There are many Black Hat techniques that people use to try and influence Googles ranking of their sites, the simple thing to remember is that THEY DO NOT help your rankings, are simply a waste of your time and sooner or later will lead to a Google ban for your site. Sure there are sites that use these techniques and are getting away with it but they will eventually get penalised as Google always manages to find them eventually.
As I said please avoid using these techniques :
Alt Image Tag Stuffing
This is a way that webmasters try to force fill keywords into their website, thus the search engines can see these keywords and their site visitors see no difference at all to layout and an excessive use of certain words.
What happens is that webmasters insert graphics that relate to their subject and then add an alt image tag to it. The search engines see this but a visitor will only see it if they hover over the graphic and a pop up will appear.
What you tend to find is that mis-informed webmasters add multiple instances of the keywords that they are targetting with a view to increasing key word density when the search bots visit the page.
The real purpose of an alt image tag is if the web site graphic doesnt load then the text will appear instead of the graphic, this is particularly important if a visually impaired visitor gets to your site.
My advice would be to keep it simple, use your keyword once and use the tags to present an accurate description of the graphic.
Hidden Text
Hidden Text is simply text that visitors to your site cannot see when they visit your webpage(s). Its used for the same reasons as described in the alt tag example. All that is involved is the webmaster adds the text (usually keyword spam) to the page in the same colour as the background and as such it becomes invisible to the human eye but gets picked up by the search engine bots.
Meta Tag Stuffing
Meta Tags are vital parts of the make up of a web page but again abusing them with a view to influencing the search engine bots can cause you problems. Basically the keyword tag is loaded with hundreds, even thousands, of the exact same keyword into the tag. For example, the tagetted keyword is DVD and the meta tag looks like:
< META NAME = KEYWORDS CONTENT=DVD, DVDS, DVD, DVDS DVDS DVD SELLER, DVD, DVDS DVD, DVD, DVD, DVDS, DVD, DVDS DVDS DVD SELLER, DVD, DVDS DVD, DVD, DVD, DVDS, DVD, DVDS DVDS DVD SELLER, DVD, DVDS DVD, DVD, DVD, DVDS, DVD, DVDS DVDS DVD SELLER, DVD, DVDS DVD, DVD >
The important thing to remember is that Google does not use this tag to rank your page due to wide scale abuse so why bother, it is also a pretty rediculous thing to do.
Title Tag Stuffing
The same principle as above but using the title tag, use your keyword once in the title and make it an accurate description of the page and its content, that is sufficient.
If you have to resort to black hat techniques then the set up of your site is wrong and they will eventually lead to the site being panalised. Its a pure waste of effort, they dont work and could kill your site.
Mike - Webmaster and eBay Power Seller at
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Ive had several prospects and clients say to me I want my web site to come up on top in search engines. And some have been contacted by an SEO company asking for lots of money and claiming that they can guarantee top search engine results, which in many cases is just false promises. There is no quick and easy way to make a web site display in the top 10 on search engines. Getting a web site to come up high in search engines naturally can take time and effort. When I say naturally, I mean without paying to be a sponsored link. The content of the web site has to be relevant. By this, I mean the web site content should be very descriptive, and ideally unique, about your business, product or service. This way search engines can rank your site according to this detailed, descriptive and relevant content.Some reasons that a web site will rank high:
* Content is relevant to the company or business web site.
* Keyword and keyword phrases are used in important tags such as title, description Meta tag and Header tags.
* Site has been updated with new content regularly.
* Other related businesses web sites have links to your site.
The title of each page needs to be descriptive of the page and not just the web site. So keywords and the site or business name should be built into the title of each page. Avoid using any word more than three times in the title tag.
Make Meta tags keyword-focused. Meta tags are tags in the HTML web page that describe certain things about the page such as the page description, list of keywords, page author, etc. The tags that are important here are the keywords and description Meta tags.
For images on the site, alternate text should be set to keywords as well. Alternate text is the text displayed before an image is completely downloaded and displayed. Alternate text will be displayed in place of the image for text only browsers and if youve disabled the show pictures option in your browser settings. A title can also be set for an image, and by hovering your mouse over an image; the title text will be displayed in most browsers.
Header tags should be used in your web pages, where possible. Search engines look for the h1-h6 Header tags as important indicators for what the text of the document will contain.
Here is an example of building keywords into your hierarchical web page to enhance search engine results.
of building keywords into your hierarchical web page to enhance search engine results.
Prominent tags used are title, description Meta tags, keyword Meta tags and h1 and h2 header tags. Keyword phrases relavent to the business of the web site should exist in the content of the web page as well is in these important HTML tags. Search engines analyze the text for relevant keywords, among other things, and rank the page accordingly. Additional keywords can be used throughout the document. Many experts recommend not using any keyword in excess of 5% of the total text of the page. Doing so may actually lower your ranking.
A site map can help your search engine ranking as well as help your web site visitors find what theyre looking for. For more information on this topic, and other search engine optimization topics, visit google.com.
These are some basic techniques used to achieve higher visibility in search engines, and should help you attain higher results if they are used along with efficient, valid HTML markup. Contact us if youd like more information on how we can help you achieve high web site visibility.
Norm Euker of provides high quality web design, Internet and email marketing to small businesses.