Google has warned that black hat tactics are “unethical, overly aggressive marketing efforts where a company tries to manipulate search engine results in an unfair way.” Despite Google’s warnings, many Internet companies persist in providing black hat SEO services. The truth is, using black hat tactics on your site can be as scary as facing these slasher movie murderers.
18 things you need to know about SEO By Bing
Let’s take a look at some of the bigger ticket issues folks should focus on when optimizing their websites. This list is not meant to cover everything, but to focus in on some of the more important aspects you should look at addressing. The first part of this list is presented in a rough order of importance based on getting work done. In many case, you’ll find your own circumstances won’t allow your focus and investments to match this list. Don’t sweat it. This list represents the ideal for a freshly planned website, prior to being built out. If your circumstances slide you in at random points in this list, don’t worry about it. The point is this is a solid place to start from. As opposed to, say… investing time in a link buying program, or in a social “liking” scheme.
Crawlability
If a crawler can’t access your content, the content won’t be indexed by search engines, nor will it be ranked. Enable and use XML sitemaps with a low error rate to build trust with search engines. Make sure your website navigation is clean and strive for a simple, search-friendly URL structure. This means the URL is keyword rich and avoids session variables or docIDs. We suggest you use robots.txt files to instruct the crawlers on how to interact with your webpage and more easily find your content.
Site Structure
Provide a site structure with strong functionality, which helps encourage link building. Linking to both trusted outside sources and internal content shows a search engine you care about users getting the best data around their query. In addition, HTML sitemaps ensure a good user experience and help search engines discover all your pages and content.
Content Hierarchy
When you plan your website’s content hierarchy, take care in aligning your content with what searchers are looking for and their intent during their journey on your URL. Basic keyword research can also help you understand how searchers are interacting with search engines, and can help craft your content strategy. Also avoid placing links and content inside rich media applications, such as Flash and Silverlight, which make it almost impossible for crawlers to find and read the content. Just gotta have your rich media? Not to worry. Make sure a solid downlevel experience exists and we’ll still find your content.
On-Page Factors
Follow a few simple guidelines for the area inside the code of your webpage denoted by the tag. Each should be short, about 65 characters, and unique to the page. Include the keyword you’re targeting for that page near the beginning of the title. The tag can be longer and should also contain the keyword or phrase you’re targeting. All content should be unique to every page and be based on keyword research. Don’t worry about investing time discussing whether the
tag outweights the value of a propertag. Invest your time in producing better content. Splitting hairs doesn’t move your rankings nearly as much as excellent content.
Content Production
Content is king, but not all content is fit to rule. What the engines seek is compelling, unique content. And while we judge what “compelling” means to a degree, what’s more important is how searchers react to your content when we show your webpage to them in a search engine results page (SERP). Your job is to create content so compelling that visitors to your site feel no need to look elsewhere to have their needs met. The worst approach leaves you to seem “thin” in your approach. This essentially means you aren’t really providing content of value. An example of this would be a website aggregating content from multiple sources on one page. Such an approach amounts to little more than a links page related to the query entered. While you may be tempted to say, “But that helps the searcher by bringing everything they need into one location”, remember that that’s the search engine’s job. We bring the results back so the user can click on links to find the content. Adding yet another layer of clicking by showcasing thin-content links pages doesn’t help the search find what they seek faster. From the SERP page to the searcher’s goal, these types of pages add another click layer, making the task completion process longer, not shorter.
When you build content, ask yourself if you’ve answered the need the searcher expressed. Now ask, if you’ve covered any related topics that come obviously to mind. Ask yourself why your webpage stand out. Why is your webpage better than all the rest? What does your content bring forward that others miss?
This is why content from articles or syndication cannot stand alone and rank successfully. Unique content brings forward elements that others may miss, which is why that content outranks others targeting the same phrase.
Link Building
When you build links, work to get targeted keywords inserted into the anchor text to boost relevancy for the targeted search term. This increases a link’s perceived value to both users and search engines. Encourage links to your page by integrating social network icons which allow visitors to easily share your page. More eyes on your page can increase the odds it will be linked from an outside source. And remember that inter-linking between your own domains can look like a spam tactic. The best way to get links, though, is to provide excellent, unique content. You should avoid services which claim to be able to build you a number of organic links for a fee. Often they claim things like “Get 100 organic links in 7 days for under $50!”. We can assure you the value of almost every one of those links will be pretty much zero. Whether the link comes from a spammy website, or we simply see a repetitive pattern, we’ll discount the value you were hoping to obtain from the links leaving you out money with no gains to show in the rankings.
Things we love
Beyond the items listed above, here are a few items we love to see websites doing. While none on their own will vault you to the top of the rankings, they remain best practices you should look to engage in. These are not in any order of priority:
RSS feeds – get them up and running and keep them clean. By following your feeds, it’s easier for the engine to get your latest content. This means we see it faster, so indexing, ranking and showing in the SERPs can happen faster. Want to really impress Bing? Get into your Bing Webmaster account and insert your RSS feed URL into the sitemap submission flow.
Mark it up – check out the ideas presented at www.schema.org. This jointly supported protocol (Bing/Yahoo/Google) enables you to “mark up” your content, essentially embedding tags into your page code to help us better understand your content. This can range from videos to images, recipes to geolocation information. Lots of tags are supported today, so hit the schema.org site to see what’s applicable for you. Again, this helps us better understand your content, and the better we understand it, the more likely we are to be able to return you for matches to queries.
Wonderful UX – sites that have an excellent user experience tend to rank better. Why? Because people like them. Yes, it is that simple. While you need to work on a lot of signals to be successful in search, you also need to find a balance. Page load times are a perfect example. Some sites take this one signal to the extreme, paring down their site to an absolute minimum hoping PLT will vault them up in the rankings. The trouble with this approach is that by removing things from the page to speed page load times, you erode the user experience in most cases. While machines calculate page load times in fractions of a second, humans are much more forgiving. Stay focused on pleasing your human visitors first and foremost. You shouldn’t ignore PLT, but taking PLT from 1/2 second to 1/4 second will be largely lost on your visitors. The engines will appreciate it, but if you had to remove content or functionality to save the 1/4 second load time, now your UX for the humans has suffered. Balance, …with humans first.
Social love – manage social or social will manage you. That’s a fact, Jack. Plan your approach to social carefully and execute consistently. Build your presence so that followers see you as an authority and a resource. Again this is a balancing act, but one you can get attuned to quickly enough. Just make sure you bring value to your followers consistently. People like links in their inbound tweets and wall posts – don’t disappoint them. Fill your social program to the brim with value and folks will love you. Pssst…we see all this happening and it helps us determine the sentiment surrounding your pages, products and services. Good is good, bad is bad. Even if you’re not active socially, you still need to monitor social spaces to understand what others are saying about you. Are happy shoppers spreading the good word about you? Are unhappy shoppers telling their stories to the world? These are things you need to know.
Before we wrap up, how about a few things you should avoid?
cloaking
link buying
like farms
link farms
three-way linking
duplicating content
auto-follows in social media
the thin content approach
We’ve found this great infographic about the Google Panda Update.
The infographic covers the main areas of the Google Panda Update and unlike many others is factually correct.
Looks like Google have added a new images feature within PPC ads.
Its still unclear if this is pulled from the Product Feed but these ads definitely stand out!
We have found it only displaying for a couple of search terms so far.
A search for a person’s name on Google Images results in the first few images being the person searched for, especially if the name is unusual, and also brings up hundreds of random images that seem to have no relevance to the name.
But, if you are friends with the person being searched and have them in one of your Google+ circles then a picture of you may appear as Google Images is now pulling in pictures from Google+.
So a search for my name results in two people out of my ‘friends’ circle appearing. 
Why these two friends though, is another question. One that we are not sure about yet.
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Black Hat Search Engine Optimization
|
| » Spamdexing |
| Generally, you should NOT submit every single page of your website to search engines. In most cases, you should submit only your home page and perhaps a couple of other very important pages at most. The rest of your website will be indexed by the search engine’s spider naturally after the first page is submitted. Over-submitting your website can get you blocked from being listed! |
| » Invisible/Tiny Text and Keyword Stuffing |
| Once a very popular form of inserting tons of key words and phrases into your pages, this is now considered a BIG no-no even though you’ll still see it from time to time! This is achieved by placing very small text at the bottom of a page and/or text the same color as the page’s background. This, too, can get your website blocked from search engine listings. Let your website’s content speak for itself! |
| » Use of non-compliant HTML to manipulate relevancy : |
| multiple titles and other techniques which aren’t HTML standards compliant, used specifically to raise relevancy. The first 2 in the grey area would be real candidates for this area as well. An example of non-compliant HTML would be using a title that does not reflect the content of the page. The links lead to information on proper implementation of elements |
| » Use of CSS (cascading style sheets) to manipulate relevancy : |
| Using hidden elements (layer or span elements etc) that can’t be seen by executing code to reveal them. This activity has not been addressed in SE content guidelines |
| » Comments : |
| Comments help maintain the code in an HTML document. Comments should not be used to raise relevancy or manipulate SE descriptions. |
| » Invisible form elements : |
| used to hold keyword values, not a well known technique, however they can be used this way. Not known to be mentioned specifically in any SE content guidelines or “unwritten policy” |
From a SEO perspective, country level domains (ccTLDs) are the most logical method of running international websites.
Search engines use a website TLD as one of the clearest indicators as to what location a website should be targeted too. Having a ccTLD over a gTLD (Generic Top Level Domain) such as .eu or .com will give the site an increased weighting in the majority of localised search engines. Eg. A .de site will have more trust, authority and relevance for a user searching on Google.de than a .eu domain.
This is supported by some research that compares the distribution of gTLDs and ccTLDs domains for a set of keywords:
The reason for the anomaly with FR and ES is that historically it was much harder to purchase .fr and .es domains due to tight restrictions on registrations. There are therefore fewer out there. The below shows what happened when the restrictions were lifted in 2004.
The research also compares how many of the top sites in Google were single language or multi language:
We would always advise that having one website per country will – in the long run – out perform one generic site targeting all the relevant countries and languages.
ccTLDs show the customer that you are tailoring the experience for them. For example they assume that a company trading on a .RU domain will have localised language, more relevant content and accept the more obscure payment methods than in other European Countries and be able to deliver items.
From a technical perspective, having a mixed language site normally causes major headaches. There are several big concerns:
- A websites strongest and most prominent page is always the home page. When you have a mixed language site what content do you display on the home page? What Language? Etc.
- From a technical and usability aspect there are always concerns about how to drive users to the relevant section or how to serve them the right content. Clever IP detects are a dangerous way to go, splash screens are an additional step for a user.
- From a SEO perspective, you would always have to work towards getting a inner page of the site ranking for localised terms. This will limit the performance and success of the website in the search engines.
Whilst Google does allow Geotargeting of subdomains and sub folders of a site within webmaster tools, this only works within Google. This will not be seen by other search engines.
Yandex which controls 60% of the Russian market has trouble with multilanguage sites – They are a Russian search engine and focus primarily on Russian sites. At the moment they only want to include authority sites in English/German/French . Getting a multi language site to rank in Yandex is often very difficult.
There is a very good reason that nearly all of the major internet powers have ccTLDs :
- Google.co.uk, Google.fr etc
- Ebay.co.uk, Ebay.de
- Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.es
In June 2011, the three big search engines; Google, Bing and Yahoo! announced that they would all adhere to a single Microdata format – Schema.org.
This is a brand new initiative which will aid web developers, SEO’s and search engines. The primary focus is to create a standard structured vocabulary for code markup in web pages. Thanks to www.schema.org, webmasters no longer have to choose from differing microdata, microformats and RDF’s.
So What is a Microdata format?
Its simple a set of tags that a webmaster can add to data / information on their website to make the data more meaningful to search engines. For example you can tag a phone number on your website as “telephone” which tells the search engine what the set of numbers mean.
Here is the entire hierarchy in a list.
Types that have multiple parents are expanded out only once and have an asterisk
DataType
| Boolean
| Date
| Number
| | Float
| | Integer
| Text
| | URL
Thing: name, url, image, description
| CreativeWork: encodings, associatedMedia, headline, alternativeHeadline, dateCreated
| dateModified, thumbnailUrl, discussionUrl, version, publishingPrinciples
| copyrightYear, comment, mentions, provider, contributor
| copyrightHolder, sourceOrganization, accountablePerson, editor, keywords
| about, datePublished, author, creator, contentRating
| inLanguage, audio, video, genre, editor
| awards, publisher, isFamilyFriendly, contentLocation, interactionCount
| aggregateRating, offers, reviews
| | Article: articleSection, articleBody, wordCount
| | | BlogPosting
| | | NewsArticle: dateline, printColumn, printEdition, printPage, printSection
| | | ScholarlyArticle
| | Blog: blogPosts
| | Book: illustrator, bookEdition, bookFormat, numberOfPages, isbn
| | ItemList: itemListElement, itemListOrder
| | Map
| | MediaObject: encodesCreativeWork, width, height, regionsAllowed, embedURL
| | bitrate, encodingFormat, playerType, duration, expires
| | contentURL, requiresSubscription, uploadDate, associatedArticle, contentSize
| | interactionCount, offers
| | | AudioObject: transcript
| | | ImageObject: thumbnail, representativeOfPage, caption, exifData
| | | MusicVideoObject
| | | VideoObject: thumbnail, transcript, productionCompany, caption, videoQuality
| | | videoFrameSize
| | Movie: duration, director, actors, producer, trailer
| | productionCompany, musicBy
| | MusicPlaylist: tracks, numTracks
| | | MusicAlbum: byArtist
| | MusicRecording: duration, byArtist, inAlbum, inPlaylist
| | Painting
| | Photograph
| | Recipe: prepTime, cookTime, cookingMethod, totalTime, nutrition
| | ingredients, recipeInstructions, recipeYield, recipeCuisine, recipeCategory
| | Review: reviewBody, itemReviewed, reviewRating
| | Sculpture
| | TVEpisode: director, actors, producer, trailer, productionCompany
| | partOfTVSeries, partOfSeason, episodeNumber, musicBy
| | TVSeason: trailer, episodes, partOfTVSeries, seasonNumber, numberOfEpisodes
| | startDate, endDate
| | TVSeries: director, actors, producer, trailer, productionCompany
| | episodes, seasons, numberOfEpisodes, musicBy, startDate
| | endDate
| | WebPage: breadcrumb, mainContentOfPage, primaryImageOfPage, isPartOf, significantLinks
| | | AboutPage
| | | CheckoutPage
| | | CollectionPage
| | | | ImageGallery
| | | | VideoGallery
| | | ContactPage
| | | ItemPage
| | | ProfilePage
| | | SearchResultsPage
| | WebPageElement
| | | SiteNavigationElement
| | | Table
| | | WPAdBlock
| | | WPFooter
| | | WPHeader
| | | WPSideBar
| Event: duration, location, startDate, endDate, performers
| attendees, subEvents, superEvent, offers
| | BusinessEvent
| | ChildrensEvent
| | ComedyEvent
| | DanceEvent
| | EducationEvent
| | Festival
| | FoodEvent
| | LiteraryEvent
| | MusicEvent
| | SaleEvent
| | SocialEvent
| | SportsEvent
| | TheaterEvent
| | UserInteraction
| | | UserBlocks
| | | UserCheckins
| | | UserComments: commentText, commentTime, replyToUrl, creator, discusses
| | | UserDownloads
| | | UserLikes
| | | UserPageVisits
| | | UserPlays
| | | UserPlusOnes
| | | UserTweets
| | VisualArtsEvent
| Intangible
| | Enumeration
| | | BookFormatType
| | | ItemAvailability
| | | OfferItemCondition
| | Language
| | Offer: aggregateRating, reviews, price, priceCurrency, priceValidUntil
| | seller, itemCondition, availability, itemOffered
| | | AggregateOffer: lowPrice, highPrice, offerCount
| | Quantity
| | | Distance
| | | Duration
| | | Energy
| | | Mass
| | Rating: bestRating, worstRating, ratingValue
| | | AggregateRating: itemReviewed, ratingCount, reviewCount
| | StructuredValue
| | | ContactPoint: email, telephone, faxNumber, contactType
| | | | PostalAddress: streetAddress, addressLocality, addressRegion, postalCode, postOfficeBoxNumber
| | | | addressCountry
| | | GeoCoordinates: latitude, longitude, elevation
| | | GeoShape: elevation, line, polygon, box, circle
| | | NutritionInformation: servingSize, calories, fatContent, saturatedFatContent, unsaturatedFatContent
| | | transFatContent, carbohydrateContent, sugarContent, fiberContent, proteinContent
| | | cholesterolContent, sodiumContent
| Organization: interactionCount, location, employees, members, foundingDate
| founders, contactPoints, email, events, address
| telephone, faxNumber, aggregateRating, reviews
| | Corporation: tickerSymbol
| | EducationalOrganization: alumni
| | | CollegeOrUniversity
| | | ElementarySchool
| | | HighSchool
| | | MiddleSchool
| | | Preschool
| | | School
| | GovernmentOrganization
| | LocalBusiness: branchOf, openingHours, paymentAccepted, currenciesAccepted, priceRange
| | | AnimalShelter
| | | AutomotiveBusiness
| | | | AutoBodyShop
| | | | AutoDealer
| | | | AutoPartsStore
| | | | AutoRental
| | | | AutoRepair
| | | | AutoWash
| | | | GasStation
| | | | MotorcycleDealer
| | | | MotorcycleRepair
| | | ChildCare
| | | DryCleaningOrLaundry
| | | EmergencyService
| | | | FireStation
| | | | Hospital
| | | | PoliceStation
| | | EmploymentAgency
| | | EntertainmentBusiness
| | | | AdultEntertainment
| | | | AmusementPark
| | | | ArtGallery
| | | | Casino
| | | | ComedyClub
| | | | MovieTheater
| | | | NightClub
| | | FinancialService
| | | | AccountingService
| | | | AutomatedTeller
| | | | BankOrCreditUnion
| | | | InsuranceAgency
| | | FoodEstablishment: menu, acceptsReservations, servesCuisine
| | | | Bakery
| | | | BarOrPub
| | | | Brewery
| | | | CafeOrCoffeeShop
| | | | FastFoodRestaurant
| | | | IceCreamShop
| | | | Restaurant
| | | | Winery
| | | GovernmentOffice
| | | | PostOffice
| | | HealthAndBeautyBusiness
| | | | BeautySalon
| | | | DaySpa
| | | | HairSalon
| | | | HealthClub
| | | | NailSalon
| | | | TattooParlor
| | | HomeAndConstructionBusiness
| | | | Electrician
| | | | GeneralContractor
| | | | HVACBusiness
| | | | HousePainter
| | | | Locksmith
| | | | MovingCompany
| | | | Plumber
| | | | RoofingContractor
| | | InternetCafe
| | | Library
| | | LodgingBusiness
| | | | BedAndBreakfast
| | | | Hostel
| | | | Hotel
| | | | Motel
| | | MedicalOrganization
| | | | Dentist
| | | | Hospital*
| | | | MedicalClinic
| | | | Optician
| | | | Pharmacy
| | | | Physician
| | | | VeterinaryCare
| | | ProfessionalService
| | | | AccountingService*
| | | | Attorney
| | | | Dentist*
| | | | Electrician*
| | | | GeneralContractor*
| | | | HousePainter*
| | | | Locksmith*
| | | | Notary
| | | | Plumber*
| | | | RoofingContractor*
| | | RadioStation
| | | RealEstateAgent
| | | RecyclingCenter
| | | SelfStorage
| | | ShoppingCenter
| | | SportsActivityLocation
| | | | BowlingAlley
| | | | ExerciseGym
| | | | GolfCourse
| | | | HealthClub*
| | | | PublicSwimmingPool
| | | | SkiResort
| | | | SportsClub
| | | | StadiumOrArena
| | | | TennisComplex
| | | Store
| | | | AutoPartsStore*
| | | | BikeStore
| | | | BookStore
| | | | ClothingStore
| | | | ComputerStore
| | | | ConvenienceStore
| | | | DepartmentStore
| | | | ElectronicsStore
| | | | Florist
| | | | FurnitureStore
| | | | GardenStore
| | | | GroceryStore
| | | | HardwareStore
| | | | HobbyShop
| | | | HomeGoodsStore
| | | | JewelryStore
| | | | LiquorStore
| | | | MensClothingStore
| | | | MobilePhoneStore
| | | | MovieRentalStore
| | | | MusicStore
| | | | OfficeEquipmentStore
| | | | OutletStore
| | | | PawnShop
| | | | PetStore
| | | | ShoeStore
| | | | SportingGoodsStore
| | | | TireShop
| | | | ToyStore
| | | | WholesaleStore
| | | TelevisionStation
| | | TouristInformationCenter
| | | TravelAgency
| | NGO
| | PerformingGroup
| | | DanceGroup
| | | MusicGroup: musicGroupMember, tracks, albums
| | | TheaterGroup
| | SportsTeam
| Person: awards, interactionCount, jobTitle, affiliation, worksFor
| additionalName, givenName, honorificPrefix, honorificSuffix, familyName
| alumniOf, memberOf, contactPoints, workLocation, homeLocation
| gender, email, birthDate, deathDate, nationality
| relatedTo, spouse, parents, children, siblings
| colleagues, knows, performerIn, follows, address
| telephone, faxNumber
| Place: interactionCount, containedIn, photos, geo, events
| maps, address, telephone, faxNumber, aggregateRating
| reviews
| | AdministrativeArea
| | | City
| | | Country
| | | State
| | CivicStructure: openingHours
| | | Airport
| | | Aquarium
| | | Beach
| | | BusStation
| | | BusStop
| | | Campground
| | | Cemetery
| | | Crematorium
| | | EventVenue
| | | FireStation*
| | | GovernmentBuilding
| | | | CityHall
| | | | Courthouse
| | | | DefenceEstablishment
| | | | Embassy
| | | | LegislativeBuilding
| | | Hospital*
| | | MovieTheater*
| | | Museum
| | | MusicVenue
| | | Park
| | | ParkingFacility
| | | PerformingArtsTheater
| | | PlaceOfWorship
| | | | BuddhistTemple
| | | | CatholicChurch
| | | | Church
| | | | HinduTemple
| | | | Mosque
| | | | Synagogue
| | | Playground
| | | PoliceStation*
| | | RVPark
| | | StadiumOrArena*
| | | SubwayStation
| | | TaxiStand
| | | TrainStation
| | | Zoo
| | Landform
| | | BodyOfWater
| | | | Canal
| | | | LakeBodyOfWater
| | | | OceanBodyOfWater
| | | | Pond
| | | | Reservoir
| | | | RiverBodyOfWater
| | | | SeaBodyOfWater
| | | | Waterfall
| | | Continent
| | | Mountain
| | | Volcano
| | LandmarksOrHistoricalBuildings
| | LocalBusiness*
| | Residence
| | | ApartmentComplex
| | | GatedResidenceCommunity
| | | SingleFamilyResidence
| | TouristAttraction
| Product: brand, model, aggregateRating, productID, manufacturer
| offers, reviews
