SEO Dance

Link building does not have to be done solely off-page. On-page optimization also requires link building within the pages of a website. This is what internal linking is for. Proper internal linking makes it easiers for readers to jump from one page to another or in case of a blog, from one blog post to another.

So if you’re wondering whether this SEO technique is a black hat or a white hat one, don’t fret. Internal linking makes it less difficult for visitors to navigate a website, and that means it improves the usability of a website. So, yeah it’s a white hat technique. And that holds true for search engine spiders, too. Remember those mechanical bugs that consistently checks a website’s content to report whether a search engine should index your site’s content or not?

To better prove that internal linking is a white hat SEO tactic, Google’s webmaster guidelines for SEO clearly include internal linking:

Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.

So how do you actually make internal linking work for your site or blog?

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Launching a successful SEO campaign requires covering the 2 factors of SEO: on-page optimization and off-page optimization.

On-page SEO is employing a set of SEO techniques that is limited to tweaking only the web pages of a web site. An HTML-challenged person will experience some difficulty accomplishing on-page SEO.

Off-page SEO is the use of optimization methods that will make a website look good with the search engines through link building. Link building is time-consuming but can be very rewarding as long as one knows how to execute it properly.

Seth Godin also has a brief explanation which might also help make it easy for SEO newbies to understand the difference between on-page and off-page SEO. Actually Seth tagged these SEO factors as active and passive SEO.

These two SEO campaign aspects are of course not without the tendency to succumb to the bi-hatted nature of SEO techniques.

Specific on-page and off-page SEO techniques and which of these SEO factors is known to be better than the other in making a website get a good search engine placement will soon be discussed. Stay tuned!

on-page SEO, off-page SEO, SEO techniques, Seth Godin

Black hat SEO vs. white hat SEO? How about checking the kaleidoscopic world of promoting a website?

Spidered, er, discovered this SEO blog with content about the other hues that compose search engine optimization from dark inky black SEO to luminescent pearly white SEO.

SEO Dance will strive to apply Light Gray SEO:

The SEO creates “original” content in bulk the old-fashioned way, thinking first of all of search engine rules, secondly of duplicate detection algorithms, and lastly of whether the text makes sense to human beings and is something anyone would ever want to read. Then the SEO experiments with all the parameters (keyword density, internal linkage) trying to move up for the queries of interest.

What SEO color are you using for your website promotion?

SEO from Black to White
via Threadwatch

blackhat seo, whitehat seo, seo technique

Black hat and white hat SEO analogies should have given SEO beginners a hint of what these two SEO sides are about.

If not, white hat SEO techniques are generally tactics that search engines tell SEO people to do if they want to their websites to rank well or to at least show up anywhere in their search engine results pages. Black hat SEO techniques are practices that the search engines would not want search engine optimizers to apply.

Now if you are serious about learning how to promote a website with SEO, it pays to know the alleged good and bad SEO techniques under white hat and black hat SEO, respectively.

Since this SEO dichotomy is based on what the search engines deem good or bad for their SERPs, it only makes sense that the webmaster guidelines set by major search engines (Google and Yahoo) were consulted.

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Search engine optimization, like many technological advancements, has good and bad side. In SEO, these two sides are known as “Black Hat SEO” and “White Hat SEO.”

So what’s the skinny about these two SEO Hats?

“One Night Stand with a Black Hatted SEO”

I have nothing against one night stands but black hat SEO is known to be something like a wham-bam-thank-you-Ma’am kind of thing. Black hat SEO is a set of relatively unethical marketing methods used by SEO blackhatters, which are often labeled deceptive, thus are frowned upon by major search engines. What makes them deserving of the “one night stand” metaphor is that since they are now more easily tracked by search engines, their effects can easily backfire. If your site is now ranking high on the SERPs because of black hat techniques, it is expected that it will soon be ranked low when the SE’s find out that the methods you used to make your site go sky high are those that violates their guidelines.

“Dreaming with Puritan White Hatted SEO”

A puritan is someone who adheres to strict religious principles; someone opposed to sensual pleasures. The sudden spike of a site’s rank is allegedly what a white hat SEO tries to avoid. As if there really is some strict search engine principles, white hat SEO techniques are labeled as ethical.

Information about SEO techniques under each side of the SEO dichotomy soon.

Kamrul was cool enough to include more points on what other factors affect a site’s page rank.

“I think not only inbound link but also Number of visits, the site the link is coming from is important. Means If your inbound links comes from low ranking site you won’t get that much credit and if accidentally inbound links comes from blacklisted sites, your sites future is in trouble. Since not only Google but also other search engines don’t like bad neighborhood’s. Kamrul’s comment on increasing PR of a site

Bad Site Equals Low Page Rank
Indeed, inbound links from blacklisted sites which Google has penalized is told to be one way to lower a website’s page rank. The bad neighborhoods that Google despise include porn sites, sites with duplicate content, link farms and other banned sites.

Reciprocal Linking for Higher Page Rank Tips
Link exchanges is being practiced by many search engine optimizers to increase their site’s page rank and also to drive more traffic towards their sites. However, reciprocal linking or link exchanges requires precaution. The trick to be successful in increasing the page rank of a website from reciprocal linking is through making sure that the site contains relevant content AND more preferably the page rank of the site that you will be exchanging links with is higher by even just one level than your site’s page rank.

blacklisted site, increase page rank, link exchange, reciprocal linking, relevant content, tips

If you have installed the Google Toolbar you will be able to see the pagerank of every site you visit in your browser. How? It has that PageRank icon with some green part or can be as white as a ghost depending on the PageRank of the website you are viewing.

What is page rank? Here is how Google explains it:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.

Ok, enough of the vote-vote important-important Google jargon about page rank. Simply put, page rank is the grade or mark that Google gives to a website. Now how is a website ranked? One popular SEO notion is that a website is given a page rank depending on the number of inbound links (IBL) it gets from other websites. So, to get a high PR (0 as the lowest page rank and 10 as the highest), link building is a key move.

So why would you want a high page rank? Here are what I believe the two best benefits of a high page rank:
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Bloghopping led me to this set of tips to make your blog launch a success. It dealt with the following aspects of blog launching:

The First Impression (which made me feel sad that I haven’t been able to post enough content yet)

RSS and Subscriptions (discussed about the “above the fold” requirement for RSS feed links to be found easily by readers; also reminded me to ask the boss for an e-mail subscription section)

Social Bookmarking (reminded me of a co-451-blogger’s Fark success)

Getting Networked

Link Building (one of my most favorite SEO chores)

Finishing Touches (this I’ll never be able to finish since I’m a very tweak-happy person considering the fact that I’m html-illiterate :()

Here, read all of ‘em 21 techniques to make blogging a lot more rewarding while I’m starting with the 2nd tip:

“Don’t get seen naked: Never launch a blog with fewer than 5 posts.”

blog promotion, blog SEO, link building, blog tip, RSS feed, social bookmark, Fark

Aside from the recent SEO contest I’ve joined, getting my SEO blog to show up in the first few pages of the SERPs is one of the most challenging SEO endeavor I’ve ever gotten myself into. Thanks to the one who chose my domain name SEO Dance, (Is it Chrispian?), this will be one hell of a roller-coaster ride. Haha!

One of the first few SEO steps I have accomplished is to try to get as many IBL (inbound links) directing to my blog. It’s one tried and tested method to get out of the sandbox.
Link building translates to building trust as how many SEO gurus would preach. Whether they call that getting trapped in Google algorithm’s quicksand a sandbox or trustbox, one thing is for sure, everyone needs to get out of the darn box!

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Doesn’t that title sound like a kind of alien invasion film? If you haven’t read my SEO experiment announcement yet, I won’t do a recap for you. Please don’t be a lazyas$, do read it.

To those who have read it, as promised, here is my SEO-fu plan.

Search engine optimization is so much of a guy’s craft I’ve noticed. This is because I don’t know of too many ladies out there trying to tinker on SEO. However, although I can’t be those kinds of guys who can and would try to understand the Google algorithm, I do enjoy working on each aspect that allegedly compose the Google algorithm. Why am I having this love-hate relationship with the Google algorithm? Google is the search engine which is known to be the hardest to please because of its retro-virus like nature - it has already evolved even before any search engine optimizer or analyst has cracked its code.

However, since I’m not going to compete against those millions of search results because I have a client who will pay me for to reach the top of the SERPs, this experiment should not be that taxing. But still, having a blog that should be dealing with search engine optimization, I can’t be a runny-nosed invalid settling for a page 20 of the SERPs, which is one feat on its own already if you are competing with millions of blogs.

Ok, enough of the yada-yada’s. Here are my SEO tactics:
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