FAQ - About Search Engine Optimization and Online Marketing

How does a search engine rank pages?

Search engines use web crawlers, programs which automatically browse the World Wide Web.  When you search, the programs sort through millions of web pages to find relevant pages.  The search engine uses an algorithm, a set of rules about frequency of keywords in a web page, links that point to a particular web page, content and meta tags.  Every search engine will have its own algorithm.

What is Pay-Per-Click (PPC)?

PPC is a marketing tool, which allows advertisers to bid on keywords which they think their target market will search for, when looking for their particular product or service.  When a user searches for that keyword, their advertisement will appear as a sponsored link, next to or above the natural search results.

FAQ - About Black Hat Search Engine Optimization (or what not to do)

What is cloaking?

When the content presented to a web crawler is different to that presented to other users.  When the page recognises that the user is a web crawler, it delivers a version of the page that contains content not visible to other users.  This is to trick search engines into listing a page in its results, when it might not otherwise have appeared.

What are hidden links?

These are invisible (or at least very small) links from one web page to another.  They can be detected by search engines and fool the search engines into giving the linked page a higher ranking.

What is keyword stuffing?

This is a technique used to maximize search engine ranking, by loading a webpage with keywords in meta tags or in content.  Some search engines no longer rely on meta tags, because of keyword stuffing, and Google’s search algorithm gives a lower ranking to sites which repeats keywords too often.

What are link farms?

A link farm is a group of web pages which are all linked to each other.  This technique takes advantage of the fact that some search algorithms will use link popularity when ranking search results.

What is hidden text?

This is text which is not visible to a user.  Text on a web page can be hidden by choosing the same font and background colours.  This can be used to improve search ranking, by stuffing a site with keywords which are invisible to visitors but recognized by search engines.