While search engine optimizing can be a great tool for increasing your website’s visibility, there is a dark under belly to this practice. There are SEO (search engine optimizing) “gurus” who are looking to take advantage of those without the knowledge of how this process works, or what can be expected from such a “service”. These unscrupulous people make millions of dollars each year by duping the uninformed. 

They begin by promising a great search engine results position (known in the online marketing sector as a “SERP”). Keep in mind that these are people who are out to drive their own revenue streams, not to help you build your business. They will take your money without doing anything to deliver on the service that is promised to you - the unsuspecting client. This will ultimately make them richer while possibly getting your site black-listed by major search engines. Before we understand how this scenario plays out though, let’s cover the basics.

Search engine optimizing is a marketing sector of web design with an honest, but solid principal. In order to drive traffic to a site, it helps to understand how to increase the visibility of that site in the search engine rankings. It is common knowledge that the typical web surfer uses a search engine to locate information relevant to their inquiry. Subconsciously, the user will place more trust in the content featured on the first page of the search engine results – after all, these results mean that more people trust this content and visit these sources regularly, so why go any further than the first page?

Most web-masters understand that being on the top of a search engine results page for keywords relevant to the content of their site will equal more traffic. In fact, if your website is on a result page that contains a particularly potent keyword in your niche, then you will get a huge boost in traffic to your site. This means two things to most web administrators: more money, or more opportunity to increase readership which basically translates into making more money. Besides, websites aren’t free now are they?

Some of the tactics used in legitimate SEO are: Content, meta-tags, keyword density, linking techniques, and SEO-friendly URLs.  Let’s begin to understand some of the techniques that will drive traffic to a website. Content speaks for itself. Keyword density is a very important concept to grasp if one desires to market their website to a particular niche. If you happened to be in the business of selling discounted Macs, then you would want the phrase “Discounted Macs” to place your website in the top position of the search engine results.

Some one buying a Mac book Pro would love to buy it at a discounted rate, so it wouldn’t be unheard of for that person to type “Discount Mac” in the search box at Google. If your website appears at the top of the first, who is going to get that traffic? You will, and you will be a trusted source of discounted Macs. In order to increase the chances of your website showing up at the top, you will have to have that phrase (as well as variations of it) in various key places on your sites pages. You would want your keywords to be in the page title, address bar, topic title, and in you main content. When Google’s software (called a “spider” or “bot”) indexes your root directory, it has many chances of picking up that phrase and increasing the chances of your site showing up in the top ten.

Meta-tags (these are tags at the top of your HTML markup) work the same way. When a spider crawls the content of your website, these tags get dragged along with the rest of the content. If you also include in the meta-tags of each page of the website words like: “macintosh, macbook, mac, book, ibook, imac, G4, G3, laptop, mini mac, apple, desktop, workstation, cheap, and pro”. This will increase the chance of your site being pulled up if any of those words are used in your copy. These words should be concentrated and meaningful, and should relate directly to the main content of the page.

Various linking techniques can also be used. Inter-linking between pages of your own website and linking with sites that are relevant to your content also helps to improve overall traffic to your site, which increases visibility, which in turn increases chances that you’ll show up in the prime real estate of a search engine results page. If a user surfs onto a website looking for a charcoal grill, why not link to a way to buy the charcoal from you for that grill from the same page? Most business will pass potential clients to one another to maximize profits, and it’s no different between websites. Linking between websites in your niche passes readers that neither site would have gotten without the other. Linking techniques are a great way to generate traffic.

SEO-friendly URLs are the addresses of website pages that can also be indexed by spiders that allude to the content contained on the page. If a page says how_to_draw_manga in the address bar, it looks better than the jumbled messes that most content management systems spit out as URLs. Again, this only increases the chances of that site to show up in the search engine results page at a higher position.

There are many marketing firms who will work very hard to make a website show up in a great SERP using the techniques mentioned. Of course, redesigning a website in this way is time consuming (not to mention the fact that site listings are dependant on three month cycles). For the work put in, the return is very obvious, if the job is done right. The keywords that return a site are short and somewhat vague, but always pertain to the niche. This is honest to goodness SEO.

Unfortunately though, there is an increasing trend in predatory practices in Search Engine Optimization. There are those who will take advantage of those who lack the knowledge that has been shared here so far. These are people with out morals, who are only out for a quick (but a lot of) buck(s). These are people who will promise a great results position for your website, but only deliver in ways that are good to business owners who don’t know any better. We’ll now discuss ways in which you may fall victim to these SEO “gurus”. 

Beware of an SEO “firm” who promises results that are in direct contradiction from the contract that you are signing. Pay attention to the contract that they will make you sign. If a contract mentions “a term or phrase pertaining to your business”, make them get specific. If they retort with some overly specific phrase that you should normally get a great SERP with, give them something more obscure that will still yield great results with the traffic on your site. It is always best to use a site like alexa.com to track the traffic of your website to see if any real boost in traffic is taking place.
 
If you hear words like: shadow domain or cloaking, it is best to end communication with such firms. These are very dirty methods that will actually get your website banned from search engine indexes. These methods use spamming principals to boost a website’s ranking. Most search engines will blackball your URL for spamming their search index. By the time you figure out what has happened, the SEO firm will have already collected the money and disappeared, taking “your” traffic with them.

Many search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN are now catching onto these tactics which warp the algorithms that were designed to deliver context sensitive content to users. Because their business strives on the quality of the returns of their indexes, they are quick to stop all spamming that affects them. Some sites (like Google) have set up FAQ pages on their websites to warn people of such predatory practices.

Unfortunately, because these “SEO firms” do not break any laws, they can get away with what they do. The best way to avoid this potential trap is to arm yourself with knowledge. In order to spread this knowledge though, we all have to do our part by utilizing social networking sites and the blogosphere. These are of the two fastest ways to utilize the internet’s viral tendencies to lend to the cause. Websites like Yahoo, MSN and Google are already doing their part.

In order to separate honest, useful SEO firms and practices from the predatory, devious firms and methods, every knowledgeable web user should be involved in the PR blitz that includes Google, Yahoo, MSN and the whole blogosphere/social networking scene. The more educated web masters and businesses become on the dangers of this marketing “service”, the cleaner web marketing will be. That of course, will make the web a better place for us all and who wouldn’t want that?

Resources:

http://seoblackhat.com/category/click-fraud/

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

http://www.google-success.com/

http://www.aimclearblog.com/2007/11/08/predatory-jerks-give-seo-a-bad-name/

http://seocompany.ca/seo/seo-techniques.html