Cloaking - Black Hat?

According to Wikipedia

"Cloaking is a black hat search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the users' browser."

DAMN! I am writing again a BLACK HAT SEO ARTICLE.

Cloaking is a term used for presenting a different page to human visitor whereas an entirely different page to search engine spiders or bots for the same url. Means the page you find at www.abc.com is entirely different than the page a Search Engine Spider find at www.abc.com

Cloaking is done by cloaking softwares that compare the IP address of the coming request for a webpage to a database of known IP addresses of specific search engine spiders. If the IP address matches one on the list, it serves a page that was specifically written for the search engines and if not than it shows a page made for human visitors. Most cloaking software has all the search engine spiders’ IP addresses indexed plus they are updated regularly.

So where is BLACK HAT In there ?

Ahh! I get it. You can build hundreds of targeted keyword rich pages designed specifically for the search engine spiders, or a link farm having 1000 links pointing to a website( HINT: USE 50 Links pointing to Google.com), while at the same time building a regular page for human visitors so they don't get annoyed. So whenever a search engine spider visits your site, it is detected and sent to your that exclusive pages for them. On the other hand, whenever a human visitor arrives, the software detects that it’s not an IP from a search engine spider, so the human arrives at the non-exclusive such that a regular page.

A cloaking software see that following things when someone comes to a website

• IP address
• User-Agent
• The HTTP_REFERER header
• The HTTP Accept-Language header

Types Of Cloaking
There are two types of Cloaking

• User Agent Cloaking
• IP based Cloaking

User Agent Cloaking
In User Agent Cloaking, the cloaking script compares the User Agent text string which is sent when a page is requested with its list of search engine User Agent names and then serves the approp riate page. enerally, if a search engine spider requests a page, the User-Agent variable contains the name of the search engine. If the cloaking script does not detect the name of a search engine in the User-Agent variable, it assumes that the request has been made by a human being and delivers the page which was designed for human beings.

IP Based Cloaking
This is the more complicated method to do cloaking. It invloves IP address od search engine spiders. When a visitor (a search engine or a human) requests a page, the cloaking script checks the I.P. address of the visitor. If the I.P. address is present in the I.P. database, the cloaking script knows that the visitor is a search engine and delivers the page optimized for that search engine. If the I.P. address is not present in the I.P. database, the cloaking script assumes that a human has requested the page, and delivers the page which is meant for human visitors.

How Search Engine Detects Page Cloaking?

• If a site using user-agent cloaking method than a search enigne send a spider which does not report a user agent name.

• If a site using IP Based cloaking method then the search engines can send a spider or bot from a different I.P. address than any I.P. address which it has used previously.

• A Human representative from search engine. Emm. Well It may be possible

So Is this Technique still have Some Worth?

I don't think so cause now Google don't give importance to number of link but the quality and relevancy of link. So such type of thing now don't work or caught after sometime resulting in that sweet ban in Google.

Here is great visual representation of the whole process of Cloaking.

This image and is from ELLIANCE: LINK. From here you can aslo find some more Visual representation if duifferent SEO Process.

Here is a Fire Fox Extension to change your user agent name to see if a site is claoking or not. Extension

Any suggestion or comments are welcome.

Doctor Google

So Google decided to get in another highly profitable market by announcing(OK.. not announced yet but will shortly) Google Health. A new project to store a patient complete medical history.

This project is codenamed 'WEAVER' and its purpose is to store health information of an individual in a computerized or more specifically in an Online-Way. This will not diagnose an illness of patient but collect patients medical data and let it share with Health Care Service Providers (Hint For Monetize). Ask.com has already introduced a feature Health Smart Answers. Smart Answers shows trusted medical info and appears above the regular result when a search related to some disease or health condition performed. All content and images are provided by Healthline Networks & Revolution Health. Search engine journal reporting here: LINK. Here is an image shot of Ask Smart Answers.

Here are the images in fact FIRST IMAGES Of Google Health by BlogScoped. LINK

And MSN is also planning to come in the Health vector as reported by Marketing Pilgrim Here: LINK

So wait and see when Yahoo decide to participate in the race.

Google Office

So Microsoft is in some real trouble now. Google Docs & Spreadsheets don't hurt Microsoft office seriously, but now its change cause Google combine with Star Office, a professional office suit for business, and offering it free with Google Pack. (Get One Free Here : LINK).

Star office is a fully functional and productive software suite that has enough feature to satisfy a business user needs. Google is targeting Microsoft Office users aggressively to get business users.

According To Google about this deal.

“We partnered with Sun to make a free version of StarOffice available in the Google Pack because we believe that users will benefit from access to a free, full-featured office suite for the desktop. And we’ve also always believed that users should have choice in their online and PC experience.”

Google Penalties And Filters

Some SEO's do not agree that Google uses some special filters to rank a site but many SEO's believe in these filters and also give evidence on the existence of these filters.

The reason behind these filters is still unclear, but most probably they are applied to stop spammy sites and the sites using unethical SEO to get higher positions in Google search engine. These filters are either built in Google Algo or applied time to time individually in case of Google Bomb (simply awesome )

Here is a list of known Google Filters and their description.

Google Sand Box Filter
This Filter basically placed on new websites. Due to this filter a new website does not receive high ranking for its major keywords. Sites that are using high competetive keywords affects more by this filter. The reason for this filter is to discourage the spam sites to use spammy techniques to get 1000 links a night for high ranking.

A website can stays in Sand box for one to six months. TO get put from sand box you have to wait and wait.During this time add content to your site and get some quality links.

Google -30 Filter
Google seems to apply the -30 filter to web sites that use spammy SEO methods. These spammy methods include use of invisible text, JavaScript redirects, doorway pages or other spam techniques. If this penalty applies to your website then your rankings will drop by 30 spots.

To get out of this filter immediately remove all spams methods you are using on site and offsite. This filter seems to be automated so after some time of removing spammy things you will see your site again on good ranking.

Google Duplicate Content Filter
This filter is applied to those sites having duplicate or same content. This filter results a drop in your sites index pages or even complete removal of your site except your homepage.

Problem is that If your site is much newer than some other sites who has domain age of two years and they steal your content than You have to suffer from this filter. Its sad but its true.

To get out of this filter use unique meta tags for each page and avoid use of duplicate content.

Google Supplemental Result Filter

Google Domain Age Filter
This filter was set up to give older domains more credibility than the newer ones. If your site is there for longer time duration than your site gets more attention by google.

Google Trust Rank Filter
This filter decide the trust rank for a website, which is determined by the age of domain, quality of inbound links and content of a website.

To increase trust rank of your website get quality backlinks and use natural content.

links.htm Page Filter
This filter apply to pages labeled with LINKS. Many sites has a page for link exchange and mostly they use LINKS in url and title for that page.

To avoid this filter use something else than LINKS for your link exchange page.

Google Omitted Results Filter
This filter applies to the pages Google think may have duplicate content. So instead of showing all these pages, it choose one or two pages from that source and give an option in the end to include omitted results. Google offers the Omitted Results link in shortened queries.

To avoid this filter use CSS to show the unique content first to search engine crawler.

Link Farming Filter
Pages with nothing but list of Links and Links and.. OK .. enough. These pages are created to get more links pointing to a website, but Google now apply a filter on such pages.

Don't participate or place your link on any pages which seems to be a Link Farm.

CO-citation Linking Filter
This filter apply due to your website Outbound Link Structure. If your site has a link on a website that links to automotive sites then according to Google your site will also be relate to automotive.

To avoid such type of Filter Think Before You Link!

Too Many Pages At Once Filter
This filter applied to website have too many pages in a very short period of time. To avoid this filter don't use content generator softwares or stop copying other sites content.

Too Many Links At Once Filter
This filter applies to the site that gets too many links in very short span of time. To avoid this filter don't participate in Link Farms or Any Spammy Get Link Campaign.

Over Optimization Filter
This filter applies to the site using more than required optimization tips. For example stuffing keywords and use them un-naturally or using title tag as keword tag.

To avoid use of this filter be gentle and patient.

Broken Link filter
This filter applies to site having link to pages that doesn't exist whether it is external page or internal page.. Since Google gives special attention to links so this filter badly affect your site ranks.

To avoid this filter don't link to pages that are no longer exist on web.

Google Two Word Keyword Filter
Using two main keywords excessively trigger this filter.

Don't Use same two words in your url, acnhored links

The Network Filter
This filter applies to the network of sites having each other links on their sites. For example you have 5 websites and they all link to each other.

The Hyphen Filter
Having hyphens in your domain name may trigger this filter.

Slow Load Filter
If your site takes too much time to load then spiders dint crawl your site and your pages will be removed from index.

Geography Filter
If you are searching in Google than the sites you get on top ranks are most likely hosted in same country as you are in.

Google Porn Filter
Google is in safe search mode by default. And it wil exclude the sites which it suspect tto be adult sites.

Google Bomb filter
The Google bomb filter seems to be applied to web sites that get too many identical links in a short time period

Alleged Dampening Filter
This filter applies to the incoming links. If you got a link than its not immediately start passing Link Juice but Google apply a dampening filter on that link result in a partial immediate credit.

Here are two good sources from where you can find more info about Google Filters.

Source 1
Source 2

If you know anymore filters or penalties please suggest them.

7 Ways For Successful Link Baiting

What is Copywriting?

By copywriting.com

"Copywriting is the art and science of writing words to promote a product, a business, a person or an idea; and carefully selecting, editing, weaving and constructing those words in a way that they’ll persuade the reader into taking a specific and measurable action."

By Wikipedia

"Copywriting is the process of writing the words that promote a person, business, opinion, or idea. The main purpose of writing this marketing copy, or promotional text, is to persuade the listener or reader to act — to buy a product or subscribe to a certain viewpoint, for instance"

According to Bob Stone - Copy Writer

"Your first 15 Words are more important than your 1500 words that follow."

No one has any argument in the statement that your first impression is the most important thing you have to care bout. And when you are participating in social sites you have to consider this more. In Social Network Sites people are not usually reading description, your ranking etc but Headings. Its the last and usually only thing which attract them to visit the site. So you have to make sure to create such a catchy title or heading that force readers to read or to at least click on your story or submission.

Link Baiting, another term used for such tactics to get more and more visitors from a social network site, totally depends on headings as previously stated. Of course no one can deny the importance of content but If You have something cool and informative or even some breaking news and you fail top present it properly than there is no advantage of that Un-Heard Great News or Story.

Here are some tips about how to create headings that helps you to get maximum of your link bait. Remember to include subject in your Headline. Don't Use...What If....., cause people not usually click such type of heading, different peoples have different expectations and if they fail to get what they think they expect, then you may get something you don't expect.

These are some types or ways for heading that will arouse readers to click on it and helps you to get maximum response.

• Direct Statement Headlines

Example: Google Announce New Map Feature

• Claim Headlines

Example: Google Will Announce the New Feature.

• News or Announcing Headlines

Example: Now Announcing A New Feature In Google

• Question Headlines

Example: Who else wants to know bout Google New Feature.
Do you know about Google New Feature?

• Asking or How To Headlines

Example: How to get notified of google's new feature

• Numbering Headlines

Example: 7 New features Of Google

• Reason Headlines

Example: Why Google Announces New Feature?

And in the last but not least at all a major factor in success of a Link Bait is TIMING. Give it fresh you get reward.

Keywords Strategy And Suggestion

If you own a small business website, chances are at some stage you'll have wondered which "keywords" or "keyword phrases" to include within your webpages. At Bytestart, we always ensure that our content matches the keywords we are interested in - and hope the major search engines rank our pages accordingly. Simply stuffing a webpage full of your favourite keywords will do nothing for your search engine visibility.

Althought the "keyword" meta tag is not thought to be of great importance to Google (the Title tag being much more important), the phrases used throughout each webpage document will be picked up and used to determine how relevant the search engine thinks your page is for a given search term.

Finding good keywords and phrases is an important area of web marketing, but how on earth do you find out which phrases are suitable for your site, and which are way too competitive to even bother with.

Here are a few suggestions for keyword research:

Keyword Suggestion Tools

Good keywords are frequently searched for (high demand) but not being targeted by many other websites (low competition). There are a number of tools out there that can help you find them.

Wordtracker - http://www.wordtracker.com

Probably the best known keyword suggestion tool out there, Wordtracker aims to help site owners identify keywords which are most relevant to their business, and which web surfers are most likely to type into search engines. Wordtracker has a databse of over 300m search terms, so is widely considered to provide a fairly accurate view of current search trends.

Once you type in the phrases you think will be popular, Wordtracker will come back with a score based on the number of users searching for that phrase. You'll be surprised how differently people search compared to how you perceive they will search.

You can get a free trial (limited functionality), annual/monthly or weekly subscriptions from £15.

Overture - http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion

If you don't fancy paying for keyword analysis tools, Overture's search term suggestion tool is a very good alternative. Simply type in a word or phrase, and the tool will come back with plenty of suggestions based on the initial words you entered, together with the number of times that phrase was used in the previous month.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool - https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Another free tool, which generates synonyms and variants of your suggested keywords. Also see Google's handy keyword selection tips.

Other Resources

A small selection of keyword suggestion tools from around the web:

Keyword Spy - Keyword research technology (also has UK, global, Canadian and Australian results).
Keyword Discovery - Uses search results from over 180 search engines.

If you would like to add a resource here, please add comment

ORIGINALLY BY : HERE

14 Things To Consider Before Hire An SEO Consultant

So at last you have decided to hire an SEO Consultant to get your site rank higher in search engines. Before choosing a consultant

carefully check that is your consultant i mean your website seo consultant posses the following qualities or not.

1. Is he smart? If he is not then don't even bother to look at him/her. cause If consultant is not smart you don't want to sit with her/him which result in lack of discussion and finally you got no info about your site rank and position.
2. Is he fat? If he is then also don't look at him.
3. Can he handle children's when they are crying. Umm well why not?
4. Is he available at 3:00 AM at night to update a sentence which you think must be in article.

These are the basics ... you can increase as per your wish and needs.

Now what you ask from your consultant is your right and he should answer all of your questions without giving you that special Look. Since you are paying money you should ask questions because asking questions is the basic sign of a bright student.

1. After every hour ask him how much site rank increase.
2. Wake him up at 3:00 in morning and ask him to update cause thats the best time to do optimization.
3. Put as much flash as you want in your website and don't listen to him that it will damage your site ranking.
4. Ask him to put all important data on homepage. for example contact us , address, motto etc.
5. Ask him to use that fancy fonts.
6. Ask him to make a side bar and put all important keyword in it cause visitor will see those words through which they can find your website.
7. Ask him to spent 4 hours on optimizing Meta Tag cause your friend told you once its important.
8. Ask him not to analyze competitors site cause you want to play FAIR.
9. Ask him to put your picture on site homepage cause people should know whose site is this.
10. Last but not least don't pay him cause your site de-rank after some weeks.

You are free to suggest all the other important qualities and requirements you think should be added in this list via comments

New Yahoo Is Live!

The New Yahoo Is Out!

Yahoo has started making its testing version of New UI live.

The new Yahoo User inetrface has a drop down search assitant, which have some really useful search sugegstions. Beside the normal suggestions it also offering an option entiled as Explore Concepts, which search the specifc keywords withind results. For example If you search "Yahoo testing new" It gives normal suggestion "Yahoo testing New Home" plus it also offers to refine the results by showing those having words "Yahoo Seach Marketing" in them. You can turn this Search Assistant Off too.

Yahoo logo is on the top right corner in the new Yahoo User Interface.

Here are some snapshots of new user interface of Yahoo Search. Enjoy!

THE NEW HOME PAGE OF YAHOO SEARCH ENGINE

NEW SEARCH RESULT PAGE

THE SEARCH ASSISTANT

THE NEW SHORT CUTS AND LOT OF ADDS

THE BOTTOM LINE

seo blog -
Employee Scheduling Software

Link Exchange

Link Exchange was and is always a major part of any link building campaign. Almost every site has a pages labeled as Links or Resources. These Pages contain links to other sites and in return other sites place a link of website eon their pages. Some times ago Google gives importance to how many links pointing to a site from different websites. But now It gives importance to from which site links are coming.

This not reduce the importance of Link Exchange but give this process a more non-spamy look. Before this purpose of Link exchange is only to get more and more links without considering the site from where its coming and at most only Page Rank is considered doing this. Result is obvious Google change its algo, which in general also moving to Quality rather than Quantity.

So doing Link Exchange will enhance your ranking but only if you consider the following points.

Always Do Link Exchange with related sites. For example your site topic is related to Health, do link exchange with only health related sites. You don't need to look for sites that exactly match your site theme means if your site selling herbal supplement, its not necessary that you do link exchange with only sites that are selling herbal supplements instead do the Link Exchange with sites that are closely related to your site topic such that a herbal supplement site can do link exchange with a site giving info about Health and Fitness.

Don't use same title for every Link Exchange.

Don't use a title more than three times.

Tweak your description also for every link if possible. Its a bit hard to provide a new description for every listing so you should at least use 4 descriptions randomly.

Don't do link exchange with sites that are a single product page. Means they just offer a single product and nothing more.

Now the question is How can you find related sites for link exchange. Here are some queries you can use to find websites that are closely related to your site and offering Link Exchange. Determine Your keyword first and then use it with these queries.

“Submit a link” + “your keyword”
“Submit a site” + “your keyword(s)”
“Submit URL” + “your keyword(s)”
“Submit an URL” + “your keyword(s)”
“Add a link” + “your keyword”
“Add a site” + “your keyword”
“Add URL” + “your keyword”
“Add an URL” + “your keyword”
“Suggest a link” + “your keyword ”
“Suggest a site” + “your keywords”
“Suggest URL” + “your keyword(s)”
“Suggest an URL” + “your keyword”
“Your Region” + “Add url” + directory
“your keywords” + “directory”
“your keywords” + “directories”
“your industry” +add url, directories,
“related sites” + your keyword + directory
“related urls” + your keyword + directory
keyword reciprocal + directory
keyword exchange + directory
keyword add site + directory
keyword resources + directory
keyword links + directory

Any more suggestions are welcome.

Directory Submission

According to Wikipedia

"A web directory or link directory is a directory on the World Wide Web. It specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links."

Directory Submission For anyone trying to promote their website, submitting to directories can be a great means of getting free or cheap links to their site. Submitting to internet directories can be a valuable tool in your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. If you are in a competitive industry and you don't have a large number of backlinks pointing to your site then the major search engines (Google, MSN and Yahoo) won't list your site high in their search engine results (SERPS). As the search engines are refining their techniques all the time it may be to your advantage to get links from related websites.

Niche Directories The search engines, especially Google are always improving their algorithms. They now provide more weight for a link from a site with the same topic. For example, a travel site will benefit more from a link from another travel site rather than a link from a legal site. For this reason, it is beneficial to have your site listed in directories related to your site. The internet has thousands of directories and there are directories for every niche you can think of. Examples included travel, business, finance, sports, webmaster, SEO, kids, blogs, entertainment, law, games, gambling and web hosting.

You can find listings of 2000 internet directories at web-directoires.ws. This site has 50 categories of well categorized niche directories LINK, including business and financial sites. Listing your financial site in financial directories will improve your search rankings. Remember that the Search Engines (especially Google and Yahoo) like links sites with similar content. Within the niche directories you can find general sites or sites that deal with a very specific topic. .A business directory would be an example of a general niche directory. The Offshore Directory would be an example of a specific niche as the site lists websites related to offshore tax shelters. This site offers specific tax information related to offshore shelters such as tax consultants, legal help, banking and investment. Another example of a specific niche would be the software directory, a site dedicated to software, tools and utilities.

Image Optimization

mage optimization is significant to search engine optimization. It is the process of making graphic arts ready for a website. Image optimization services as part of SEO Process. Image optimization consist of strategies to make your graphics search engine friendly. This includes optimize your image file for maximum speed, editing, sharpened, condensed and cropped for quality. A well optimized image reduces the time required to download web pages.

The image optimization process involves:

Image selection
Size determination
Compression
Defining length and width of image
Alt-tag (alternate text) generation


Alt tag increases your website’s chance of getting top ranking in leading search engines. aming of image file and content of the alt tag is also important in image optimization. Making file names related to your web page content and include appropriate keywords in image file name is alo consider in image optimization.