SEO Frequently Asked Questions - 17 Through 25

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17. How important are inbound links?
18. How can I tell if my site has been banned?
19. What is "Cloaking"?
20. Does PageRank' effect my rankings in Google?
21. What are "doorway pages" and should I use them?
22. What is unethical SEO?
23. I use framesets, is that OK?
24. Can I use JavaScript on my website?
25. Is it OK to use Flash?

How important are inbound links?
Over the past 2 years or so, search engines have placed a lot of importance on inbound links. Inbound links are a good way to judge the popularity of a website i.e. the more inbound links a website has, the more important it is considered to be. Many people use words that describe a website in order to link to it, so the words used to the link have become very important. Ideally, all of the inbound links to your website should use your target keywords as the link text.

How can I tell if my site has been banned?
There is no real way to tell if your site has been banned from a search engine. If your site was listed and then suddenly disappears, it might be reasonable to assume the site was banned. Normally only sites that engage in some kind of spamming or poor practices get banned. For example, if you have used hidden text, URL cloaking, or been part of a link farm, then it is possible your site would have been banned. There is not usually a way to get re-indexed once a site is banned.

What is "Cloaking"?
Some sites have decided to cheat the search engines and deliver optimized content to the search spiders yet deliver different content to regular users. This is usually done when the site wants to use frames, java, flash or some other such media that would be difficult for search engines to read. The page is said to be "Cloaked" whenever this optimized content is delivered to search engines.

Does PageRank' effect my rankings in Google?
In short, yes PageRank does effect how your website ranks in Google. The PageRank' system was designed to be yet another factor in how pages should ranks, it is not the only thing that matters however. When you do a search at Google, the highest PR websites are not always placed at the top. Sometimes a page with a lower PR can outrank a higher PR website if it is better optimized for the search terms.

What are "doorway pages" and should I use them?
Doorway pages are nothing more then pages full of spam text which are supposed to be optimized for search engines. Some times there are hundreds of doorway pages hosted on external servers, at different domains etc.. These doorway pages have links to the main websites. The theory is that if these doorway pages rank highly in search engines and visitors use them, they will eventually be taken to the main websites.

What is unethical SEO?
Unethical SEO is a term that is used to describe search engine optimizers, or the optimization of a website which uses any form of spamming or tricks in order to falsely improve rankings. For example, the use of hidden text or doorway pages as mentioned above would be considered unethical search engine optimization.

I use framesets, is that OK?
Frames are extremely difficult to crawl for some search engines. There are a few things which you can do in order to help the crawling of frames. Be sure that you use all of the correct meta tags and that you have a well optimized title tag on the page. Use the <noframes> tag and place a decent level of text content in there, along with links to other pages on your website. This will help engines that read the <noframes> tag to scan your website.

Can I use JavaScript on my website?
Given that JavaScript is a somewhat dynamic programming language i.e. it can require human interaction, or it can cause things to change, it is not readable by most of the search engines. Although it is a somewhat simple language, it has proven too difficult to parse. Any text or link in JavaScript may be missed by search engines. Only use JavaScript where it is urgently required.

Is it OK to use Flash?
As with JavaScript, it is too difficult to parse. Some sites use Flash introductions with a skip button. Page with flash intros greatly reduce their rankings and are encouraged to stop using intros. Sites that use Flash for navigations and interaction etc.. are encouraged to use HTML navigation instead and HTML text where possible.

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