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THE WHOA FACTOR
January 2009 Archives
Image via Wikipedia
Doorway Pages: "Black Hat" All the Way
Have you ever seriously considered using doorway pages to attract visitors to your website and control where on your site they end up? If so, you'll want to hear what the experts think about this very popular SEO tactic that's frequently used by overzealous webmasters and perhaps even more frequently pushed on the reticent entrepreneur by profit-seeking SEO companies.
But, first, let's define our terms so there's no confusion about the type of page we're referring to. According to Wikipedia, doorway pages (also called gateway pages, portal pages, entry pages, and jump pages, among other names) are
low-quality web pages that contain very little content but are instead stuffed with very similar keywords and phrases. They are designed to rank highly [sic] within the search results, but serve no purpose to visitors looking for information. A doorway page will generally have "click here to enter" on the page.
Here's what Marc D. Ensign, CEO of Sound-n-Vision (a NJ web design and Internet marketing company) has to say about doorway pages and SEO in his article, Debunking the Top 10 Search Engine Myths, posted at SiteProNews:
Many companies will sell this idea of increasing your ranking by creating hundreds of one page sites loaded with keywords that link to you from various domains. This is considered spamming the search engine and is not recommended. If you properly optimize your site and focus on the correct way to get listed, you will increase your ranking much quicker than these doorway pages ever could.
The use of doorway pages is considered by many experts to be a "black hat" SEO tactic that should be avoided at all costs. Beanstalk offers a list of Black-Hat SEO Tactics that it states quite simply are "not legitimate." It also warns that, "while some (black-hat SEO tactics) may work in the short term, they WILL get your website penalized and/or banned eventually." As you may have guessed, one of these serious breaches of SEO "Netiquette" is doorway pages.
Beanstalk offers this further counsel about doorway pages that are generated by software and added to a site automatically - such a deceptively simple and seemingly innocuous activity:
This is a very dangerous practice. Not only are many of the methods of injecting doorway pages banned by the search engines but a quick report to the search engine of this practice and your website will simply disappear along with all the legitimate ranks you have attained with your genuine content pages.
According to an SEO Bank post, called (you guessed it), Black Hat SEO,
Black Hat techniques are just plain bad business practice. They also do the search engines and the search users a huge disservice by contributing to poor quality of results. This adds nothing to the end user experience.
SEO Bank also states that black hat techniques are "not ethical" and adds that they are "probably illegal." It also offers the following warning, which website owners would do well to heed: "Black Hat techniques will always increase the risk that a site will be deliberately removed from a search engine's index."
Landing Pages: The "White Hat" Alternative
Doorway pages shouldn't be confused with landing pages, which are content-rich web pages used by businesses and other organizations to capture sales leads, make contact for later interaction, or encourage immediate online transactions. Whereas doorway pages are designed to mislead both the website visitor and the search engine, the use of landing pages is a legitimate SEO/SEM technique.
According to Wikipedia, landing pages (also known as lead capture pages) come in two varieties. Reference landing pages provide such helpful content as text, images, and links that are relevant to a visitor's interest area (which can be determined by the search terms, or keywords, he or she has used to arrive at a particular landing page). They provide something of value to the visitor, and that something is relevant information. Transactional landing pages attempt to convince the visitor to complete a transaction of one kind or other - whether it be filling out a form or purchasing a product. Transactional landing pages can be every bit as relevant to a visitor's search string as reference landing pages can, which is why they, too, (unlike doorway pages) represent a legitimate SEO/SEM strategy.
Check out Landing Page Tutorials and Case Studies, on Copyblogger, where Brian Clark will help you get started using or improving your current landing pages to make them more effective. (This post is chock full of links to helpful tutorials providing just the guidance you need to optimize or create your own landing pages.)
So, what's the difference between doorway pages and landing pages? They're as different as black and white: black hat and white hat. Doorway pages equal black hat SEO (the kind you don't want to touch with a 10-foot pole), and landing pages equal white hat SEO (the kind that can enhance your business and increase your profits without jeopardizing your long-term search engine ranking - two methods of attracting website traffic that are as different as night and day.
Which one will you choose for your business?
 Image by lafra via Flickr During recessions, many companies elect to pull back or even eliminate advertising. If those companies are relying on traditional print advertising, they may be justified in their decision. However, a much wiser choice would be to shift advertising dollars from print to online media. From a purely common sense perspective, pay per click advertising offers one enormous advantage - Online advertising reaches qualified prospects when they are ready to act.It's as simple as that. Think about it. When an engineer is flipping through a trade journal or a work at home mom is perusing a health magazine, how carefully are they scrutinizing your ad? Sure, they might be thinking about purchasing your wares, but more likely, they are thinking about the articles, a business issue, what to make for dinner, or the weather. Your ad is likely to go in one eye and out the other. Contrast this to the pay per click model. When that same engineer or work at home mom is Googling for your wares, they are keying in searches using your keyword phrases. When your ad displays on the SERP (search engine results page), you have one big thing going for you - your pay per click ad is relevant. Pay per click advertising puts customers in control of the ads they view. While people tune out print ads - over which they have no control - they may just tune in those pay per click ads. So how would you rather spend your precious advertising dollars - print and hope, or target and convert? Simple point, really. But we tend to overlook simple, and SEM is one of the easiest places to do it. Too often, search engine marketing gets itself wrapped up in jargon and statistics and dazzling technologies. Not that those things aren't important, but there are far more fundamental reasons why online advertising is growing double digits as print advertising continues its decline.
Image via Freepixels.com
Are you using a blog to attract customers, promote your business, and sell your product or service? Here are a few tips for making your business blog successful with both customers and search engines.
1. Always provide high-quality, value-added content. While your main interest as a business owner may be to sell your product or service, your prospective customer is more interested in what you have to offer that won't cost him anything. This is one reason content will always be king even in the business sector of the blogosphere. Not only does value-laden content draw the reader in and hold his interest; it also provides useful information that makes his life easier, which increases your credibility and keeps your customer coming back.
Steve Rubel, of Micro Persuasion, gives five reasons Why Text Remains King of the Web. You'll want to check them out.
Willie Crawford also states, in How to Get Massive Free Website Traffic:
You can also create traffic by putting things on the Internet that people are attracted to. You can create content by writing articles or blogging for example. I love content creation and have written over 1100 different articles. My articles teach people how to solve pressing problems, and at the same time point them to me (my sites) as a great resource.
2. Optimize your high-value content by including appropriate keywords in all your blog posts, supplementing this technique by making good use of keywords elsewhere on both your blog and your main website. Embed keyword rich links in your blog content to take the reader to appropriate pages on your main website which feature your products or services. Other prominently yet tastefully displayed links, set up for ease of navigation along the top of your blog or in your sidebar, will help your readers locate everything your site has to offer, benefiting both you and them.
In You're Up a Link Creek Without an Anchor, Debra Mastaler has this to say:
Most people involved in SEO knows [sic] about anchor text and its benefits...Anchor text is a query ranking indicator and considered the most powerful component of link popularity. Since link popularity is what (mostly) drives search rankings, I'd say it's a pretty important part of your SEO program.
3. Always allow your visitors to move freely between the pages of your website. For the ultimate good of your company, never attempt to prevent your visitors from leaving a web page - no matter how much you may be tempted to try to keep them there. This strong-arm cyber tactic never works and only serves to annoy visitors, making them sorry they ever clicked your link in the first place. It often also steels their resolve to flee your site as quickly as they can and stay as far away as possible in the future. Such an "audience reaction" brings zero value to your business. So, please resist the temptation to try this highly questionable tactic, and always respect your readers' right to freedom of movement on the Web. It will pay off in the long run.
You can't prevent people from leaving your website...if they don't want to stay, from Newcastle University has the following to say on this topic:
Worrying about whether or not your users will return to your site, or attempting to actually prevent them from leaving is futile: provide a valuable service and your job is done. If they need your site again, they will return to it. People vote with their feet and attempting to prevent them from doing so will at best cause user irritation and at worst will be an accessibility or usability problem.
4. Supplement your on- and off-page blog SEO with other types of social media. This can help increase traffic to your blog, as well as to your main website. Use keyword-rich descriptions and links to your blog content and company web pages on social media sites such as Facebook and Digg to draw traffic and keep it flowing between your sites and thereby make the most of the current social media goldmine.
In Blogs Are for More than Just SEO, Lee Odden has this to say:
...When it comes to blogs, consumer information discovery trends are involving social networks and social media at an increasing rate. Recommendations are competing with search. When looking at the web analytics of our blog and client blogs, social media traffic is in the top 5 referring sources of traffic. Blogs are social and social media sources will become increasingly important for many business blogging efforts in the coming year.
Some great places to incorporate keywords in your business blog are:
Blog Template:
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Blog title
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Tagline
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Post URLs
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Categories
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Tags
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Recent Posts list
Blog Posts:
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Post titles
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Post subtitles
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Link anchor text
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Close to other keywords
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Image captions
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Image titles/ALT tags
Special Pages:
As business conditions continue to weaken, companies must explore every option for generating new business. Don't overlook social media. Many social media websites are no longer merely playgrounds for the young, bored, and playful. Companies are using them to interact with customers, promote their brands, and develop new sales opportunities. For details and ideas about how to use the most important social media sites, read these posts. Can Twitter Help Your Business?
Can Facebook Help Your Business?Can YouTube Help Your Business?Can Flickr Help Your Business?
 Original cartoon by Word Sell, Inc.
Do you sometimes wonder if your SEO plan is a trifle inadequate? You may have embarked on your optimization project with stars in your eyes and many hopeful plans for success. Yet, your results may be proving somewhat less promising than you'd hoped. Do you wonder why the end of 2008 has brought so little growth to your business? That's a very valid question. Yet, a far more important question would be, "What will you do to change that in 2009?"
If you're grasping at mental straws, desperately attempting to convince yourself that your past half-hearted SEO efforts will eventually pay off, there is a better way. Instead of stubbornly hiding from the truth and holding on to the notion that if you wait around long enough some good will simply have to come of your meager search optimization efforts, why not take the following proactive steps instead:
1. Admit that circumstances and conditions aren't to blame when your SEO strategy fails. Not even economic conditions - as bad as they have been of late - deserve this dubious honor. Business isn't a static entity but a dynamic one, which means that the company that has the most flexible plan and the greatest ability to adapt to the rapidly changing economic landscape will be the company most likely to stay afloat in the impending economic storm. No matter how bad things may get, circumstances and conditions don't determine your SEO strategy - you do. And if circumstances or conditions make that strategy ineffective, you're the one who needs to do something about it.
2. Recognize that your optimization plan has been less comprehensive than it's needed to be. It's never a sign of weakness to admit that you aren't perfect and that perhaps you've gone into your SEO experiment with less knowledge or experience than you may have needed for developing an adequate plan. This is a reality you simply must face - or ignore at your peril. Yet, it's also a factor over which you can exert an amazing degree of control - and in fact one that you're wholly capable of changing in the future once you've made up your mind to do whatever it takes change it.
3. Stop making excuses for your laxness in developing a more comprehensive plan. Perhaps the task seemed overwhelming at the time and you hardly knew where to begin. SEO seemed like a foreign language, as you attempted to move your business online and make it successful in an increasingly competitive, Internet-based economy. These facts are certainly valid, and each one places a very real obstacle in our path. Yet, a little initiative can counteract a host of obstacles when we finally come to realize that we simply have no choice but to act. Accept your lack of initiative in overcoming past obstacles - accept it gracefully and forgive yourself for your past SEO naivete. Then make up your mind to change that in the coming year.
4. Determine to learn the SEO strategies that can turn your business around. Make a conscious decision to move forward, making 2009 the year that you actively seek and put into practice the principles that will make your optimization efforts more effective than they've ever been before. Do your research. The search engines work both ways: they can send targeted traffic to your site, increasing your profits many-fold, and they can also send you to the websites that carry the information you need for building your strategic SEO program. Seek out those sites that can add to your store of SEO knowledge and those individuals with expertise in the critical art of SEO planning. Pick their brains, ask for their help, and most importantly, heed their advice. You might even find it worth your while to pay an expert to help you develop and implement your company's SEO plan. If that's what it takes, by all means go for it - but be sure you've done your homework first and are dealing with a reputable company or individual with a proven track record.
If you're a non-conformist or a do-it-yourselfer with an inquiring mind - or you're simply on too tight a budget to pay someone for SEO help - you'll find a host of excellent search engine optimization strategies online.
These three informative posts offer a variety of helpful SEO tips:
If part of your SEO plan is to aim for top billing with Google, the advice on the following site should give you a competitive edge:
If you're a beginner to search engine optimization - and even if you're not - you'll find a great deal of help in this step-by-step, illustrated Google SEO guide:
Now that you have the SEO tools you need to make your optimization plan successful, all you've got to do is use them.
Are you ready to get your SEO program off the ground and make it fly in 2009? If so...Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines - or rather, start using the search engines at your disposal to maximize the effectiveness of your SEO program and really make it soar!
Flickr is one of the Web's leading photo sharing Web sites, and is usually thought of as a place for hobbyists to hobnob. However, with an Alexa ranking of 31(ahead of LinkedIn) and thousands of user-organized special interest groups, Flickr should not be overlooked as a platform to build customer relationships and drive traffic to the company website or blog.
Building relationships. Let's say you're in the auto repair or car restoration business. Why not sponsor a Flickr group and post before-after pictures? Customers might get a kick out of seeing their cars, and pass along the photos to their friends and family where they can all exchange comments that are linked to the image. With that comes brand recognition, credibilty, and leads. Driving traffic. Because photos can be tagged, good keyword phrase selection will make your uploads visible to people throughout the Flickr community - and beyond. For instance Zemanta, an automatic photo uploader service for bloggers, pulls photos from Flickr along with other media sites. (The photo for this post came from Flickr via Zemanta.) Flickr uploads can be integrated with Facebook and automatically converted into blog posts. All this visibility and exposure can lead potential new customers to your Flickr Group, and from there to your website. Flickr could be the next social media secret to be discovered by business. Right now, Flickr has 56 groups listed under "auto restoration". Some have just a few members; others have hundreds. The Morris Garage Group gives you an idea how one company is using Flickr. They're off to a good start. Without doubt, thousands of companies in this business could follow the Morris model and build on it. And, as with most social media sites, Flickr involves minimal or no cost to the user. In today's economy, when marketing dollars must be spent with utmost care, the low cost/high potential value of sites such as Flickr has never been more meaningful.
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