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Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing Frequently Asked Questions


More Search Engine Optimization FAQ:

Q: Will using Flash pages or dynamic pages harm my search engine rankings?

You don't want to use Flash Pages if you want them to gain a ranking on the search engines. Search engine spiders and crawlers can't read flash pages. That said, you can obtain rankings by embedding your flash presentations into pages with relevant content pertaining to the presentation.

Dynamic pages present no problem to being indexed by the search engines as long as they use the extentions .php, .asp, .aspx, etc. What the search engines have a problem with is when you use a "query string" in the URL. The use of "?parameter=yes&other=no" will negatively affect your rankings as these query strings make it extremely difficult if not impossible for search engines to crawl your website and pages. Most search engines refuse to crawl pages with query string URLs.

Using "frames" and "framesets" is also discouraged as the spiders have a difficult time indexing them also.

Q: Should I try some "Black Hat SEO Practices" to get my page to rank higher?

While using black hat SEO practices might get you a quick rise in rankings, over the long run they will adversely affect your rankings and may lead to having your site de-listed or banned by the search engines.

Black hat SEO practices would include "cloaking", hidden text, keyword stuffing, doorway pages, cross-linking, or any unethical spamming or tricks used in order to falsely increase your rankings in the search engines.

Cloaking is a means of cheating the search engines by delivering optimized content to the search robots while delivering up different content pages to human visitors. This became a common practice by webmasters that wanted to use frames, java, flash, or other media that the search engines can't spider properly. Google and the other search engines caught on to this practice when it began being used to serve up good pages to them and spam pages to real visitors. Websites caught cloaking are usually banned.

Hidden text is done by making the content the same color as the background of the page. In this way, the webmaster can stuff the content with keywords and content that can't be read by visitors but can be indexed by the search engines and rank higher. Once again, websites using hidden text are banned if found out.

Doorway pages are special landing pages that are full of spam text which are fully optimized for the search engines. These pages are hosted on external servers, and at different domains made just for them. These doorway pages then link to the main or real website. In theory, these doorway pages rank highly in the search engines and visitors are directed through them to the main website that can't rank highly or is total spam. They work for a time, then are banned. Those webmasters that use them then transfer the doorway pages to new, throw-away domains.

Any form of unethical SEO practices or Black Hat techniques should be avoided if you want your website and business to remain active online over the long run.

Q: Just how important are inbound links and how do I know how many links I have pointing to my website?

In the past few years, search engines (especially Google), have placed more and more emphasis on inbound links as a means to judge the popularity of a website. Inbound links (especially natural, organic ones) are like a vote for your website. The more inbound links to a website, the more important it is considered to be.

It's not just the number of links pointing to your website and pages, but the "quality" of these links. You can't just have links from any Tom, Dick, or Harry website. The search engines want to see links from similar and related websites from the online community within your market or niche. They are also looking to see if your inbound links are from "authority" sites in your online neighborhood. The more authoritative a website is that links to you, the higher the quality of the link.

You don't want all your inbound links to link to your homepage. The search engines want to see "deep links" coming into the various pages of you website. These deep links show them that you have high quality content throughout your site that is worth sending traffic to.

It is easy to find out how many inbound links you have coming to your website. But, there's no real way to find the exact number. Each search engine qualifies links differently and therefore, they each report different numbers. You can go to Google and query for: "link:www.yourwebsite.com" to find the links they have used in their PageRank computations. Yahoo will report more links than Google when they're queried. You can also find link checking tools online that will help you determine the number of inbound links to your site.

Q: What are reciprocal links?

Reciprocal links are links that are exhanged between two websites. If website A links to website B and site B then provides a link back to site A, this is considered a reciprocal link.

Often, reciprocal links are placed on a formal links page (see Ristvin Marketing's SEO Resources Page). Reciprocal linking is accomplished by emailing or calling the webmaster of the site you want to have link back to you and request exchanging links.

Q: If my website is banned, how will I know?

Banning a website means that there are no indexed pages found in the search engine database (de-indexed). If you all of a sudden can't find your website by querying for it, you should suspect that it has been de-indexed or banned. To be sure, you can do a site query ("site:yourdomain") which should bring up all the pages on your website that are indexed and in the database. If nothing appears, you've been de-indexed.

Once you've been formally de-indexed, it is very difficult, if not impossible to get back into the search engine database. From personal experience, I can tell you it may take years. You do have the option of applying for re-inclusion into a database. Most search engines have a form that you can fill out to explain what you think has happened and why you should be re-included. The search engines make it difficult to even find these forms and they are more or less a means of begging to get back in.

Q: How long will it take for me to see results from my SEO efforts?

This is a hard one to answer because it can vary widely. There are so many factors that the search engines take into account that you may not be aware of. Search engines do a major update at least once a month. However, these updates are based on what their crawlers may have seen a few weeks prior.

It may take up to two months to see ranking shifts, but in some databases such as Google, I've seen changes in as little as 24-48 hours. It all depends on luck and whether you have heavily promoted your website through linking sites. With search engines that have more than one datacenter, you may see your rankings very from day to day as the new changes stabilize throughout the datacenter network.

To find out the frequently asked questions about search engine marketing see: Frequently Asked Questions About SEM