SEO (search engine optimisation) has become a mainstream marketing practice used by businesses large and small, all over the globe. Most companies recognise that to take advantage of the keyword searches within their markets they need to outsource their SEO to a specialist online marketing agency. What a lot of these businesses aren’t aware of is that there are two different types of search engine optimiser: white-hat (ethical) and black-hat (unethical). Choosing a black-hat SEO could mean techniques are used that go directly against what the search engines favour.

If black-hat is bad, then why does it exist?

There are two main reasons why SEO’s aren’t all using white-hat, best practices techniques to improve client rankings:

1. Black-hat SEO can work. It can bring in quick results but the downside is it opens your site up to long-term risk. If you have agreed to pay a search engine optimisation to get you to the top of Google then white-hat techniques can take months, whereas using some unethical tricks they could have you there a lot quicker. The problem you’ll face is that once Google spots that these methods have been used to manipulate the search results you will soon find your website has been penalised or even dropped from the index altogether, resulting in plummeting traffic levels.

2. Black-hat SEO is easy. A lot of research is needed to stay ahead in search engine marketing. At Liberty we spend tens of hours each month and thousands of pounds each year on researching and testing the latest techniques. For many companies this isn’t an option, so they choose to stick to old black-hat techniques that they know inside out.

What black-hat techniques should you look out for?

The most common types on unethical optimisation include keyword stuffing, cloaking and invisible text.

Keyword stuffing – When keywords are used in too great a volume.  You will no doubt have seen this on websites where the same keyword is repeated over and over in a piece of copy or where a long list of keywords are bundled together at the bottom of a page.

Cloaking – Presenting one version of a page to the search engines and another to the visitor. If you’ve ever searched for something and found yourself surprised that the website you clicked on is for something completely different then this is probably an example of cloaking.

Invisible text – Making the background colour and the colour used for the text the same. You can only see the text if you select it so although it looks like a big open use of colour, it’s trying to trick the search engines into scanning a whole load of extra copy.

Despite it being common knowledge for years that these techniques could get your site banned, many SEO companies still use them. If you see examples of these in use by your potential online marketing agency then run a mile.

Probably the most common mistake I see on websites is that the pages are all created in the exact same way. Many sites will have the same page descriptions or keywords across their whole site, rather than using each pages as separate way of competing for keywords. If two pages are talking about different topics, but appear to be optimised for the same keywords, then it is likely to confuse the search engine spiders which they should rank. Treating each page separately is one of the strongest ways of increasing the search engine friendliness of your website.

What should you do?

Create a list of the keywords you want to be found for and then assign each web page with one of these keyword. When you have decided upon your list of main keywords and the pages that best represent each one you need to really optimise that page for the keyword. To do this you:

- Make sure the keyword features in the URL of the page (if you have a static site or use a CMS system that allows URL re-writing)
- Place the keyword in the page Title tag (close to the beginning)
- Make sure the keyword features in the start of the meta keywords list for the page
- Put the keyword in the meta description of the page (close to the beginning)
- Write the body copy so that the keyword features for around 5% of the text
- If you can then you should put the keyword in the H1, H2, H3 tags
- If an image is on that page then add the keyword to the image Alt text
- If possible, add the keywords into the links that point to that page from other places on your site

By following the above pattern for each page you will have the start of a strongly SEO’d site, and therefore better chance of ranking for your keywords than the many businesses that write the same page titles for their whole site, or are trying to optimise every page for the exact same keywords.

Online marketing intelligence company, Hitwise, has recently released a report showing that the number of words being typed into search engines is growing. It seems that internet users have taught themselves that the longer the keyword phrase, the more relevant the websites shown in the results.

The report, based on search engine usage in the US, shows a continuing rise in the percentage of people typing in over three keywords when using Google and the other search engines.

This is good news for smaller businesses, as one and two keyword phrases are often very competitive and dominated by larger, well funded, and well optimised competitors. Optimising your site for longer search phrases can bring in very targeted traffic and is much easier to rank highly for.

How can you start taking advantage of these “long tail keywords”? Head over to the Google keyword tool and type the your main one and two keyword phrases in your market. In the results you’ll see some of the related long tail keywords that people search on. Some of these will be much more specific to what you offer and will still have a nice level of traffic. Work out which ones are worth competing for and start optimising your web-pages, your copy and your in-bound links for these words. If you don’t know how to do that you can always call us (029 2076 6467).

AnswerMyPhone.biz, a telephone answering and message taking service, approached us to help with the promotion of their new website. The site had been designed but didn’t have much copy or many in-bound links, and as such wasn’t ranking at all well on Google or the other search engines.

What did we do?

1. We looked into the keywords that their target market were using, highlighting some niche markets that the business had not previously considered.
2. We wrote keyword rich copy for a number of key pages, including the homepage and service pages, based on the most commonly used keywords as well as the niche examples.
3. We provided advice on their on-page SEO and created internal links, descriptions and page titles based on the chosen keywords.
4. We started building links to the site from a variety of other websites including relevant and general directories.

What was the outcome?

We are pleased to say that within only a fortnight of the new copy being placed on the site we could see first page Google positions for some of their main keywords.

We are now working with the company to promote their site further and generate page one results for the rest of their chosen keywords.