If you have a website, you probably think about your search engine rankings a lot. Getting on the first page of Google for your main keywords is pretty much what everyone online wants… including me! The thing is that this doesn’t happen overnight, and the waiting game is a killer. In fact, if you fail the waiting game and you try to push too fast and too quickly you could kill your website altogether, and here’s why. At Web123 most of our customers come to us having never had a website before or they’ve had one that was awful, hard to use and didn’t attract any traffic. When they get their brand-spanking new site from us they’re pretty happy: It looks good, it works a treat and they’re very excited about the potential new source of customers and revenue. And that’s as it should be. A brand new website can seem like a golden cash cow. And eventually it can be, but if you’ve got a new website (and not too much budget to spare) it’s going to take a bit of time to get noticed by Google. And that’s ok. It takes time to build consistent traffic and achieve online success. But there is a real danger when you’re in the heady rush of love for your new website to get impatient. You want everyone, especially Google, to love your site. You get upset when not much happens in the first month or two. You start to feel disillusioned. This is the danger period where you could end up doing something really bad for your website. It’s around this time that you might randomly get a telemarketing call from someone in India who tells you that your site is bad and there are cheap shortcuts they can give you to improve your traffic. And they’ll probably start talking about how they have a fantastic system for getting you a higher search engine ranking. They promise they can ‘turn your website around’ and make you rich. Smell a rat here?
Firstly, what are search engine rankings?
When you search for a term online using a search engine like Google, it will deliver results to you. The top will show sponsored links (per per click) and directly underneath that might be some localised listings and THEN after that will be a list of websites that Google has decided will be the most relevant and most closely answers your query. The higher up on that list your website comes the more clicks you’re going to get… which means more visitors to your website. So search engine rankings are VERY important, that’s why SEO companies exist; to get your search engine ranking position (SERPS) as high as possible.
Why ‘Black Hat SEO’ is death for your website…
What they’re offering is something called ‘black hat’ search engine optimisation (SEO). Black hat SEO is when you do a number of ‘dubious’ online activities to get quick rankings. It’s also called spamdexing, which is the deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes. Basically unethical or deceptive optimisation techniques like keyword stuffing, article spinning and using link farms, etc. These things used to work great in 2009. Nowadays, Google has wised up and is on a search and destroy mission for any site that’s trying to buck the system. If you do any of these things, your website could become collateral damage. Google’s head of Webspam, Matt Cutts, recently said his biggest surprise of 2012 was the amount of people who still believed you can buy a ‘product’ or an SEO ‘cheat’ that will rocket you to #1 on Google. His basic message was: if something looks too good to be true… it IS too good to be true. So think twice whenever you get a random phone call telling you they can give you 1000’s of links to get you top page rankings. It’s a crock! This is black hat tactics and if Google discovers it they could decide your website is really webspam and it could ban your site or push it so far down in the rankings that you might as well have been banned! Your Site Might Be Seen As Webspam If…
- You have grammatically incorrect sentences
- Your site is not user-friendly or well laid out
- You have too many links on your pages
- You suddenly get a LOT of inbound links to your site in a short period of time
- You have inbound links coming from low quality sites that have already been flagged as spammy
- You have duplicate content on your pages
- You have copied and pasted duplicate content from other sites (without giving a hyperlink to the original source as credit)
Why ‘White Hat SEO’ is good for your business…
White Hat SEO, on the other hand, conforms to the search engines’ guidelines and involves no deception. It’s Google-friendly. The basic premise is that you create real content for real people (not search engines). It’s basically going back to good old-fashioned marketing ideas. The beauty is that you don’t need a specialist to do it, you just work out what your customer wants… and you give it to them! So go white hat, it’s going to be cheaper in the long run.
How to get real online traffic
If you want thousands of visitors from the minute you launch your site, you’ll need budget. Pushing your website on radio or investing setting up a ‘pay per click’ search engine listing (like Google Adwords) or invest in some display ads online (like Google Adsense). These methods will get you visitors quick, but it’s not cheap. If you don’t have much budget (and who does these days) there ARE things you can do to improve your rankings and boost the visitors to your site. But remember one thing… Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was a strongly ranked website. If you’ve got a little time, try some DIY SEO. But, be warned, it can take anything from 2 to 6 months to build a respectable level of traffic. The beauty of naturally building traffic is that it generally lasts a lot longer. You website is like life, quality is always better than quantity! Here is a link to our SEO for Beginners Guide PLUS our SEO in 30 days workbook. It will get you going in the right direction without having to spend a cent. Remember that Patience is a Virtue! So my message is: please don’t be impatient! Your website (and your domain name) is an important asset. You don’t want it banned. Once blacklisted, you may never get back on Google, which means you’ll never be found and your business will be dead in the water. The only answer then is to buy a new domain and rebuild your site authority and your search engine rankings up all over again. And you really don’t want that! Until next time ABN’ers! Bianca
