1. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Search Engine Marketing by Stephan Spencer President, Netconcepts

2. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Where do searchers look? The top of the natural results! (Enquiro / Did-it / Eyetools Study)

3. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

4. Some Highlights from the Study  72% of searchers click on the first link of interest  25.5% read all listings first, then decide  85% click on “natural” (unpaid) results  The top 4 PPC slots on the right are equivalent in views to being ranked at #7 - #10 natural

5. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Spammers Never Prosper  Sooner or later, you’ll get caught –Automated search engine algorithms –Manual quality review by evaluators –Spam reports (www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html)  Consequences –Ranking penalties –Total site ban (i.e. getting “graybarred”) –Incomplete indexation (partial site ban) –Removal of your “voting” power

6. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Spam (“Black Hat”) Practices  Sneaky redirects  Hidden or tiny text –e.g. noscript, noframes, iframes, hidden divs, etc.  Keyword stuffing  Targeting irrelevant keywords  Automated submitting, resubmitting or deep submitting  Trademark infringement  Duplicating content

7. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Spam (“Black Hat”) Practices  Spamglish  Doorway pages  Machine-generating pages  Pagejacking  Cloaking content  Link farms & “FFA” pages  Buying expired domains w/ high PageRank

8. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Spam (“Black Hat”) Practices  Multiple domains w/out redirecting  Linking to bad neighborhoods  Blog comment spamming  Guestbook spamming  Splogging

9. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Example 1: Doorway Pages & Keyword Stuffing

10. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Doorway page spam

11. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Doorway page spam

12. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Keyword stuffing

13. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Keyword stuffing in the “meta tags” too

14. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Example 2: Link Hiding  PRNewswire.co.uk embeds keyword-rich text links within a tag on their home page that not visible to ordinary users: – Search Engine Marketing Search Engine News Release Optimization

15. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Example 3: Text Hiding (& Spamglish)

16. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Link Building  Inbound links play a key role in determining rankings  It’s not just about quantity (“link popularity”); it’s about quality (importance of the page, topically relevant/authoritative)  PageRank™ – Google’s algorithm for measuring a page’s importance; Yahoo & MSN have similar measures  Each web page (not site) has its own PageRank score  PageRank scores from 0 to 10; logarithmic scale

17. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Link Building  Check your link popularity at www.netconcepts.com/linkcheck  Check your PageRank with the Google Toolbar (download it from toolbar.google.com) –And/or check your home page’s PageRank using the Google Directory (directory.google.com) –Listings are ranked in order of PageRank –Makes it possible to see your site make small PageRank shifts relative to other sites in your category

18. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Google Directory – listings are organized by PageRank

19. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Link Building  Find link targets –Review links of competitive sites, sites in your keyword market Use the Link Checker tool at www.netconcepts.com/linkcheck Yahoo’s linkdomain: query is particularly useful Run a link: query on www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-search/ –Check sites with high rankings for relevant keywords –The fewer the number of links on their page, the better  Offer link-worthy content. Keep it fresh.  Consider providing an RSS feed

20. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

21. Link Building  BONUS: Sites with higher PageRank get crawled earlier, faster, and deeper by Googlebot  Types of links that are likely to get discounted: –Reciprocal links –Affiliated sites (on the same IP range or hostname) –Footer links (at the bottom of the page) –Site-wide links  Don’t participate in “link farms” or link to “bad neighborhoods” –Hallmarks of a link farm = more urls per page & less organization  Try to get good keywords in the hyperlink text

22. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com “Google Bombing”  Inbound contextual links alone can drive a site to the top of Google (e.g. “miserable failure”)  Also works on Yahoo, MSN Search, etc.

23. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

27. Do’s  Targeting relevant and popular keywords  Lead off with keywords in the title tag  Use H1 (heading) tags  Make body copy sufficiently long and keyword-rich  Include keywords in your link text  Include text links to your important secondary pages  Have a site map that contains text links  Make your directory structure flat

28. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Do’s  Build up your PageRank scores  Get listed in Open Directory  Write meta descriptions that contain the targeted keywords & a compelling call-to-action  Have a custom error page  Use clean, simple URLs that contain keywords

29. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Don’t  Engage in any above-mentioned “black hat” tactics  Use dropdown boxes, Flash, Java, or JavaScript for navigation  Have a "splash page"  Use frames  Include multiple ampersands or "cgi-bin” or session IDs or underscores in your URLs  Put your text content within Flash or graphics

30. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Flash – a roadblock

31. © 2006 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Don’ts  Have the same title tag on multiple pages  Put important content into pop-ups  "Click here" links  Superfluous text like "Welcome to" at beginning of your title tags  Redirect on your home page