Realtor Q & A: “Are there optimization tactics that can be dangerous to my web health?”
Search Engines favor websites and blogs that generate useful content, so be concerned about anything that isn't potentially useful to your target visitor
Let’s face it, Search Engine Optimization is a battle. There are thousands of people determined to be in the top 10 to 20 results for certain highly sought Real Estate phrases (i.e. New York City Real Estate, Los Angeles Home)… AND IT’S NOT POSSIBLE!
Obviously, the difference between being top 20 and being no. 220 for a search query can be enormous to a business so it’s no surprise a giant industry has arisen to sell improved results. At Real Estate Blogsites™ we’re in the business ourselves; however, we believe the only winning strategy is well- formatted, consistent, focused & useful content creation. Our intention is to provide Real Estate businesses with the leading- edge content creation / content management products & services.
Regardless, we see a lot of dangerous activity surrounding better placement for existing websites and we thought we’d begin to give a head’s up for what we know is potentially dangerous to your web health. Here goes:
I. Link Farms
Sites that have dozens and dozens of links could easily be seen by the Search Engines as a link farm. It’s widely believed that any web page with over 50 links will throw a red flag. Google, for instance, goes out of it’s way to state that quantity, quality and relevance of your links are what count towards your overall relevance; however, excessive link exchanging, partner pages created for the sake of cross-linking, any disregard for quality in links, buying or selling links, outbound links to web spammers or bad sites and generally any links created to game can hurt you severely. Ask yourself, "is this useful for my visitors?" If not, you’re simply asking for trouble.
II. Bridge or Gateway Pages
Building an independent web page loaded up with keywords, submitting it to the Search Engines and linking [or pointing] it to a less relevant website is typically referred to as the creation of a Gateway or Bridge page. There are programs that try to automate this process, supposedly tuned for safe keyword density. All search engines want to see websites or blogs that are filled with useful content. In fact, Google fields complaints from its users about bad search results everyday and its army of engineers will review as many of them as they can. Any of Google’s own 10,000 employees can use an internal system called “Buganizer” to report search problems they see and about 100 times a day they do see and report them. Your website exists to help promote your business, so why risk having it thrown out of the indexes?
III. Hidden Text
Text that is purposefully hidden from human view [by hiding it behind files, by using a 0 font size or by using white text on a white background], but that is visible to crawlers is a tactic meant to stuff key words & phrases into a page. It’s gaming, perceived by Search Engines as untrustworthy and they are familiar with the trick. They will detect it and, if so, you’ll likely be removed from search results for doing it.
IV. Keyword Stuffing
Repeating key words & phrases in your post titles, your files and in your tags is OK! It helps Search Engines understand your subject- specific purpose for creating content; however, you should beware [you or somebody you hire] of going too far. Filling pages with too many keywords can result in a negative user experience and if what you’re doing isn’t useful to your prospective visitors, assume it’s not favored by the Search Engines. What’s more, Search Engines can easily identify a high density or over population of common keywords in text and may consider it a gaming tactic.
V. Meta Keyword Stuffing
Meta Data [and Image Alt tags] allows for the tagging of different areas of a site. They are mostly hidden from the human eye, but visible to search engine spiders. Very much like keyword stuffing, search engines know and can detect a high density or an over population of common keywords in meta data. Leading Search Engines like Google will mostly ignore Meta Data, but there are other engines that may not… and they may consider it gaming.
VI. Duplicate Content or plagiarizing
Many people believe that operating multi- domains with duplicate content is an SEO strategy. Deceptive practices like this can result in a poor user experience and Search Engines can detect duplicate content. If they do, they will throw you out of their indexes. Additionally, plagiarizing without any due recognition or credit via a direct link to the author can also be considered a deceptive practice. Be careful, your site may be removed from all search results.
VII. These are some of the more obvious tricks out there, but there are many, many more and we’ll blog as we become aware of them.
Rather than shortcuts and/ or tricks, we advocate getting in the habit of writing or blogging. All Search Engines want to see websites or blogs that are filled with useful content. In our view, you should be thinking about creating content consistently and based upon a specific knowledge of a subject (i.e. Malibu Real Estate.) If it’s useful to a market of prospective customers, you should be able to compete for visibility & discover-ability.
In summary, if the link, the tactic or the content is not useful to your target visitor, it’s probably a risk to your web health. Worse, it may have you thrown out of the search indexes so be careful about what you, or people you hire, are doing.
Contributed bysupport@kineticknowledge.com
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