Black Hat SEO Tactics

There are many ways to deceive search engines, to think that bogus content is actually valuable content. This is not something Google as a company likes, and it's against their quality guidelines:

Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."

Real life black hats

Never the less, some companies actually sell this as a "service" to their customers. What they do is ask the customer for a number of words they would like to be found on, and build a series of pages where each page's file name and title is one of these words.

The content of the pages are bogus text which at first looks genuine, but if you read it you'll see that it makes no sense at all. These pages link to each other, and are linked to on an index.html page. If a user access one of these pages using a javascript-enabled browser, he is instantly redirected to the website's front page.

The javascript that handles this is disguised in unclear code, which at first glance looks plausible. These pages have no value at all for users, and unless they've disabled javascript in their browser, they'll never see the pages. So why are they there? to fool the search engines into thinking it's valuable content, and include it in the indexes for the website. It's obvious that they don't want to get caught by Google. Why else would they disguise the javascript that redirects the users to the front page? Why else would they use text that look innocent at first, but is just some random text from the website with the particular page's word used 5-10 times throughout?

A better alternative

Don't fall into traps like this. BMW tried it and felt the consequences. Just because you haven't been found out yet, doesn't mean you wont get banned from Google's index at some point.

There are better alternatives. Have a look at my previous posts on this to get some ideas, or just use your common sense. If you want to be found when users type a specific word or phrase, how can you incorporate that into your site, while still giving your users value?

Be sceptical, but not dismissive

There are plenty of "white hat" SEO companies out there, and some of those who use black hat tactics might also be able to help you with true SEO of your website. Just have the company in question explain how they will optimize your website, and make sure it's not against any Google guideline or policy. Google has a page on what to look for in an SEO.

Getting dugg by Digg.com

I mentioned in my previous post, that I've tried to post my own articles on digg.com and that it gave me quite a boost in traffic. So far it seems that was all I got from it. Some of the users who came from digg.com, 'dugg' my articles (which means that they liked what they read), but it didn't seems to result in an increase in regular users yet. Perhaps the effect will only show later, but to make sure, I'll refrain from posting any more links on digg.com until I'm sure.

As I've mentioned, the trick is to be seen without offending anyone. If the traffic from digg.com doesn't result in regular users, there's no point in posting my own links there, as that would only be an insult to a part of the regular users of digg.com. If only someone else would post links to my articles on digg.com ;)...

How To Get Visitors to Your Information Website

Information based website differ in quite a few ways from e-commerce websites, and can use other means of attracting visitors. Before we go into that, let me just clarify what I see as some of the differences between the two.

Information vs. e-commerce

First of all, let me point out that these two types of websites are not exclusive. You can easily have a site with both elements, but it's more common to just focus on one.

I see e-commerce websites as sites with a product catalogue, a shopping cart and possibly a bit of static text describing the company behind the site. This might be very stereotypical, but I find it to cover most sites that sell products. An information website, is a site that either has no products or sells services. If the site has no products, it is either a blog, a "web presence" (e.g. static, descriptive text of a company) or something intended on establishing a brand. A site that promotes/sells products like custom made jewelry or fitted dresses, falls within my e-commerce category since the products can still be displayed and ordered only, making it possible to have a type of catalog etc. For some this might be a bit of a stretch, but I need to generalize a bit to make it easier to see the value of the suggestions.

Following are suggestions to what you could do to attract more visitors to your site, divided into my two types of information websites. Again, they're not exclusive. They are just the most important things you should focus on, if your site falls into one of these two categories.

Blogs, web presences and brand sites

1. Make sure you constantly update your website with new and related information so that it wont die. You can't get people to come back by appealing to their need for a specific product, so you need to constantly provide new knowledge, entertainment and experiences. This point covers many of the points in my list of "10 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website" but I wanted to stress this again, since it's even more important for these types of websites.
2. Be a media-whore, but not always. This one's a bit tricky. You need to get the message about your site out to as many people as possible, but you don't want to be perceived as some extremely attentions seeking politician who'll do anything for a story in any type of magazine. It's not popular with everyone, but posting links to your own site on places like Del.icio.us, digg.com, Google Base etc. actually attracts people. But only to a certain degree, and only if you have something of interest. Don't post links to simple press releases or irrelevant news about your company. Post only links to valuable content, that would be of interest to a larger number of people. I've used this technique to link to a few of my latest post, and have gotten both a peak of users, but also a bit of name calling on the way. Whether the new users stick around, only time will tell.

Selling services online

If you're trying to promote your company's services, you'll most likely have an economic interest in new users, and the ability to see if any of these new users become buyers. Because of this, you can spend money on getting people to your site, with the prospect of getting these back again soon. With the other types of information websites, they're rarely able to generate income, and if they do it's most likely based on the amount of users on the site, and not the type of users.

Another thing that usually differs from service selling websites and other information websites, is that you rarely update your site or add content. Unless you combine the two by starting a blog about your company, your site will probably be fairly static.

With this in mind, you should seriously consider doing this:

1. Use AdWords or similar tools to advertise your services, and remember to link the users directly to the main page describing a particular service.
2. Form strategic partnerships with like-minded companies, and make sure you promote each others services equally (and that your partners site is as busy as yours or even busier).
3. If you're selling services connected to a specific product or supplier, make sure you're listed on their list of resellers/installers/consultants etc.
4. Take active part in user groups, conferences, seminars etc. that has something to do with your services. If none of these exists, consider starting them if you see a need in the market.

The most important thing is to stay "top-of-mind", to make sure your users already know where to look, when they realise a need for services like yours. This can be very difficult if you only act online, or if you only act offline. The trick is to find something that might get your users to return to your site once in a while, or some other way you can remind them of your services and tell them about new services. By organizing seminars, knowledge sharing meeting or the like, with a certain interval, you might just achieve that.

You choose the level of difficulty

None of these things seem easy at first, but it depends on your level of commitment. You can start out easy, and escalate later, or if you've got the finances for it, you could start out big and hope your idea floats.

What Not to Wear

As with people, how a website presents itself has a huge impact on how it is perceived. While reading treehugger.com the other day, I was intrigued by one of their posts about a new product called ecoballs. The name aside, it sounded like a great idea. Using less water, washing at a lower degree and saving on detergent all sounded very nice, but also a bit dubious. Treehugger didn't now much more about the product than what was obviously from a press release or something, so I decided to check out the products website.

This is where the point of presentation comes in. Being unconvinced by short product description claiming all sorts of good things, I was expecting to find something that would convince me that the product was worth my time. If the ecoballs website is to be compared to how a woman dresses, I would say she looks like a cheap call-girl or something worse. To stay in the world of comparison, I was expecting a smartly dressed woman, probably a business woman or scientist. Someone with style and charisma telling me this product is the real deal, and that it's safe to buy.

Translating that into website terms, that would mean finding valid proof of the capabilities of the product, independent studies backing the wild claims and possibly links to respectable sites who've tested and reviewed the product. Not finding any of this, actually made me conclude that the product is most likely a scam, and not something I would be willing to pay almost 50 pounds for.

My point here is hopefully clear enough. It doesn't matter if you've got yourself an internet strategy, goals, tracking and a statistician on the line if your site sucks. If you're trying to sell dubious stuff to gullible people, then the cheap call-girl look might work, but if you're serious about trading online or about your online presence, you need to have a presentable site which doesn't scare people off. This site might not be the most spectacular site on the web, but there is a reason i didn't choose something more colorful.

10 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website

I’ve mentioned before that there is no difference between e-commerce websites and information websites when it comes to formulating your internet strategy, but that ends once it comes to implementing an internet strategy. If your have a goal of boosting your sales through your website by 15%, there is a world of difference in how to achieve this for an e-commerce website and an information website.

This time round, I’ll give you a few hints as to how you can increase the traffic to your website; since this is something you would most likely need. If your first task is not how to get more users and thus potential buyers, just skip this one and come back later.

Although these hints are applicable to all types of websites, some hints are more appropriate for information websites than for e-commerce websites and vice-versa.

Make Sure Your Website is Interesting for Both People and Search Engine Bots

• Keep to a few, possibly related, subjects and make sure your message is clear. Make sure you have loads of information on the topic(s) surrounding your type of product, and as thorough description as possible of each product. With loads of information, you have a bigger chance of being found in searches on search engines, and it’s more likely someone else will link to you and your products.
• Don’t use frames! And do use long and explanatory URLs! If you use frames or use parameters to differentiate pages, you’re less likely to be indexed properly by search engines. Plus: parameters are ugly and frames make it impossible to have deep links.
• Make sure your website is properly indexed, e.g. by using Googles Sitemaps

Make Sure There is something Worth Seeing/Reading

• Have interesting and catching content, so that your users will return for more.
• Only put a bit of information on your front page, but make sure that it’s up-to-date and relevant. Information about your products is more important than how the company started or that a list of 20+ people liked your product.
• You could start a corporate blog (Google loves fresh content) like 37signals has done it. Not only does it give the search engine more data to index, but it also gives you the opportunity to show that there are actually people behind the facade.

Make Sure People Know Your Website Exists

• Construct a nice and informative footer for your e-mails, including a link to your website.
• Each time you post information to other websites, make sure to include a link to your website in a footer.
• If you or your coworkers use networks like LinkedIn or eCademy, make sure your include a link to your website.
• You should include an address for your website on every document, business card, flyer, poster etc. that has anything to with your business. If you publish in physical media, work you website into that media as much as possible.

That’s it for generic hints. I’ll be back with more targeted hints later.

A Dear Child has Many Names

Apparently Online Strategies are called something different, depending on your view. I was wandering why this blog wasn't found by anyone searching for "online strategy" or something similar to that, and found a very simple solution. It is so simple, I should have noticed it before.

Online Strategy Games

If you search Google for "online strategy" you only get hits concerning online games! I'm a bit perplexed as to why I haven't looked at this before, since this is one of the first things to do, if you consider starting to use AdWords for your site. You need to know what your users will be searching for, and display your ad there. I would think that seeing a long list of online gaming sites, my potential users would try and search for something else, and would therefor think it unnecessary to place AdWord banners there. Apparently The Milk has put up an AdWord banner for "Online Strategy" which got me thinking. Even though the Google results are all about online strategy games, the search would still be my first choice, if I was looking for information about formulating a strategy for my online presence, and thus the perfect place to put up AdWord banners. The Milk is the only ones there, which means it must be quite cheap, and the click rate could be quite high if more people search like i do, since they would be looking for something about strategies and not something about gaming.

Alternative names

Since I'm not interested in paying for AdWords yet, I started looking at different searches with more related results, which I might want to target instead of "Online Strategies". "e-commerce strategy" looks like a much better fit, but somehow that's not the full image. Focusing just on e-commerce is a bit too narrow for my taste, and the way I see it there is no real need to distinguish between strategies concerning e-commerce or "online information" sites. "web strategy" fits a bit better, though I find 'web' to be slightly out dated. "internet strategy" looks like a nice fit as well, and might actually be a better fit than online strategies.

A Difference in Words

Looking at 'online' and 'internet', I find 'online' to define the playing field a bit more narrow than 'internet'. Though 'internet' is also a bit dated, it's still better than 'web', and somehow I find that 'internet' also covers events and ideas that happen within closed areas of the internet. With 'online', I find it to focus more on public access sites which kind of rule out B2B sites and intra-/extranets.

Conclusion

What does all this have to do with internet strategies? it shows you how important it is to choose your playing field, and how to define what you are doing. If no one finds me by searching for "online strategies" I need somewhere else where I can be found, without having to redefine my whole site and rewrite everything I've written so far. Be simply substituting 'online' with 'internet' my chances could be a lot better. We'll know about that in a month or two, when I've gathered enough data to draw a conclusion.

Kaizen

The word Kaizen was one Neil Anuskiewicz used in his article about Google AdWords, and a word I find very fitting for working with online strategies as well as AdWords. Kaizen is Japanese for “continuous and incremental improvement”, which is exactly what a strategy is, no matter if it’s an online strategy or a general corporate strategy. Following a strategy will never lead you to a certain state or position, even if you get that marked share you’ve set out to get, it doesn’t mean you’ve reached the end of the road. You can always improve more, and just because you’ve successfully fulfilled your strategy, you’re not done - you just reassess your strategy to help you further along towards your vision. And even if you at some point become what you’ve envisioned, the marked and the world has most likely changed, and you might not be where you wanted to be and therefore need to define a new vision.

Following a Strategy is Kaizen

My point is that if you define an online strategy, you should use it to make continuous and incremental improvements on you store or website. You need to make sure you always supply what your customers want, and that your online strategy is always in tune with your other strategies and visions. If your online strategy includes marketing campaigns like AdWords, it means that you should continuously ensure that your AdWords are giving you the result you want, and not just in the initial period. It should be tracked all the time, though more intensely in the beginning.

Practice Kaizen

In my view, you should ‘practice’ kaizen in all areas of your business, because if you stand still in the current market you’ll be run over. You should continuously improve in all areas of your business to make sure your company is running as smoothly as possible. From your data storage procedure to the way your sales people behave towards your clients, there is always room for improvement. Just keep an eye on what the cost of improvement is - just because you can improve in an area doesn’t mean it’s viable for your company.