Negative SEO Techniques

SEO is the technique to maximize a site's exposure in different Search Engines. There are number of factors need to be taken into account while optimizing a website to be search engine and user friendly, including the content and structure of the website's copy and page layout, the HTML meta-tags, backlinks and many others. Following are some of the factors or techniques negatively affecting the SEO industry:

• Dynamically created pages

• Sub Domains

• Cloaking (or Masking)

• Spamdexing

• Link Spamming

• Page Jacking

• Mirrored (or duplicate) websites

• Hidden Text

• Doorway pages

1. Dynamically created pages

Dynamically created pages are web pages which have more than one parameter in a website URL. Such type of pages in a website is database driven. Multiple parameters in a dynamic URL (?, .php, .pl, .cgi extension) can often mean that a search engines spider will choose to ignore the document. So, such URLs are not very search engine friendly.

Google is presently able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because their web crawler can easily overwhelm and crash sites serving dynamic content, they limit the amount of dynamic pages they index. So, Search Engine representatives have long urged webmasters to limit dynamic parameters to two, optimally to one so that spiders will easily crawl them.

2. Sub Domains

Many large Web portals and online retailers structure their sites using subdomains. A subdomain lets you brand your different specialties with your primary domain name. Subdomains are considered to be independent web sites even though they may share the same IP address. But do check with your Web host to make sure you are sharing an IP address with legitimate sites. Otherwise, this could get your site banned from search engines. Some legitimate sites make the mistake of using duplicate content in their subdomains. This can also make the search engines treat duplicate content in subdomains particularly harshly.

3. Cloaking (or Masking)

Cloaking is the SEO process of delivering one version of a page to a user, and a different version to another user such as a search engine. The benefit is code and copyright protection. We can custom build a page for the user. If the user is a search engine, we want to give it our best most optimized stuff. If it is a user, we want to give it a pretty page that is tricked out for navigation and usability.

Mouse-over cloaking is a new SEO technique used widely now-a-days. When a visitor clicks on a website after performing a search query in the search engines, they are directed to another web page, but the search engines have indexed it highly. With just the slightest jostle of their mouse, the visitor is quickly re-directed to the site which has allegedly been “SEO optimized.”

4. Spamdexing

Spamdexing or search engine spamming is the practice of deliberately and dishonestly manipulating search engines by SEO's to increase the chance of a website or page being placed close to the beginning of search engine results. Such as:

Metatag Stuffing: Repeating keywords in the Meta tags, and using keywords that are unrelated to the website's content.

Keyword Stuffing: Repeated use of a word to increase its frequency on a page. Presently, search engines have the ability to analyze a page for Keyword stuffing and determine whether the frequency is above a "normal" level. The keyword density of a webpage should be between 2% - 7%.

5. Link Spamming

Link Spamming is the process of submission of pages that are intended to rank artificially high by various unethical techniques. These can include submitting hundreds of slightly different pages designed to rank high, small invisible text, or word scrambled pages. Such as:

Link farming: A set of web pages that have been built for the sole purpose of increasing the number of incoming links to a web site. Link farms are a known SEO spam tactic and sites that participate in them are likely to be penalized or banned from the major search engines.

6. Page Jacking

When your competitor gets a high ranking page under quality keywords, the first thing that will happen is your competitor's page gets stolen (called Page Jacking). It is the SEO process of duplicating a high ranking competitor’s page, but the page is redirected to your website. Many search engines, upon seeing a duplicate page will delete the competitor’s website from the directory leaving the fake page in its place.

7. Mirrored (or Duplicate) Websites

Mirrored websites are nothing but, creating duplicate sites having the same images & the content with the same number of pages in both the websites. In this case, one of the website stands a high chance of being rejected by the search engines for indexing.

8. Hidden Text

Hidden text is links with the same background color as that of the website. This SEO spam technique is used to increase your page rank of your website.A user to your site may accidentally land to this hidden link & the page thereafter.

9. Doorway pages

A doorway page is simply an additional page on your website that is created to target a specific keyword not related to the website and then submitted to the search engines. Such doorway pages drain away the link popularity of a website and route it to the SEO and its other clients, which may include websites with unsavory or illegal content.

So be aware of the above explained negative factors while optimizing a website.

RSS Feed Optimization

In some ways RSS is very similar to HTML, the language commonly used to create websites. Just as with HTML, webmasters using traditional search engine optimization tactics when creating an RSS feed will find that their RSS feed receives additional exposure and interest.

Simple steps to optimize a RSS feed for search engines:

1) Title Should Contain Important Search Terms
To state the obvious, the title should be relevant and not misleading, while still emphasizing keywords. Ultimately, the title should entice the reader to read on, not mislead them.

2) Display RSS Feeds
Most webmasters display their feeds as content on their website. When displaying a feed be sure to use PHP, ASP or HTML so that search engines will spider the contents of the feed displayed. If using a template to display feeds, use header tags to define the appearance of the Channel Title and Item Titles. Many search engines weight header tags with more importance.

3) Internal & External Links
Within a feed you should always use the full path of any links, keeping in mind that other sites may syndicate the contents of the RSS feed. Links that are not local to the site should launch a new browser. While this is not specific to search engines it will help keep visitors on your site.

4) Link Text Should Emphasize Keywords
It is no longer a deep, dark secret that the text used for incoming links will help a site contextually define the keywords that the site appears for in the search engines. Keeping that in mind, be sure to use keywords in any link text that points back to your website.

5) My Yahoo and My MSN
This is surprisingly simple to do but often overlooked by publishers and webmasters. The fastest way to have an RSS feed spidered by Yahoo or MSN is to include the feed on a personal my.yahoo or my.msn home page. Simply create an account on the respective search engines and customize the home page to include your RSS feed. This is done by adding content and listing the URL to the RSS feed. Typically, within 24-48 hours the feed's contents will be spidered and indexed by Yahoo and MSN.

6) Theme Feeds
Feeds should be themed. This will help with themed links back to a publisher's website from anyone syndicating the feed's content.

7) Link Popularity
Increase link popularity by submitting the RSS feed, blog or podcast to the appropriate directories. The following directories allow submissions of specific kinds of RSS feeds. Be sure to follow the guidelines of each site and choose categories wisely.

Submit Podcasts - http://www.podcasting-tools.com/submit-podcasts.htm

Submit RSS feeds - http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm

Submit Blogs - http://www.blog-connection.com/submit-blogs.htm

8) RSS Feed Descriptions
RSS feed descriptions are generally summaries or introductions to other content. Often, feed creators will provide additional information on an HTML site, enticing the reader to click through for the full information if it is a topic that is of interest to them. Provide enough teaser copy that the reader can easily discern if the contents are something that is important to them.

9) Subscribe to Feeds
This might seem obvious, but a surprisingly large number of publishers do not subscribe to their own feed. This is a great way to visualize what your customers see, and experiment with formatting and integrating HTML into feeds.

10) Image Ads
Add your corporate logo to your RSS feed. Create a brand and enforce that brand by including the image in the RSS feed. The image will enhance your corporate identity and dress up the look of your feed by adding your corporate logo.

11) Alphabetical Rank
Many feed readers list feeds alphabetically in the reader. Feed channels that begin with A will naturally appear in the top of the feed list in most feed readers. If you wish to appear in the top of list of feeds that a reader has subscribed to, keep this tip in mind.

12) Meaningful Links
Each item in your feed should contain a unique URL associated with it. This will direct users to associated information. Many find using target URLs with the "#" symbol in the link to identify specific content useful.

Most marketers have a love-hate relationship with search engines. Search engines have the abilitiy to make even the most confident webmaster feel powerless . Let's face it - all of us have felt the wrath of the search engine powers-that-be at one time or another, and while it may be difficult to know what line was crossed or how we fell out of favor, following some basic guidelines will be helpful in optomizing feeds for search engines.