The Webmaster's Place

The world of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is filled with a lot of shady characters and black hat tricks. Most sites use legitimate SEO tactics to gain search engine exposure, but a large number of websites resort to shady “black hat” tactics to try and game the system. Sometimes these attempts fail from the beginning, and some work for a little while, but ultimately Google and other search engines catch on and sites become penalized for their black hat tactics. (continue reading…)

Search Engine Optimization, aka SEO has helped hundreds of thousands of websites become easily accessible and profitable, but the practice has a dark side. SEO is killing the internet, making it less and less useful everyday.

SEO is the process of making a site more search engine friendly by following W3C standards for coding, strategically using keywords that users are searching for and promoting sites using backlinks. Many sites use these practices responsibly, but a growing number of website owners use it to cheat the system and make a quick buck. (continue reading…)

Keyword density is an important consideration in optimizing a website for search engines. A site with little to no keyword density has little chance of ranking well on search engines such as Google and Bing. The opposite, and more dangerous side of that is keyword spamming.

Keyword spamming is when a webmaster overuses their keyword(s) to gain a better ranking on search engines. A lot of times this is done out of either ignorance or laziness. The webmaster either does not know, or is trying to cheat their way to the top. (continue reading…)

Every web designer has come across the client that wants their brand new site listed on the number one spot on Google “like tomorrow.” Usually these tend to be the people that want to get away with paying $300 for a fully featured site with Flash, message boards, contact forms, videos, a content management system, and the works. Aren’t these people annoying? (continue reading…)

by Mike McKeown

Blogs are all the rage these days. It seems like everyone has one. Businesses, churches, schools and everyday regular people have blogs. Sure a lot of people have blogs just because they like blogging, But why do so many businesses have them on their websites? Because they make money!

But how exactly do they help? Here’s a good list for starters:

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By David Leonhardt

A webmistress asked me recently how much I would charge to optimize her site for the search engines. I took a glance at her site, and the first thing I found was a hidden link to an association she was part of.

I asked her why the link was there. She told me it was “for the search engines.” It never ceases to amaze me how much really bad – I mean absolutely horrible – advice is floating around the Internet.

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