First off, why do black hat tactics even work?  Why do people even risk a banning by using these strategies?  One, because banning is not as bad as you think.  If you scrub the site of the bannable offense, the site can be listed again.  Of course, this is a drawn out process that can lead to months of down time and lost profits, but banning isn’t necessarily permanent, as some believe.  However, committing bannable offenses again and again could lead to a stricter ban.  But for many the rewards outweigh the risk, especially if a ban can be overcome.  Many black hatters just cut their losses and move on to create a new site.

More importantly is the fact that black hat tactics often do not get caught by search engines.  Black hat practices are sort of like viruses – but in a way more resistant.  New strains of viruses come on the scene and new virus definitions are written.  New viruses are caught a lot faster than new “strains” of black hat techniques.  The internet is gigantic and so scrubbing the web is automated.  Search engine spiders aren’t that quick witted, and by the time a spider’s algorithm is re-written to catch a new black hat practice, a site could be changed.

Spiders Just Aren’t That Smart

A search engine is only viewed by a human checker when a spider makes an alert that there has been a problem.  There is no other way to gauge sites because the internet is nearly infinite: new sites are coming on board every day.  It is possible – if not probable – that search engine spiders become A LOT smarter.  Search engine spiders could learn as they go and self-correct.  That’s the next wave of artificial intelligence, but it’s a far cry from how search engine spiders work today.

What this means is that there’s a fairly large window for when a loophole is found and it can be exploited.  If a spider could say to itself - wait, that doesn’t look right, I’m sending this to headquarters – then that would be one thing.  But currently spiders are crawling the web using yesterday’s definitions of bad behavior.  This gives black hatters the time to exploit a loophole and scrub a site when that loophole has been closed.

In addition, spiders aren’t that thorough.  Though Google may seem all-powerful, the God of cyberspace, there just isn’t enough computational power for spiders to scan every site down to the last bracket.  As mentioned, the internet is huge and only getting larger and more complex.  Spiders can’t necessarily keep up.  This means that certain aspects of a page might be entirely passed over by a spider – hence, the possibility of a loophole.

Short Term Search Engine Marketing

What this should all tell you is that black hat marketing is all about the short term.  It also means that the marketer has to keep a pretty steady eye on developments in the industry.  Has the algorithm changed?  Are sites starting to get banned?  Black hat marketers are also pretty spread across a host of micro-sites, like a superaffiliate, rather than putting all their eggs in one basket.  So if they’re caught in one domain, they just set up shop somewhere else.  It’s a case of the marketer trying to always stay one step ahead of the law.

I feel sort of like I’ve given the pro-black hat manifesto here.  That wasn’t my intention.  For people who have heard the term black hat and wonder why people would be so risky with a marketing plan, these are some of the reasons.  A black hatter has a certain type of personality profile: a bit anti-establishment, a person who wants to outsmart the big guns at Google and other search engines.  A little bit of a hacker mindset.

If you’re not a big risk taker – or you’d rather just add content, trade some links, and not worry about the repercussions – then black hat SEO is not a good option.  This is especially true for those site owners who set up one major domain and work their heart out trying to market it.  If that site goes down, the whole business might be taken down with it, so it’s not really an option for those looking at the big, long-term picture for a site.  As time goes on, my bet’s on Google shrinking the window of viability for black hat techniques, but currently black hatters are comfortable with taking the risk.

Although every prominent SEO blogger has been saying for years that Google PageRank doesn’t matter, all you have to do is spend a few minutes in any SEO or Internet marketing forum to see that the obsession with that little green bar is alive and well.  From bloggers to website developers, people all over the Internet can’t seem to get past the idea of PageRank.  The reason that PageRank has remained so prominent in the minds of many in spite of the fact that they have been told they shouldn’t worry about it is that it’s visible and available for every website.  It takes time to really evaluate a website, and PageRank is viewed by many as a really easy way to gauge a website on a scale of zero to ten.

So, since you shouldn’t be worrying about the PageRank of your website or anyone else’s, what numbers should you be paying attention to?  If you remember a post I made back in July, I said that the bounce rate is the most important figure that an analytics program will provide.  In addition to the bounce rate, here are a handful of other numbers that I think are worthwhile to spend your time analyzing:

Conversions: Not every website has something to sell.  For some websites, their ultimate goal may be to get users to sign-up for a monthly newsletter.  For many bloggers, the ultimate goal is to increase their RSS readership.  Regardless of what your goal is, the most important thing is that you have one.  If you are churning out content and waiting around to get rich, it’s time to take a step back, give yourself a quick reality check and then decide what you are actually trying to accomplish with your blog or website.

Once you have a clearly defined goal of what you are trying to accomplish, you can begin tracking conversions for that goal.  Tracking conversions can give you a very accurate idea about what activities you should be spending your time on.  For example, you may think that spending six hours on creating and promoting a piece of content that brings you a lot of visitors is a very worthwhile way to spend your time.  However, if your goal is to acquire new RSS subscribers, and this activity only brings you sixty new subscribers, while you get an average of thirteen new subscribers per post that you spend forty-five minutes writing, you start to realize that even though the piece of content you spent a lot of time on might have generated a lot of traffic, it wasn’t actually effective at accomplishing your goal.

Google Cache Date: While I don’t think Google PageRank has any real value for SEOs, one metric provided by Google that does matter is the Cache Date.  The Cache Date shows the last time that a page of a website was crawled and cached by Google.  If your website has been cached within the last few days, it shows that Google is crawling your website on a regular basis.  However, if your cache is weeks (or even months old), it shows that Google is not regularly crawling your website, which either means it has no new content or very little authority within Google.

To check the Cache Date of your websites (and the websites of others), you can either click the Cached link (which will show the date at the top of the page), or you can use a Firefox extension like SEO for Firefox to see when a page was last cached.

ROI: This may be the last number that I discuss, but it’s arguably the most important.  At the end of the day, you want to make sure that your online endeavors have a positive ROI.  If you spend two thousand dollars and only earn a thousand dollars back, you just experienced a negative ROI.  If you don’t carefully track your ROI (whether it’s on PPC advertising or SEO investments), you may end up putting yourself into the red.  By carefully tracking your ROI on all of your projects, you can ensure that the money you are investing is leading to positive returns for you and your website.

As you can see from the image above (or the search query you began to type into the Google homepage), Google Suggest is all about providing users with relevant search terms based on what they have started to type into the search box.  As usual, Google states that the purpose of Google Suggest is to provide a better experience for their users.  While this may be true, many experts have also speculated that this is an attempt to increase their AdWords revenue by driving users towards the money terms (more popular keywords that require a higher bid from PPC marketers).

So, what does Google Suggest mean for SEOs and internet marketers.  Although it may seem like a minor change, Google Suggest may have some serious implications on the search industry.  While it will take some time for us to begin to see the true impact of Google Suggest, here are some observations about Google Suggest that I have noticed during its first week in mainstream existence:

Misspellings are Going to Be Less Important: In the past, you could pick up nice amounts of traffic by optimizing pages for common misspellings.  However, Google has slowly curbed the opportunity to pick up traffic from misspellings with their Did you mean feature, and as you can see from the screenshot above, they are putting another nail in this strategy’s coffin.  So, if you have been pulling in a lot of traffic through misspellings (whether it’s paid or organic), it’s probably a good time for you to start diversifying your strategies.

SEOs May Need to Switch Their Focus to New SERPs: Although one and two word keywords will still be extremely important for SEOs to rank highly for, Google Suggest may be bringing new sets of keywords and SERPs onto SEOs radars.  For example, I have a celebrity website that ranks on the first page of results for that celebrity’s name.  However, when you begin to type that celebrity’s name into the Google homepage, the first term that shows up in Google Suggest is celebrity’s name.com.  Therefore, I have already begun optimizing my site to rank for this term (along with a few other terms that are now appearing in Google Suggest).

As Search Skills Improve, So Will Our Information: As searchers become more accustomed to searching with the types of terms that Google Suggest provides them, their searching style will become more focused and less sporadic.  Although this means that the long tail may become less significant, it will allow SEOs and internet marketers to look at analytics data that is more focused and provides better insight into the actual thought process that goes through searchers’ minds when they are looking for something online.

Follow these tips to get more results from your blog comments.

• Don’t Promote Yourself- Even though commenting on blogs will help build your brand, you shouldn’t treat the comments section of a blog as an opportunity to advertise your company. Blogging is a social activity. The comments section is a place for healthy interaction. If you’re constantly pitching your products, people will view you as nothing more than a spammer. Obviously, this will hurt the image of your brand.
• Stop Keyword Stuffing- Like I said before, blogging is a social activity. You don’t need to make your username a keyword your website is targeting. No one wants to build a relationship with someone named “Used Ford Mustang Steering Wheels.” People connect with people. Use your name, and if you really want to, follow it with your company name.
• Add Unique Insight- I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis. The one thing I see that drives me crazy is pointless comments. Simply saying, “Good post,” or “I agree,” adds nothing to the conversation. Instead, you should make your comments stand out from the crowd by adding relevant, compelling information to the conversation. Unique, insightful comments capture the attention of the blogger and the other commentators. They spark interesting conversations, and they go a long way to building your authority online.
• Consistency Counts- The best way to get more results from your blog comments is to build relationships. You can do this by consistently commenting on the same blogs. If you’re a loyal commentator, you will establish a rapport with the author and his followers. Over time, they will begin to pay more attention to your thoughts. This will give you credibility in their eyes. Consistent, hard work always pays off.

Always remember, blogging is about building relationships with others interested in your niche. Use your social skills, and you’ll be just fine.

Web content is a much different animal than other types of writing.  Personally, I don’t understand how anyone can read an entire novel on an e-book reader.  Believe me, I’m a person who spends an enormous amount of time, but reading on a computer can be tiring on the eyes and increase people’s short attention span.  This isn’t a small thing.  The Atlantic even had an article recently, titled “Is Google Making us Stupid?” I mean, there have been days where I’ve spent so much time online clicking around between sites that when I get out in the real world, I actually have the instinct to click things so I can get them instantly – you mean I actually have to drive in this traffic?  Can’t I just click a link and end up somewhere else?

This short attention span disorder must factor into web content creation – I would say even before you craft keywords to put into that content.  When people come to a site they’re looking for well-crafted information.  Web content is a strange kind of artform: it needs keyword/search engine friendly without being overly obvious about it.  The idea, of course, is to sell products, but people will most likely to buy something from a site, or click on affiliate links, if they trust the information on the site.

Web Content Layout & Title Tags

“Trust” is pretty subjective, but there are some basic things every website owner must do.  Web content needs to be instantly informative.  The first two paragraphs are crucial.  In fact, I would recommended back-weighting your keyword phrases into the lower paragraphs of an article so the first two paragraphs are less awkward and get immediately to the point.  Web content needs to be in short, easy-to-read paragraphs (like this blog post).  It’s amazing that people still try to cram in a bunch of information in huge paragraph blocks, as if this gives the content more authority.  Actually, it just makes it more unreadable.

Web surfers also want the content to be relevant to the title tag.  Many web surfers look to the title of the article more than any other feature: more than meta description or the first sentence of content.  The title tag signifies that the article is going to cover exactly what the surfer is looking for – the major reason that a site should be populated with articles with a whole lotta title tags.

But if the article is only vaguely related to the title tag – and doesn’t get to the meat of the point within the first two paragraphs (if not the first two sentences) surfers are going to quickly retreat back to Google and look at something else.  You know that’s true because you’ve probably done it yourself.  If your content is not directly related to your title tags, your going to lose viewership and respect from people who might not come around again when they’re looking for information.

Other things that help make a site easy on the eyes:

• Bullet points

Web surfers will scan a site quickly if it has the information they need.  Bullet points are great for two reasons: they make the content look authoritative and they make it easy for surfers to find information quickly.  If people find what they’re looking for quickly, they could then move on within the site and see what it has to offer.  Another trick to bullet points: they don’t have to be grammatical like other content, so you could use the bullet points to add a keyphrase.  Then again, be careful: too obvious and it can make the content stand out as a keyword farm.

Calls to Action

The last balancing act in web content is calls to action.  It’s not enough to put links in content that links to other content on the site.  Many people (me included) read through many of these links, especially now that so many links are just embedded advertisements.  However, describing those links - and in the process describing why a site is an absolute authority on the topic – is a good way to inspire confidence and inspire readership.  Just look how this goes: Seo Hosting has the best SEO tools available online as well as informative SEO articles for beginning marketers and experienced SEO professionals. See how easy that was?

Don’t Forget About Forums: In the age of Facebook, it’s seems like internet marketers have gotten the idea that they are too cool for forums.  Although Web 2.0 style social networking can be a great way to promote your brand and website, forums are actually more popular than ever before.  As people spend more time on the Internet, they become more comfortable participating in activities such as forums.  The great thing about forums is that they attract people who are really passionate about a specific topic.  Therefore, if you invest some time and become an active member of a forum community, you can begin promoting yourself to the types of people that will go out and tell others about your brand and website.

Create a List: Sure, you may see internet marketing blogs complaining that Top Ten lists are overused, but outside of that extremely small percentage of people, the general population finds Top Ten (or any other number) lists to be very useful.  I mean, this is a Top Ten list and it obviously has your attention!

Drawings: People like visuals.  The old saying of a picture being worth a thousand words is especially true in relation to the Internet.  People spend a lot of time reading, and if you can communicate an idea to them through a drawing instead of 500 words, there’s a good chance that you will stand out in their minds.  The other great things about drawings is that people will add them to their own content and link back to you.  Remember, even if you’re not great at drawing, you can always hire someone that does have a knack for it.

Make it Free: People have always and will always like free stuff.  Therefore, if you can give away something that has some value, people will not only take advantage of it themselves, but they will tell their friends about it.  Keep in mind that “value” doesn’t have to be an explicit dollar amount; doing something as simple as compiling your best blog posts into an e-book and giving it away for free can be very successful.

Know Your Influencers: Every industry has influencers.  Even though some industries such as technology have more high profile influencers, even the most niche industry has at least a handful of influencers.  Since these are the people that can convince others to buy a product or avoid it at all costs, it makes sense that you would want them to be interested in your brand and website.  The best way to do this is by establishing a relationship with them.  Instead of spamming them with emails, take time to learn everything you can about them, and then use what you learn to find ways you can actually be helpful or useful to them.

Have Realistic Goals: Some people are actually successful at being viral, but because they have unrealistic expectations, they think that they fail.  Therefore, if you are going to launch a specific viral campaign for your brand or website, make sure that you set realistic goals, and if you meet these goals, it’s important to acknowledge that your campaign was a success.

Keep on Trying: Like most things in life, if you keep trying (and analyzing your failures and seeing what you can do to improve), you are eventually going to succeed.  You’re not going to hit a home run everytime, but if you learn from your mistakes and remain persistent, you will find yourself being successful more and more frequently.

Leverage Existing Relationships: While cold callling strangers isn’t going to help your latest viral marketing campaign take off, using existing relationships to establish some traction can be very effective.  If you know people that can help you, don’t be afraid to ask (just remember that you will need to return the favor later).

Humor: People enjoy laughing, and if they see something that they think is funny, chances are they will share it with their friends who have a similar sense of humor.  If you can make people laugh (or at least smile), you have already made your brand and website more viral than your competitors who are dry and dull.

Be Useful: Whether it’s a piece of content or a tool on your website, if you can help someone solve a problem or issue, they will tell other people with the same problem about your solution.  If you want to increase your viralness, find out what some of your target audience’s most common problems are, and then develop a solution that they can use to solve at least one of these problems.

If I had to name one problem that I have come across with almost every small business website I’ve worked with (or visited for that matter), it’s this: a lack of content.  When a small business makes the decision to finally get a website for themselves, it seems that they almost all follow the same path: they end up hiring a web design firm to create their site, and instead of getting a content rich website, they get a bloated website with little content but a lot of unnecessary graphics.

Although small business owners may think they need to spend a lot of money on how their website looks, quality content is a much smarter investment.  I’m not saying that it’s not important to have an attractive website, but let’s be honest: you are much better off with a clean and simple design for a content rich website than a flashy design for a website with three pages of content.

If you are a small business owner and the previous two paragraphs describe the situation you have found yourself in, don’t worry, it’s not the end of the world.  Even if you have a tight budget, it’s still possible to create very good content; it’s simply going to take an investment of time from you if you can’t hire someone else to do it for you.

So, now that I have your attention, you probably want some concrete methods for developing content for your website.  Here are three tips from my personal experience that you should get you started developing great content for your small business website:

Useful Tips: You’re reading this post because it contains tips that are useful to you and your small business.  Therefore, it’s not hard to imagine that people would be interested in reading tips that are relevant to their lives.  Regardless of what your small business is, you have customers and potential customers, and they will take time to read useful articles that give them practical tips that they can take and use.  If you’re having a hard time coming up with what kind of tips you should write about, a How To article is always a good place to start.

Outside of the Box Content: If you have read some of my previous posts (like 5 Ways Watching TV Can Help You Attract More Links), then you know that I like tying SEO and internet marketing posts into other topics.  Not only are these posts enjoyable to write, but they are also interesting to the people that read them.  For experienced SEOs and internet marketers, they provide a different approach to the subject.  For people who are new to SEO and internet marketing, they provide a perspective that can actually make these complicated and commonly misunderstood topics easier to comprehend.  Just as writing outside of the box content works for SEO and internet marketing, with a little creativity, you can think up outside of the box content for subjects that are relevant to your potential (and current) customers.

FAQs: I have actually discussed adding FAQs to your website in at least one previous post, but it is a topic that is worth discussing again.  I have had opportunities to look at analytics reports for many different small businesses, and one of the things that sticks out is the amount of time that visitors spend reading through FAQs.  By taking the time to create useful FAQs, you can significantly increase the confidence of your visitors and in turn convert more of your visitors into customers.  In addition to creating FAQs about your specific company, you can create FAQs that answer common questions you know your customers have.  Even if these more general FAQs don’t lead to instant conversions, visitors will remember that your website was useful and helpful to them, and chances are they will be back to visit again (and possibly make a purchase during one of their later visits).

1. Wrong Keywords- One reason your SEO efforts might be falling short is the keywords you’re targeting aren’t the right ones. Keyword selection is a difficult process that requires a deep knowledge of SEO. If you choose a keyword that is too popular, you’ll be unable to compete with the others targeting the same phrase. On the other hand, if you target a keyword too obscure, no one will ever search for it. The key is to find long tail keywords with little competition but decent search volume.
2. Infrequent Updates- Search engines have a passion for fresh content. They crave fresh content because it keeps their results relevant. For this reason, it’s crucial that you give the search engines the new content they desire. Updating your website regularly shows both the search engines and your website visitors that your company is active and worth their trust.
3. No Inbound Links- Inbound links are an important measure of a website’s worth. The most trusted websites have high quality, inbound links pointed to their content. If no one is linking to your site, you’ll have a difficult time convincing the search engines you should rank well for your keywords. Learn some basic link building techniques to build authority for your website.
4. Lack of Patience- We’re an instant gratification country. We want results, and we want them now. Unfortunately, that’s not always the way SEO works. SEO is a process that requires your long term commitment. Think of it as the snowball effect: the longer you maintain your SEO plan, the greater the results will be.
5. Boring Content- Dry, keyword stuffed content might be the leading cause of failed SEO strategies. Too many website owners get so focused on writing for the search engines that they forget about the humans who will be reading their website. The bottom line is it doesn’t matter how well you rank if your content doesn’t resonate with your target audience. Make sure your SEO writing is targeting the right audience, and your SEO efforts will start to really pay off.

My business is mainly in developing niche sites that are run using WordPress. I write content that targets very high paying keywords in Google AdWords. My content indeed is very well written, unique, useful, entertaining and informative. The goal in mind though is to monetize it using Google AdSense. Some content I write that targets certain keyword phrases need a little more boost than others. Most of my content targets longtail keywords. However, some do not and need additional love.

The 80/20 plan that I follow is very simple. I invest 20% of my time writing content and 80% of my time marketing it. Depending on the strength of competition of the keyword phrases I am targeting will dictate the level of depth I go into marketing each article or page I create. For me, Internet marketing is a primary method of promoting my content on the Internet. It combines two elements: search engine marketing and social network marketing.

Search engine marketing is really simple if you think about it. All that is required is a search engine optimized web site or blog and your ability to write content in a creative way that caters to both humans as well as search engines. In other words, in order for you to rank well for the keyword phrases you are targeting, you have to carefully write your material in a way that uses the keywords and related terms in your content a certain way and at a certain frequency. All in all though, it’s not difficult but it does take some time to master.

The tricky part is social network marketing. As mentioned above, there are times when I want to rank for more competitive keyword phrases. These terms fall outside from what I would consider being longtail. Long tail keyword marketing does not require backlinks, while targeting more primary keyword phrases do. That is where social network marketing kicks into gear.

Many people look at social network marketing in terms of scoring votes of your submitted content into these various networks. While voting does indeed play its role in the my big picture of social network marketing, it doesn’t take the role you may think it does. Many of these popular social networks NOFOLLOW their links. So even though the page that your submitted content appears on ranks well in the search engines, you dont’ get credit for the links.

What is the point towards getting your content submitted into social networks? Well, really the point and reason why I like my content listed in social netowrks is for the fact that if someone else likes what they read, they may in return write a post about it on their blog which will provide a direct search engine friendly backlink to my content and or home page.

Internet Marketing isn’t just limited to search engine marketing and social network marketing. You also have the element of email list marketing as well as instant messenger marketing. Email list marketing is great because you can send out direct email to your subscribers and inform them of the content you wrote. Depending on how close you are with your subscribers, you can possibly even ask your subscribers to link to your newly publsihed content. In doing so, you are establishing backlinks to your content.

The same is true for instant messenger marketing. If you have about 25 buddies in your instant messenger contacts and speak with them daily. You can easily ask them to check out your newly publsihed article or web page and ask if they wouldn’t mind providing you with a backlink to it.

No matter what you do, always remember the 80/20 Internet Marketing Plan. Once again, use 20% of your free time towards creating content and 80% of your free time marketing and promoting your content. If you do that, you’ll see super huge results.

What are some other ways that you can market and promote your content? If you have some ideas, feel free to share them below in the comments.

With the obvious demand for a better understanding of search engines, how to rank in them and how to market your content in them, here is a search engine checklist that I believe you’ll find helpful. It is a simple Yes/No checklist. The more questions that you can answer yes, the more you’re on your way to search engine traffic bliss! Drop a comment with your scores if you’d like.

Simple Search Engine Checklist:

1. Are you creating content that your readers are interested in?
2. Does your content contain focused keyword phrases?
3. Are you optimizing your pages with three to five keyword phrases?
4. Do most of your important keywords appear above the top fold?
5. Are your keywords hyperlinked?
6. Do your graphics on your post contain focused and relevant keywords?
7. Does your post title contain focused keywords?
8. Does your post URL contain focused keywords?
9. Can search engines and people easily find your content from the home page?
10. Do people link back to your home page and individual pages?
11. Are you using basic HTML coding (e.g. H1, h2, h3, Bold, Alt text, etc.)

If you can answer “Yes” to all these questions then you should have a healthy site for users as well as search engines. Feel free to drop a comment and also I’d love it if you’d share this post with your readers on your own site as it can do nothing but help.