[What is] Search Engine Optimization ?

SEO is about customizing a website to get high rankings on the search engines.

SEO or Search engine optimization  if you like is a way of analyzing a website and altering it to become search-engine friendly so that the search engines can be able to easily read and index it. SEO is about customizing a website to get high rankings on the search engines. The reasons for high search engine rankings are obvious — when web surfers use the search engines to look for something, they rarely search beyond the top 10 results and as such, if a website is to benefit you, it needs to get rankings among the top 10, if not the first slot.

Even though SEO has been in existence for quite a long time now, it has gained popularity only in the recent past. This is due to advancement in technology where new tools such as use of Java applications, many images, and Flash require a website to be optimized so that the search engine spiders can read the site easily. Note that if the content of your website cannot be read by the search engines, definitely the site will not be indexed meaning it will not be available to your potential visitors when they look for it on the search engines.

Basically, the search engines have a very huge database that they maintain with information of all websites available. The information however is never listed on the search engine’s results page but they take the information into consideration when ranking websites. As such, a webmaster should ensure they optimize their sites to selected keywords and also when submitting the websites so that the sites get ranked. Note that if you use a set of keywords on your website, you should use the same in your submission tool lest you send mixed signals to the search engines and interfere with your rankings.

The right keywords can be obtained through thorough research. There are tools that can be used to identify the right keywords. They can give you data as to how many times certain words are searched by web users. However, if you use the most frequently used keywords, expect a stiffer competition.

The major search engines today are free hence you should take advantage and advertise your products and services for free, which you can do in as little as an hour. If you are not adept on SEO, you can always hire professionals to do the work for you. Even so, the internet is full of resources that can enlighten you on SEO, which is a good thing so that you cannot be left on the dark even as you hire someone.

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[SEO] Is SEO a Long-Term or a Quick Fix Issue?

Question: Is SEO a long-term process or can there be a quick fix solution?

Before all you SEOs raise your hand with the answer, lets take a minute to analyze the basis of the question for all the small business owners out there.

A lot of businesses are looking for ways to grow their companies without increasing long-term costs. They want profits, and in order to be (and remain) profitable, they have to keep expenses down to a minimum as much as possible. After all, the more you spend, the less profits you have in your pocket, right?

This is an unfortunate mindset when it comes to SEO and SEM. Instead of looking at them as an investment that will grow their businesses, owners hope that both SEO and SEM can provide quick-fix solutions that will bring an influx of new customers and soaring profits. And somehow, magically, that influx is expected to stay strong, even without any ongoing marketing efforts.

Uh huh.

I got two words for you: Coca-Cola.

Or Pepsi Cola.

Or Wal-Mart.

Or Target Stores.

When did these guys stop advertising? All are well-known brand names and very few people are in danger of forgetting that Coke continues to make cola. Should Coke (or Pepsi, or Walmart or Target) stop their marketing efforts, nobody would forget to go to those stores or buy those products.

Or would they?

These companies continue to advertise for one reason only: it increases their profits. They just don't advertize once or twice, or for a year or two. They continue to advertize year after year after year to make sure people keep them in mind when they do their shopping. They know that when the advertising stops, sales decline. That's the bottom line.

I often talk to business owners that want to invest temporarily in their SEO or PPC efforts. They want to start strong then scale back or eliminate the "expense" down the road.

That's just crazy talk!

PPC as a Short-Term Solution

PPC can be expensive. It's pretty hard to run a successful PPC campaign without an ad spend of several thousands of dollars per month. And it's very easy to move into the tens of thousands of dollars per month. A lot of businesses look at PPC as a temporary solution until their natural search engine rankings are in place. Then they cut out the PPC and let the natural do it's thing.

The question to ask is, if you're profiting with PPC on each and every click, why cut it? Sure, you can get "free" clicks in the natural results via SEO, but why cut out one profitable stream just because you opened another? The problem with PPC as a temporary strategy is that you're looking at the expense, rather than the ROI that it brings.

If all you see is the $5000 per month credit card charges in ad spend, that can be daunting. You can be tempted to think, "I can't afford this $5000!" But if that $5000 in ad spend is bringing you $10,000 in profits, you really can't afford to stop. Sure, you'll "save" $5000 per month in expenses, but you'll be losing $5000 each month in profits.

Killing profitable PPC can really hurt your business. If your PPC campaign isn't, or is barely, profitable, perhaps you need someone else to manage it for you. How you manage your PPC campaign can make a HUGE difference in your profits.

Short-Term vs. Long-Term SEO

There are some things you can do to SEO your site that only need to be done once, then you move on. Things like website architecture can make a profound impact on your site's performance. A few hours of consulting can help point you in the right direction to improve your rankings.

But SEO is really a perpetual process of researching keywords, finding problems and making your site more search engine friendly and keyword focused.

Short-Term SEO Solutions

Short-Term SEO can really only focus on a few things, including site architecture, one-time keyword research and optimization of a set number of keyword phrases. It's pretty difficult to "fully" optimize a large site in a short period of time. There is no ongoing management, reflection or strategic improvements being made. Once the "SEO" is done, it's done. The rest is just happenstance.

Here are some pros of a deliberate short-term SEO campaign:

• Pages gets fully analyzed, optimized and rolled out within a few weeks or months, depending on the size of the site.
• Site architecture (should) be reviewed and problems corrected.
• No long-term contracts or ongoing commitments.
• No re-occurring fees past the initial payments.

And the cons:

• It can take months until any work or recommendations are submitted to the client, delaying performance on the search engines.
• Many valuable keywords may not get optimized into the site based on timing, contract limitations, available pages to optimize or keyword discovery through analytics.
• Limited reporting and performance analysis.
• Extremely limited or non-existent link building or social media help.

Long-Term SEO Solutions

Long-Term SEO is more about the process of improvement. Keyword research and optimizing those keywords into your site is an ongoing process. Finding and correcting site architecture and usability issues is important for continued success. Link building and even social media strategy continues to keep you ahead of your competition.

Here are some cons of a long-term SEO campaign:

• Some valuable keywords may take time to get optimized into the site as other important keywords are targeted first.
• Long-term commitment, which is generally 6-12 months at minimum but likely can go on indefinitely.
• More money out of pocket.

And the pros:

• New and valuable keywords are always being discovered and optimized into your site.
• Ongoing performance analysis, ranking maintenance, analytics reporting and consultations as needed.
• Ongoing link building and social media consulting (if included in a contract)
• Keywords are optimized and implemented continuously; no waiting for a "final" product to be delivered.
• Responsibility in success lies with the SEO because nothing is being "handed over" and then forgotten about.

Short-term SEO campaigns can have merit. But for long-term success and growth, a long-term strategy is generally warranted.

When looking at your SEO and SEM efforts as an ongoing investment, you can get out of the mindset of "cost" and look at the return on investment each will bring. If the return is profitable, then any cut into the "cost" of your online marketing will only result in a cut in your profits.

-By: Stoney deGeyter

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[SEO] Understanding the New Role of SEO Consultants

The techniques of search engine optimization (or "SEO") consultants have frequently appeared to outsiders as something akin to alchemy. The SEO bag of tricks has often consisted of rather questionable methods of exploiting unexposed elements of search engine algorithms.

The industry of professionals that are concerned with the positioning of web sites in the results of queries in search engines and web directories has not yet found its comfortable role in the web design community. The lack of a settled name (SEO - search engine optimization, SE - marketing, SE - promotion) for the profession is perhaps both a reflection of, and a cause for, its uncertain identity.

SEO techniques have proven to have an extremely limited lifespan. The debate over the continued usefulness of meta keyword tags, sparked by a recent Traffick article, seems to acknowledge that SEO keyword services will no longer be needed. The question becomes ever more pertinent, just what exactly is the role of SEO?

Just as the Search Engine Optimization service industry has had to constantly recreate itself in response to the constant evolution of search engine technology, it must now adapt itself to the recent developments in the web industry, namely the emergence of a relatively stable set of web standards and design conventions.

SEO strengths

Insofar as the SEO community is more closely associated with the marketing industry, it brings a welcome focus on the end-user. This marketing background enables SEO consultants to better identify target audiences, understand market segmentation and generally raise awareness of the importance of thinking about who the audience is when designing a web site.

Although the bottom has fallen out of the online marketing industry, in terms of managing banner and other placement campaigns, the growth of placing advertisements based on keywords in search engine results (e.g. Overture, Google Adwords, Espotting) has created a new mini-industry that only the SEO community is positioned to truly manage.

It is, however, the obsession with the mysteries of search engines and their algorithms that created this community and which will sustain it. The number one source of traffic to web sites is, and will remain, search engines and directories. Understanding the inner workings of search engines, analyzing log files, and putting that knowledge to work in the design and construction of web sites is an essential ingredient for the commercial success of any web project.

The evolution of web design

Given the current economic climate, designers can no longer indulge in their personal flights of fancy, but rather, every resource invested in a site must be justified for valid business reasons.

In recent months, a growing and vocal segment of the web design community has begun to espouse a design philosophy that heralds the importance of adhering to emerging standards. There has been a convergence towards a number of standards and best practices, including the relatively stable latest versions of HTML/XHTML/CSS issued by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), usability design patterns and web accessibility guidelines.

The pro-standards design philosophy has certain ideological and aesthetic roots, as this approach to design has a tendency towards simple yet elegant structures. A collection of sites that share this philosophy can be found on the Minimalist Web Project. However, an indirect consequence of following web standards has been the creation of sites that perform very well in search engine results.

As designers need to justify their choices to business decision-makers, redesigning sites according to the new standards can be defended on the grounds of improved performance (pages tend to be much smaller, thus reduced server load), better usability, ease of maintenance, and the ability to deploy content to multiple platforms. But one of the most important reasons remains the fact that by optimizing the site for search engines, the redesign can contribute to greater traffic.

The recent redesign of the Wired web site (see this Wired News article describing the redesign) has been hailed as a validation of this approach by one of the Internet industry's bellwethers.

SEO's potential new role

It is clear that the management of online marketing campaigns, whether in the form of traditional banner campaigns or Overture-type account management, will remain a necessary and useful industry.

If the Wired example is indeed a sign of things to come, then we will see more and more redesign projects improving the structure and code of web sites according to the new standards, with search engine optimization as one of the primary goals of the project.

Knowledge of marketing principles will enable the SEO consultant to intervene in the redesign process in a way similar to the "Business Analyst" role, who is responsible for identifying business objectives, target audiences, brand positioning and functional requirements.

However, one of the main focus of SEO techniques has been site content, and in this regard, the SEO consultant's role overlaps more and more with the "Information Architect". Just as many members of the SEO community come from an advertising and copywriting background, the IA community is populated by a large number of people with a background in Library and Information Sciences.

Information architects focus on the structure of content within a page, in terms of titles, headings and labels and they create navigation frameworks and overall site architectures. Finally, they are also specialized in the creation of classification systems, which will likely increase in importance as additional standards emerge (e.g. Dublin Core for metadata) in the wake of further developments in the many XML initiatives.

Until now, the search engine optimization community has been largely disconnected from the web design community, intervening only after a site has already been developed. As site optimization with an eye towards indexation within search engines becomes part of the mainstream of web design projects, SEO will need to find its place within the design process.

The recent emergence of a community of interest of web design professionals interested in supporting web standards and best practices has provided an ideal moment for the SEO community to engage itself in the web design process.

-By: Andrew Goodman

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[SEO Strategies] Avoid Jumping the Gun

Implementing search engine optimization into a web site is as important as the site's design, if not more so. Regardless of how well a site is designed, it is the optimization and rankings that will acquire more visitors on a day to day basis. (It is then the content and design's job to keep those visitors there.)

While optimization will help a web site no matter when it is introduced, the most beneficial approach is to keep it in mind throughout all stages of web site development, as well as to be aware of key points in site production.

Designing with Optimization in Mind
One of the easiest ways to introduce optimization is to have your designers know what will help, and what will not. While they are designers, and are focused on the aesthetic appearance of your site - there is no reason they cannot work with you to make your site more powerful for long term success.

Make sure that your designers are aware of what types of navigational features are beneficial. For example, the usage of a text based navigation will lead to much more search engine exposure than one composed of an image map or javascripting.

Beyond that, the ability to introduce headlines and other content related tags will surely help. The point of this exercise is to make sure that the design that has been used will not limit or worse yet, compromise the optimization.

Content, Clarity, and Hierarchy
If possible, your web site should contain specific information on each page. Whenever possible, your content writers and designers should avoid blending two topics into one. Each page, for the sake of optimization, should be geared towards one specific set of keywords (phrases). Having more pages on a web site is sure to help, as it will introduce more quantifiable areas for the engines to index. If each page is targeted for a specific optimization usage - extraordinary results can be achieved.

Start by putting the most broad topical categories as navigational elements. Once one of these categories is accessed, drill down further into more targeted or niche level topics. Continue that trend as much as needed to cover all aspects without becoming redundant.

Practice and Implement Validated Code
Search engines are raising their awareness to validated HTML code. While no one can immediately confirm nor deny an engines' liking to validated code, it certainly could become an issue as the Internet continues to grow.

Beyond the benefits of validated HTML code for optimization, it will also make your user base much larger. Code that goes against the W3C validation rules can often cause issues in both appearance and usability for all site users. Clearly, it would be counter-productive to employ coding that deterred any site visitors, right?

Complete the Web Site Before Launching
If you are initially designing (or redesigning) a web site, it is absolutely critical to make sure that the web site is completed. By this, I mean that all areas of content have been completed and are in place. Having a web site available to any browser (be it human, or an automated engine spider) that does not contain all of the content is simply detrimental. Without all of the unique and developed content on a page, the browser cannot understand the entire message that is trying to be conveyed. For the sake of optimization, a spider cannot effectively index your pages, and for a user, they simply cannot make logical sense as to what that page is about.

Test the Site Thoroughly
If you get to the point where the web site that is up and online (be it on a private, or public URL), it is important to test that site through and through. Run it through a series of validation programs that check for HTML validity, spelling and grammar, as well as internal and external linking. Run these reports and repair the site based on findings over and over until you pass with flying colors.

Be Prepared for Indexing Spiders (With a Robots.txt)
I have covered this previously, and again, stress it to the maximum. Before you conduct a single submission, know that a spider can come through on luck or coincidence alone. Be prepared, and let them know where they can, and cannot go the second your site goes online.

Submissions�
At long last, you have a completed, validated, content-rich, spider ready web site sitting online awaiting endless visitor sessions�. Make it happen with all of the right submissions, both paid and unpaid.
August 19, 2002

-By: Eric Lander

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[Search Engine Optimization] As It Relates to Larger Web Sites

Many of us think that having a large web site with lots of content will secure a good position within the search engines, leaving little to worry about. In order to secure a well-optimized status for any web site, large or small, you must first use your site's strengths as an advantage. Executing your optimization with these strengths in mind will bring great rewards in the form of traffic.

In order to address the various strengths that a web site holds, we must be able to first define how large that web site is, not only in number of pages - but content as well.

Identifying Large Web Sites
For the purpose of this article, we will consider a web site to be large when it has 300 pages (or more) available to users. While 300 pages may seem like a lot at first glance, this number most likely seems small to those who are actively involved within the industry.

More important than the actual number of pages, is the level and diversity of content offered to users and accessing spiders. Simply stated, large web sites contain enough information to fill an entire book found on any bookstore shelf. Because there is so much information, the concentration of topical interest becomes quite wide as opposed to being restricted solely to a niche market of users.

Strengths of Large Web Sites
With a large web site, one of the most important factors in a successful optimization campaign - content - is certainly taken care of. Beyond that, here are some more factors to watch for to ensure the most visibility from the engines:

Avoid Query String URLs
Since large web sites are typically database driven, it is important to avoid the use of any query strings. Query strings contain a "?" within the URL, and are used to assign values to variables as they are passed through the location and HTTP request. Some search engines, like Google for example, can and will index query string URL's, but based on history - they do not index these URLs as willingly as those that appear to be static. If you cannot develop something in house to deliver database driven contents easily without the use of query strings, seek out the help of third party applications for your servers.

Keep Large Sites Flat - (Never exceeding three layers of depth)
Knowing that themed web sites produce more traffic from the engines, many industry professionals have published their research of themes and effects from developing within a themed architecture. Following that lead, our independent research has concluded that working within 3 layers is as deep as any themed site should become.

While having more layers does not invoke any direct penalization or other detrimental effect, it has been shown that fewer pages are indexed beyond the third layer of a themed web site.

For those focused on Google in particular, it has also been found that the further down into a themed site you travel, a lower PageRank value is assigned. It is not uncommon to see a home page with PR7, second tier of PR 6, and third layer of PR 5. To avoid this from continuing down the line, stick to three layers in your themes.

Ability to Use Elaborate Themes
As alluded to above, the creative use of themes can be used to devise elaborate schemes that contain information that covers entire topical categories within a domain name. By having a more elaborately themed site, the engines' focus and attention should become constant - along with the search engine referrals.

In short, do not be afraid to use the level of content and information available to develop a creative and elaborate theme structure. By approaching things a bit differently then the rest, you may end up obtaining more attention to key areas of your site - leaving your competition lower in the ranks.

Internal Link Popularity
If you have a large web site, then you also have a lot of internal link popularity real estate to work with. With hundreds of pages indexed regularly, a simple text based navigation system can make or break your most important pages and the attention distributed to them.

If the main navigation system uses anything aside from simple link text, then immediately implement a text navigation system as soon as possible. Once you have done that, be sure to create text for the links within that navigation system that match the targeted page's keyword focus. Repeat that step for all of your links, but do not make the link text difficult for your users. If you sell "widgets", you are doing more harm than good trying to consistently link back to your homepage as "widgets". Set a theme to your site, and consistently use a linking structure in simple text. If you have 300 pages on your site, all of which have the same link structure, you are easily focusing attention to those links.

Play by Google's Rules and Build PageRank
Google is a large search engine, and based on its user base and partnerships - you never want to cross the line of ethical optimization. Too often, those who attempt optimization are not familiar enough with the rules to know what is, and what is not, ethically accepted. Optimizing ethically is useful for any sized web sites, but it is more important for a larger site looking to rank within Google, because the potential to build and retain high levels of PageRank are greatly increased.

Using the Open Directory Project ("ODP")
A larger web site, regardless of topic - is more likely to obtain multiple listings within higher categories in the ODP. These listings are sought after by the industry insiders for their high regard and influence within Google and other search engines pulling from the ODP's index.
August 12, 2002

-By: Eric Lander

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[Search Engine Guide] The Doorway to Optimization Disaster

When tasked with the mission to get your companys website to the top of the search engine results, it can be down right confusing just trying to understand which methods work, which dont, and which could have serious repercussions for your business.

The following advice will begin a series of articles that will take a look at the more questionable methods that are currently used to obtain prominent search engine visibility.

Over the next few weeks, we will cover some of the more notorious optimization techniques such as cloaking, hidden text and keyword stuffing to name just a few. Today, we begin with the most controversial and the most debated, doorway pages.

A doorway under any other name is still a doorway. Doorway pages, gateway pages, doormat pages, pathway pages are just some of the names used to describe the same technique; building a page for the sole purpose of gaining top search engine positioning and creating traffic for a website.

The variety of aliases for a doorway page provides a clue to the ethics of such a page. By using a different name, the doorway creator (be it the webmaster or SEO) hopes to persuade the website owner that what they are doing is most definitely not a doorway page. But, to paraphrase a well know saying, if it looks like a doorway page and smells like a doorway page then, you guessed it, its a doorway page.

What is a doorway page?

Now that we have clarified the different names that are often applied to doorway pages, lets explore exactly why a doorway page can be bad news for any website that utilizes them. First of all, lets look at the definition of a doorway page.

Inktomi, one of the worlds largest providers of search engine results offers a great description in theirContent Guidelines:

[Doorway pages] are pages created deliberately, to trick the search engine into offering inappropriate, redundant or poor-quality search results.

This is a great catch all description of a doorway page, as doorway pages rarely follow the same format, but all have the same desired outcome.

Doorway pages are typically only created to inflate the search engine ranking of a website and are rarely built with useful content or the user experience in mind. Their sole purpose is to provide a page that can be filled with keyword rich text and multiple links back to the main website. Often these pages are not part of the main domain and simply float in cyberspace waiting to attract an unwary search engine spider and force-feed it the inflated content.

A doorway page will often have no graphics, as these would not benefit the optimization of the page, and would use various large fonts and bold text in an effort to highlight the targeted keywords. In essence, a doorway page is spam, and will more than likely lead to more harm than good.

So why are doorway pages spam?

So why is a doorway page considered by many to be spam? If it is so unethical, why do many SEOs still utilize this method? Two great questions that I am often asked when discussing doorway pages with website owners. So lets look at the answers.

First, a doorway page is spam if its sole purpose is to manipulate the search engine results without any effort to provide useful content to the visitor who unwittingly lands on it. Some people will argue that a doorway page can be attractive and informative and therefore not spam. I typically respond by challenging the creator of a doorway page to make the content of the actual website attractive and informative rather than building unnecessary pages.

Search engines do not want to spend their time spidering, indexing and inevitably, removing a doorway page from their database. There is no need to create a doorway page, when you can work with the pages of the main website to increase the relevance of that site and consequently improve its search engine ranking.

Why are doorway pages still used?

Now lets look at why many webmasters and SEOs still utilize doorway pages in their optimization efforts. There are two common reasons why doorway pages are still used.

The first reason is that creating a doorway page is quick and easy compared to optimizing the actual website you wish to benefit. Many SEOs have software readily available that, with the touch of a button, creates a keyword dense doorway page ready for uploading to the Internet. With this quick and easy method, it is far cheaper for anyone, webmaster or SEO, to create dozens of doorway pages each designed to increase the traffic of the benefiting website.

Many SEO companies struggle to be profitable in a competitive industry and therefore take the easy route of creating doorway pages. They know that they can make a very good profit if they never actually have to take the time to review the main website and spend hours determining what type of optimization would work well for that particular content.

Like an athlete that takes steroids, they want quick success and are too lazy to put the time and effort into obtaining legitimate results. Unfortunately, like a pumped up Olympian, they run the risk of being banned or penalized for using unethical techniques.

The second reason that doorway pages are still used, is less about laziness and greed but more about ignorance. Before doorway pages were used in proliferation by adult sites, who wanted to trick a searcher for computers into visiting their smutty content, the search engines did not look on their use as spam as they do today. Doorway pages were tolerated and for many years provided a lot of success.

Unfortunately there are still a lot of webmasters and SEOs that have not moved with the times and still believe that doorway pages are effective and safe. I have even spoken to webmasters in charge of obtaining search engine ranking for their companys website, who have admitted that they simply do not know any other way of optimizing a website, other than creating multiple doorway pages. The rules of search engine optimization are constantly changing and many companies simply cannot keep up with whats considered acceptable and whats now classed as spam.

The Search Engines' View

We have already touched on Inktomis view of doorway pages, but many other major search engines have the same tough stance. As many SEOs will claim that doorway pages are not spam, it is important for anyone considering using doorway pages or using a company that implements doorway pages, to hear it direct from the horses mouth.

Here is what the search engines have to say about the use of doorway pages:

• Google: Google does not encourage the use of doorway pages. We want to point users to content pages, not to doorways or splash screens. Content Policy
• Fast/AllTheWeb: [we will] exclude Page spam documents from our index or at least disregard links from it when computing static rank Spam Policy
• Ask Jeeves / Teoma: Defines doorway pages as Fabricated pages designed to lead users to other web pages Spam Restrictions
• AltaVista: Trying to fool search engines into including pages that don't truly match queries, or ranking marginally relevant pages very high on result lists, is one form of spamming. Combating spamming

Avoid the doorway to disaster

Using doorway pages to enhance the search engine ranking of your website, will not benefit your company in the long-term. While it is tempting to use doorways to gain quick results, inevitably the search engines discover the pages and ban them from their index. Worse still, if you or your SEO create multiple doorway pages, all pointing back to your main website, you run the risk of your own website losing all positioning or being banned completely.

Whether optimizing your website yourself or employing the services of an SEO, the best thing you can do to improve your search engine ranking is to start with the content of your own site. Creating doorway pages to increase your performance will lead you to nothing but disaster.
July 16, 2002

-By: Andy Beal

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[Cloaking] Search Engines Shift Gears

As recently as last year, search engine representatives were unclear or did not seem to care much about the search engine marketing application referred to as cloaking, IP delivery or stealth scripts.

At one point, I remember thinking many people working at major search engines must simply have no idea what cloaking is and how it works. If they had, they wouldn't have waited so long to take action against it.

Cloaking is a search engine optimization strategy in which a Web page URL has several documents associated with it, one for each of the major search engines and a different document for end users.

With cloaking, an individual search engine spider sees only the page tailored to optimize rankings for that search engine.

Visitors entering a Web site from search engine results see a page designed for end users because these click-throughs are URL independent, that is, the link from search engine results refers visitors to the URL of the site and not to the page the search engine has cached, which is the page optimized for its indexing process.

How Cloaking Works

Cloaking is a program installed on the Web server that monitors URL requests. These requests must contain the IP address of the requester so the Web server knows where to send the requested page.

By comparing the IP address of the requesting machine to a database of IP addresses of search engine spiders, the cloaking program determines whether a visitor is a search engine spider then decides which search engine spider it is.

The server sends the page designed for the spider it detects or the page designed for end users if a search engine spider is not detected.

Pros

Cloaking allows you to tailor Web pages for individual spiders and to score top positions in multiple search engines using one URL.

It's difficult for a single page to rank well with all search engines because each search engine uses a different algorithm to rank Web pages.

Hiding HTML code from prying eyes is the main reason people give for using cloaking. When sites achieve top search engine positions, competitors for the same keyword analyze the pages to discover why. Cloaking can keep important optimization strategies -- such as keyword frequency, keyword placement and word count -- hidden from competitors.

Cons

Though cloaking can keep competitors from some of your search engine optimization strategies, it can also be used to hide other things.

People can steal your site's content and hide it behind a stealth script. This nasty form of theft, referred to as page jacking, was exposed in a publicized event on Search Engine Watch.

But the major downside that may have you thinking twice about cloaking: Major search engines are finally on to it.

On the I-Search Discussion List, Marshall Simmonds, manager of Search Engine Relations at About.com, posted conversations he had with representatives from AltaVista, Inktomi and Northern Light. Sentiments expressed were simple and to the point: Web sites that cloak will be permanently banned from their search engine databases.

Google states its policy in a FAQ.

It all sounds like deterrent language to me.

Do Right by Users

Many people reported in I-Search that they achieve better positioning if they simply optimize normally and use techniques that are impossible with cloaked pages.

At several recent conferences, I've had the chance to speak frankly with search engine representatives. They generally agree you should provide quality content to your users and worry about spider-friendly design over positioning alone. This is a long-term strategy that will survive any spam shakeout.

-By: Detlev Johnson

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