Search Engine Optimization & Marketing » keywords

What is Black Hat SEO?

OA — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 01:59:33 +0000

Black Hat SEO, is "the use of unethical techniques to make search engine rankings go up". It’s still widespread in spite of all the backlash from Google. It breaks rules and regulations that exist in Search Engine Optimization and also runs the risk of getting the website being banned. There are groups of people who claim that if Black Hat SEO is illegal so is basic SEO. Here are some methods of Black Hat SEO:

Keyword Stuffing- This is stuffing your site with keywords in a non-logical manner.
Use of Doorway Pages- Door Way pages are fake pages are that used for indexing purposes.
Invisible Text- This is adding text that is the same color of the background.
Spamdexing- This is the process by creating pages specifically for the search engine for obscure phrases.
Link Cloaking- This process is basically hiding the actual content of the site and misleading users and search engines.
The other processes include Buying Links, Data Mining and Page Rank Hijacking.

5 Awesome Tools For Keyword Research

OA — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 19:53:56 +0000

I wanted to write this post earlier, but I was not able to write it owing to a mix of my lazy-ness and being bombed with work. May of you keen keyword-junkies out there may already know about these tools, but nevertheless these are some awesome tools for the tiny little noobs like me out there. Here’s what we start out with ( bear in mind, these are tools for keyword drilling and research and don’t delve into issues such as keyword density, page flow etc., ) 1. Adwords External Keyword Tool This tool can be called the "big brother" of keyword drilling based on generic ideas. Its both a great tool for figuring out potential keyword combinations based both on ideas presented and semantic terms. It also doubles up by showing search traffic for these terms according to G ( Even though I believe most of the data is skewed to a large extent ).

SCORES

Usage – 3/5

Finding New Keywords – 4/5

Finding Search Traffic – 3/5

Total – 10/15

2. Keyword Discovery

CREDIT: PPC HERO

Keyword Discovery is yet another me-me service which tries to replicate the function of Wordtracker. But, Keyword Discovery scores a home run when it comes to usability as well as finding regional search data. If your out trying to figure out the search data for regional terms or optimizing for google.co.uk or .com.au, this is one awesome tool.

SCORES

Usage – 4/5

Finding New Keywords – 3/5

Finding Search Traffic – 2/5

Total – 9/15

3. Wordtracker I included Wordtracker in this list after much resistance, not because the tool is not perfectly a keyword research tool, but because its more of an antique tool. Wordtracker hasn’t evolved one bit over the years and still sticks to its basic function of suggesting keywords based on a thesaurus type model and displaying the search data based on meta-crawlers like Dogpile. The only thing I like with Wordtracker is its keyword basketing system ( almost like an ecommerce site checkout ) and its massive KEI functions.

SCORES

Usage – 2/5

Finding New Keywords – 3/5

Finding Search Traffic – 2/5

Total – 7/15

4. Google Suggest Google Suggest is NOT EXACTLY a typical keyword research tool, its more of an attempt by google to tweak their search quality. But, this tool is awesome for finding our longtail keywords! I had to include this in the list for the amazing arrays of longtails you can optimize for with the help of this tool. Afterall, longtails are gold!

SCORES

Usage – 4/5

Finding New Keywords – 5/5

Finding Search Traffic – 0/5

Total – 9/15

5. Yahoo Search Assist This is similar in function to Google Suggest, but I put this in the list because there are no tools which analyze search data according to the Yahoo perspective. Yahoo is after all the second largest search engine in the web and it would be a shame to discount it from proceedings.

SCORES

Usage – 4/5

Finding New Keywords – 3/5

Finding Search Traffic – 0/5

Total – 7/15

I may have missed a couple of tools here and there, but I’ve to a large extent discounted the tools which were released by MSN. I can guarentee you that these tools are some of the best you’ll find out there and these tools can help you create that foundation for a very successful search engine marketing strategy.

What is Keyword Research?

OA — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:56:01 +0000

Keyword research is the process of figuring out target keywords that you want to optimize a page or a website for.

Keyword research is done on the basis of:

What people are searching for.
How many results are there for the phrase in the search engines

In other words, keywords are like targets or the foundation of a search engine optimization and marketing campaign.

Four Reasons why having good keywords is important

With crappy keywords, even if you end up at page #1 there is a high probability that you are not going to get traffic.
Traffic from irrelevant keywords doesn’t convert as well as traffic from relevant key-phrases.
Bad keywords can result in a bad search engine optimization campaign.
If you shoot at keywords which are too competitive or have too few searches, it could be a detrimental effect on the time and money you invest into search engine optimization.