check whether they are paying the commissions promptly

Sell only quality products – Whatever you sell is going to affect the brand image of your own affiliate website. So see that you sell only quality products that are reasonably priced.  Hence you need to research the products well before deciding to promote them.

See that the program offers good Commissions – Affiliate marketing companies should give you at least around one fourth and above of the profit they earn through you. Anything less than this is too low.  Check what the other affiliate companies are offering before you jump in.

Check the payment options – It depends on how you want to receive the affiliate commission. There are various ways of receiving your payment. It can be through paypal, check, or bank deposit. You need to check whether the payment options of the affiliate company is suitable for you.

Finally, verify whether the affiliate company gives a proper explanation on how the affiliate system works. If they themselves don’t know how it is going to work then you can better find some other program as it could well be a fraud affiliate agency.

So these are some of the factors you should consider before joining an affiliate program. Making sure that you choose the right affiliate program will not only ensure that you get into the right affiliate business but also save a lot of wastage of valuable time and money.

Some Tips For Success In Affiliate Marketing

Today there are enough of affiliate marketing tips on the Internet. Also, the number of new affiliates is rapidly increasing like never before and the competition is fierce. We also have a good number of novice affiliates leaving the affiliate marketing arena after getting dejected with poor returns. The reason is, people expect to taste instant affiliate marketing success which is not actually possible. It is more about hard work and how well you use affiliate marketing ideas. The following content hopes to guide entry level affiliate marketers who may have come here looking for some guidance.

Pick a topic that you are good at – Always select something that you are interested in selling. This may not give you commission but it can surely make the job of building your affiliate website a lot easier.
Select what you sell – Go for quality products, not quantity. This will help you build a reputation for your site.
Buy a domain name – After selecting the product that you are going to sell, buy a domain name relevant to the niche of your website. Do not go for free WebPages as they will look unprofessional.
Select a genuine advertiser – As there are many bogus affiliate programs out there, you need to verify the legitimacy of the program before joining. Also ensure that the affiliate programs you choose offer good commissions.
Cloak your affiliate links – Not many people will like to click on links if they know that somebody else is making affiliate money out of it. So see that you use cloaking software to hide your affiliate links. You can download cloaking software for free on the internet.
Participate in forums – Participate in forum discussions related to your product so that you can meet people related to the niche of your website. Do not use a direct marketing approach. Instead, you can use a friendlier and less aggressive way of opening a sale. You can also put together a mailing list of potential buyers and promote your products via email.
Use unique content – See that your affiliate site content is unique and interesting to help your site rank higher in search engine result pages. Your website should answer common problems faced by people with respect to your product or services. People search for solutions all the time and if your site provides the answer they may well be routed to your site via a search engine.

Improve you website traffic – You can submit your affiliate site to major search engines. This will help improve the visibility of you site. Use search engine optimization to improve the keyword usage in your site.

Remember, newbie affiliate partners will have a lot of work to do like getting your self educated about affiliate marketing, setting up the affiliate site etc. And you will not get paid overnight; you may have to play the waiting game for sometime. Just like any other business, you will succeed only with perseverance and work hard. Be patient, follow the right affiliate marketing practices and in the long run you will surely be rewarded with good affiliate commissions.

Promote your EBooks with Affiliate EBook Marketing

Selling EBooks has become a popular business on the internet. However it takes a lot of marketing efforts to popularize eBooks. The selling of EBook has always enjoyed a good market as people are always looking to get information on the Internet via eBooks for anything and everything. To cater to this demand, a good number of eBook suppliers have come up and hence it can be tough to get a new eBook noticed. One way of getting attention to your eBooks can be through affiliate eBook marketing.

The Ebook Affiliate marketing method most often depends on the niche of the Ebook you are selling. Though there are many affiliating programs out there, many of them are not fine enough to give you a good income. Following are some ways of improving your ebook sales.

Selling ebooks using ClickBank – ClickBank is the biggest and most popular market place for online products. ClickBank acts as an easy interface to connect affiliate marketers with ebook publishers. To sell your eBook at Clickbank you should sign up for a merchant account and arrange for a small affiliate website. Most often this a single page site to explain and advertise about the eBook content with links for making the buy. When a sale is made, ClickBank will take a commission and send you a check after giving a small commission to any affiliate who took part in the selling process.

PayDotCom Affiliate Marketing – PayDotCom is a popular online shop that sells scores of products through affiliates. Though this one is almost similar to clickbank, the good thing about PayDotCom is that you get paid faster through paypal. The membership fee is also lesser and there is no rule on the maximum price for products sold.

Selling eBooks on Commission Junction – As in PayDotCom, here too we have affiliates to sell your eBooks for a commission. As a vendor you should supply resources required by the affiliates to market your eBooks like textual links, ad banners etc.

Ensuring Traffic to your Affiliate Site – See that you take all the steps to ensure good traffic. You can think about using Internet advertising methods to bring people to your eBook site. Also see that the site is search engine optimized with all the relevant keywords related to the niche of your e-book.

Affiliate marketing programs alone won’t help in selling ebooks. You also need to see that the ebook has something new to offer for the subscribers. There is no use of coming up with an ebook on a topic that has already been covered by a good number of ebooks. You need to find out a niche that is in demand in the ebook market. Once you have made sure that your ebook has something new and helpful, you can feel assured of good sales provided you also use affiliate eBook marketing ideas as mentioned in this article.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a comparatively new marketing strategy that has evolved in the internet. Since the success of an online business relies on the amount of targeted traffic it receives, affiliate marketing has become a very popular method of obtaining targeted traffic from other related and non related business sites. The affiliate websites that link to the larger business site drive targeted traffic to it. Upon conversion of the lead, the affiliate sites are paid a pre agreed percentage as commission.

There are various advantages for both in affiliate marketing. The concerned product site receives a large amount of targeted visitors, there by increasing the sales many times without having to do all the promotion on its own. The affiliates that promote the product site on the other hand receives a good sum as commission for just letting its visitors reach the product site and earns money without having to invest in products or services. Affiliate sites can generate high income if they are willing to put in some effort to promote the products of the mother site.

Even without taking much efforts affiliate sites can still drive traffic to the product site by just promoting their own websites. However, the conversion rate will decrease in this case as it would not be a targeted traffic. Still the affiliate site could receive commissions on the product sale initiated through it. This is known as the passive income which is unique to the affiliate marketing. Most product sites in the internet offer affiliate programs where website owners can participate. All you need to do is advertise the product of the mother site and provide a link from which your visitors can reach it and purchase products.

There are several factors that you need to consider before joining an affiliate program. Some of them include the kind of product you would promote, if the tracking cookies are good, whether a monthly report is sent to you, what would be your commission, method of payment, threshold if any, and the kind of support offered to you by the product site.