The goal of any business’ website is to increase leads and conversions, in order to be successful the site needs to be on the top pages of the major Search engines and therefore needs to be both viewer and search-engine friendly. Redesigning your website can be an effective way of repositioning your brand, or changing public perceptions of your company.
However, redesigning a site without keeping in mind the search engine aspect can cause a negative impact on your SE results. It is therefore imperative to include your optimization specialists in the initial discussions about the redesign so that the changes that come about in the redesign do not cause your site to lose any of it’s existing “equity” .

As the new site is designed, the site architecture, content, internal links, navigation and meta data should be taken into consideration. The impact of external links should be considered as well so redirects that are both user and search engine friendly can be planned. It is important to keep the site content rich and design it in a way that the SE spidrers can crawl important information about the business. A site redesign or change in content management system may need a migration plan to ensure a smooth transition of existing categories, link URLs and anchor text. If the site changes URLs, 301 redirects must be put in place. Making sure that the redesigned site has an updated HTML and XML site map can help search engines find and crawl new content.

When there are major changes to a web site’s design, content and URL structure, there will be some effect on the search engine visibility of a site, However, if the fundamental elements are taken care of, one can greatly minimize any negative effects and have an appealing new site that stays on the first page of the search engines.

What does SERP mean?

The search engine results pages, usually referred to as SERPs, are the listed web pages that are returned when a user types a query in the search engines.

What are “Organic” SEO Results?

When a user types in a query, a page is returned with results that include paid or sponsored results and the non-sponsored or “Organic” results which are the unpaid, algorithm-driven results of any particular search engine.
First page Organic Results are more challenging to achieve as your website needs to fulfil a number of criteria set in place by the Search Engine in order . It requires a consistent efforts to keep your site one step ahead of competition by using the best White Hat SEO techniques so that you get a high placement on the Organic results and stay there for a long time.
Research has shown that viewers tend to trust “Organic ” results more than Paid results and that the higher you are on the list , the better the chances are that your site will generate leads for your business.

Continuing with the series on basic SEO questions, one question that we optimizers frequently hear is “What is Black Hat SEO?”

There is no generally accepted definition for black hat SEO. The answers depend on who you are speaking to, something considered fair by one webmaster maybe off-limits to another. Generally, efforts to manipulate Search Engines to gain quick results are considered as Black Hat SEO.

Besides the principles that web companies and marketing personnel apply to their work, guidelines can also vary based on the industry and sometimes the Search Engines too.
Search engine operators, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo, have published guidelines about techniques they consider to be Black Hat and in violation of their policies.

There are no shortcuts in SEO. It is a long-term process that requires perseverance and diligence. Black hat techniques may look tempting and easy and may give short-term results but they are detrimental in the long run. They can cause your site to get banned by the SEs which is every webmaster’s worst nightmare..

Here are some common BlackHat SEO techniques to be aware of :

Cloaking a website by displaying one website to visitors and other one to Google’s spiders. The most common way to do this is using the “iframe” redirect code.

Using Hidden Text or “white” text written on a white background to stuff keywords within webpages.

Creating Doorway pages which involves having a website optimized for one set of keywords, then redirecting its traffic to another website once it is indexed.

Using Automated Submission/Link Building Software that submits your site to hundreds of directories that probably have no relevance to your site. This is also known as Link Farming.

Keyword Stuffing or adding a large number of keywords in the meta-tags.

Buying Paid Links indiscriminately to try and build inbound links.

In the pursuit of obtaining first page results on the Search Engines, optimizers employ a number of on and off page strategies such as adding custom metatags, calls-to-action, link-buildiing, blogs, article submission, e-PRs and so on . If you look closely at these strategies, you realize that the one element that lies at the core is : Great Content.

One way to add fresh content is through Page additions, which can supplement the existing content and help to gradulaly build the site into an authority.

The one important thing to remember is that when it comes to pages what matters is not so much sheer quantity but the quality and the consistency of the pages.
Just having a large number of pages will not be beneficial for SEO, those pages need to be original with relevant content and should be well linked within the site.

While scheduling page adds we should ask ourselves if the new content is relevant to existing topics, if will it add to the overall value of the site, and if the content is simple to understand but thorough in its information.

Adding new pages gives optimizers the opportunity to target keywords and phrases and improve linking. It’s very important to ensure that the pages being being added have original content and are in no way duplicates .

Great Content is the most crucial factor that can affect website rankings. Online visitors usually turn to search engines for up-to-date information. Google and other search engines are always judging sites based on the kind online experience to their users. Especially with the introduction of Google Caffeine, having fresh, relevant content has become almost mandatory.

Creating high quality, custom content and posting it in different forms at a a pace which will keep attracting the interest of search engine crawlers is a sure-fire way to forge your way to the top of the search engine rankings.

The URL you choose for your business’ web site can play a major factor in the long-term success of your online marketing campaigns, and of your business. I want to outline in the next few paragraphs some of the do’s and don’ts for choosing a URL that will work for, not against you. (more…)