Optimizing a Web Site`s SEO Ranking - Protecting Your Search Engine Rankings
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Protecting Your Search Engine Rankings
Search engine ranking is extremely important in online business and has caused a number of webmasters to use illegitimate methods to gain popularity. However, search engines have identified these techniques and such sites have been banned from the search engine index.
Sometimes, it happens that even the good websites get labeled as scams. Even after you apply all the legitimate methods of optimization, your website is still at risk of being identified as a scam. This can be avoided by taking the proper precautions.
Link building of course adds to the search engine ranking. Top ranking can be achieved by link popularity, but you need to be careful when choosing the sites you wish to link to. You can get a good website ranking when you link to quality websites. Due to increased optimization, some sites have been exclusively designed for enhancing link popularity. Such sites are recognized by the search engines as "bad neighborhoods" and some penalties are imposed. Even though you won’t be penalized when a bad neighborhood links to you, you’ll have to pay a penalty when people see the bad link and stop visiting your site. Keep checking the active links on your website to make sure there are no links to bad neighborhoods.
So how do you recognize that a particular website is a bad neighborhood? Google has a solution. You can download the Google toolbar. When you open a particular web page, the Google toolbar shows the page rank of that website on a sliding green scale. When the scale is completely grey, the site is likely to be penalized. Hence, it is best to avoid linking to such sites.
When light green is shown on the scale, the site isn’t penalized. You can link to such sites, but keep checking them regularly to make sure they are not penalized. When the scale shows green, the site is of good quality and you can link to it.
Another illegal way webmasters try to fool search engines is by placing hidden text. The keywords are placed in such a way that they are not visible to the human eye. That is often achieved by keeping the color of the text the same as the background. This trick is also identified by spiderbots and such sites are penalized.
Also, many good sites are penalized by mistake. Suppose the text color and background color is found to be same. The site is penalized even if the text is highlighted with some other color. The best way to avoid being penalized is to keep the text color and background color different.
Webmasters also apply the method of keyword stuffing to boost the site ranking. To avoid such artificial boosting, search engines have set a limit to keyword density. If the density is higher than the limit, the site is penalized. Therefore, never overuse the keywords in your site.
Another way some webmasters deceive the search engines is by cloaking. Here the spider is fed a page that can boost the website ranking, while the visitor is directed to some other site. Search engines have become intelligent enough to identify such tricks. A problem arises when some sites, which are cloaked for valid reasons, are being penalized. Keep yourself away from cloaking or else your website may lose popularity.
Just as you work to build traffic and increase the ranking, you also need to work to maintain your website. Only then can you soar high in online business.
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