Search Engines Misconceptions
Search engines are a key part of promotion and because they are so important, there are a lot of untruthful rumors, misconceptions and outdated secrets circulating about them.
One of the most common is the invisible text technique. Lets explain-
Creating invisible text is pretty simple, add some text to your page that is the same color as the background. Included keywords in to this text. Search engines see it because search engines don't see background colors, but your visitors will never know it's there.
This method used to work in the stone age of search engines and you can still see some pages out there that use it. In time, search engines have gotten pretty efficient in dealing with this sort of manipulation. Getting caught while doing this can result in having your rankings dropped as a penalty, or even having your site completely banned from the engine in question. Try to avoid the "invisible text" technique if possible. If you really have to use it for one reason or another, do it with CSS. But don't come crying to me if (when) you get burned...
A similar trick is to add extremely small text, stuffed with repetitions of the keywords you're trying to target, to your page. The purpose is similar to the "invisible text" technique, to hide the keyword content from the visitors while allowing search engine spiders to see it. Of course small text isn't entirely invisible, but coupled with a suitable picture in the background, it might be almost unnoticeable. This "small text technique" is another old trick which is very risky nowadays. Using this technique is hardly worth the risk and the design problems that come with it.
Using Strong Keywords That Are Out Of Your Nitch
They might have heard from somewhere that certain keywords, for example those related to the adult industry or different celebrities, are really popular and get searched thousands and thousands of times each day. So even while their site is for example about chess games and has nothing to do with those things, they decide to add tens of unrelated adult words to their META tags and in the worst case, even into the actual text of their page. They are wishing that because the keywords are so popular, their site will be seen by many and they will get a lot of visitors. It will only bring them visitors that are looking for something else than what the site is about. Once the visitors realize that the site is not what they are looking for, they'll leave. You should only optimize your site for keywords that are relevant to your site.
Things To Keep In Mind About Search Engines
Another thing to keep in mind is not to overdo it when you're optimizing your pages. Repeating your primary keyword 100 times at the top of the page will not get you the top spot on search engines, on the contrary it will hurt you and might even get you into trouble. Moderation is the key - use those keywords often, but not as every other word!
Don't Use The Meta Refresh Tag
Meta tags: The infamous refresh tag -
The META refresh tag, used to automatically redirect visitors from one page to another. It looks something like this:
<![CDATA[<META HTTP-EQUIV=Refresh CONTENT="1; URL=http://www.domaininform.net/">]]>
It's not one of the useful META tags, but it’s not among the useless ones either. It's one of the few potentially dangerous tags there is. While it works quite nicely, many search engines dislike it because it is (or was) commonly used with doorway pages. I recommend that for the sake of your search engine success, leave this tag alone and instead redirect visitors by giving them a link to click. JavaScript redirects (preferably in external JS files) can also be used, although with some caution.
|