Search engine optimisation is esentially making a number of small changes to areas of your website pages. They can seem like small changes and you may think how can this little thing make any difference. However when you add all the small improvements and put them together, they can add up and deliever a significant improvement. This can give you an edge over your competition as you climb your way to the top of the search results in your area of expertise.  Some of the suggested Search Engine Optimisation Basics beginner guidelines may be familiar to you, however are you using them correctly or are you risking penalties by pushing past good SEO into "Black Hat SEO" techniques?

SEO Tricks, SEO Secrets

The latest SEO techniques - GOOD or BAD?

 Al it takes is a quick Google and you find countless websites reporting fail proof secrets to getting top postion in Google. Some of them are even clever enough to give you some FREE secrets for SEO and when you get to the point where it is just atarting to get interesting; you hit this: "Buy the complete SEO secrets Report here" lol. At the end of the day search engines are getting smarter all the time. The Secret SEO Trick that worked last year has had the door slammed shut on it bu Google and others. It will contue to happen too, Google wants to deliver as perfect as possible results that suit the user first time! Google is failing its job if when you search for an item or service all you get are low quality websiyes with little relavent information for the user. This is why they will keep cloesing the doors on the latest SEO Secrets.

Do they work?

Sure they do and some people will make a lot of money from tricking the search engines for a period of time. However gere is what you risk; if Google cottons on to your spammy tatics and they will eventually, your website will be penalised and if they feel it was a blantant violation of guidelines; your site may be completely banned from search engine results altogether! Lesser violations will have filters applied to your website and you may find your main page has disapeared and yet other pages show up. If a filter is applied, then generally if you fix the offending code; your site will pop back up in its rightful place the next time it gets cached.

Each time you do something on your website; ask yourself this:

Will this help the user experience?

If the answer is YES and it also helps tell Google what your page is about, then great do it. If the answer is NO and the only reason you are doing it is to increase your search results position then I would look hard at this as you may do your website some damage.

Ten Things Not To Do For SEO

1. Have Hidden Text

Do not place keywords and other text on your pages and hide them by using the same colour for the text as the background. Google reads your CSS style sheets and will not like it! If Google does not like something, you are outta there.

 2. Bad Redirects and Multiple Domain Names

If you have changed the URL for a page then use a 301 permanent redirect and this is fine, Google will transfer your page rank to the new URL. If you have multiple domain names pointing to the same website then use a 301 redirect here also. Do not go overboard though as having more than a handful can look a little spammy. For temporary content or site changes use a 302 redirect to tell Google it is not forever.

3. Duplicate Content Issues

 Using someone else content on your own website DOES NOT cause a duplicate content penalty! I hear the yells of "your wrong", but I am correct. Publishing other peoples content will cause a duplicate content FILTER, not a PENALTY. Google is fine with shared content, it just try's to filter out duplicates to show the original for the searcher. However you really are penalising yourself! This is because if the filter is applied to the content then you will not rate for any of the keywords or phrases in it! So write unique content and avoid the filter, but write for people not search engines.

 4. Avoid Bad Code

Try and make your websites at least follow the basic W3C guidelines especially when it comes to accessibility like using ALT tags to describe images correctly for screen readers and disabled users. We believe you don't have to be too critical and achieve every standard. But using CSS style sheets and build your site in a way that it loads quickly will certainly make the user experience better.

5. Avoid Query Strings in the URL

Search engines struggle with query strings in URL's and they can also cause duplication issues as above. Try and use URL's that mean something to the user, use keywords relevant to the page like TLD.co.nz/domain-for-sale. This means something to the user and the search engine and the keywords will also be highlighted in the search results.

6. Don't Keyword Stuff

Essentially if you write your content for people and not search engines you will avoid keyword stuffing. Sure repeat your keywords where it makes sense and in page headings etc, but don't make it read like a desperate attempt to get Google to think your are trying to rate for "Domain Names" for example . Also in your page title, keep the keywords down to a minimum, the more you try and put in there the more you water down their effectiveness. A simple guide is if the Title is too long to read all of it when it shows up in the search results, then shorten it. This really helps you focus down on what the page is really about!

7. Default Repetitive Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

 8. Keyword Spamming

When you add keywords to your title a meta tags, don't putkeywords that are not relavent to the page. This is seen as keyword spamming and will do your site no favours.

9. JavaScript redirects and Other Cloaking

Do not show your visitors something different than you show Google! Cloaking will get you banned if you get caught, is it worth the risk!? You can potentially ruin a domain name and have to plead to have it resubmitted!

 10. Don't use free Domain Names or Domains full of hyphens.

 You can easily get free domain names that look like yourname.freedomaincompany.com. You need a unique domain name and preferably one with either your brand or using the Keyword Domain Name Adavantage Free domains save you such a little amount then why would you bother! In earlier Internet years people used to take advantage of the fact that search engines at the time could not read words joined together very well. They created domain name like www.keyword1-keyword2-keyword3-keyword4-keyword5.com to try an d manipulate search engines. This practice has now been wiped out and the major search engine will very likely consider your website spam if it has more than a couple of hyphens in it. Besides that, they are very hard to give out to a client and will often result in someone else getting your website traffic due to the likelihood of mistyping your address.