Every business wants to rank at the top of the search results on Google, Bing and Yahoo! In order to improve a website's rank within the search engine results pages (SERPs), many website owners will hire a search engine optimization (SEO) speciliast. Search engine optimization is a term used to describe a series of techniques used to improve a website's rank on the SERPs for particular chosen "keywords".
While SEO is a good thing and can really help a website obtain great rankings, there are literally thousands of "seo experts" that do nothing more than use "black hat" seo techniques to try and game the system. For example, everyone knows that having good keywords within the body of your content can help your website show up in searches for those keywords. Some shoddy seo firms will try to trick the search engines by over using keywords in an attempt to make the page seem more relevant.
Some even go so far as to repeat certain keywords dozens of times at the bottom of a page, and then change the font color so it matches the background color of the website. So, if you have white text on a white background, humans won't see the over used keywords, but the search engine robots do (since they only read code and don't see in color). This is called "keyword stuffing" or "spamdexing", and it can get your website booted off the search engines.
Another important factor in getting good search engine rankings is to have a lot of legitimate incoming links TO YOUR SITE (i.e., links from other websites TO your website). The idea is, if more people link to your website, it must be important. Google and the major search engines place a high importance on the number of incoming links your website has. And, naturally, this is another area of abuse.
Many seo firms will try, once again, to game the system by creating hundreds of incoming links to your website (for a fee of course). They often link YOUR website to all of their other client's websites, and conversely link their other client's websites to YOUR website. It's like a giant link orgy. The search engines call that a "link farm", because the links have only one purpose - to game the system and trick the search engines. DON'T DO IT!
JC Penny recently got in big trouble with Google for having a bunch of these bogus incoming links. Allegedly the company hired a seo firm that created a bunch of artificial websites and then linked them all to JC Penney's main website. Google has algorithms that check for this kind of suspicious activity, and JC Penny got caught. In fact, Google has an entire Web Spam Team devoted to detecting search-result spam and then altering their algorithms to protect against it.
Even unscrupulous website design firms have utilized these deceptive tactics (i.e., linking many of their client's websites to each other in order to create bogus incoming links). If you're a dentist, for example, it's OK to link to another dentist's website (perhaps you refer patients to each other). But would it make sense for you to trade links with dozens of dentists? Probably not. Especially if dozens of dentists all linked to each other in a giant circle (you see how that would look very suspicious?).
Is your website part of a link farm? How do you know what incoming links your website has? There's an easy way to find out. Go to any major search engine and type the following (substituting your domain name for YOURDOMAIN.COM) - link:www.YOURDOMAIN.COM
This will show you how many incoming links your site has according to that search engine. You may have links from sites you don't even know, and that's usually fine. Most incoming links are a good thing. But if you see a bunch of links from other websites that your designer created, then you're treading on thin ice!
Be careful who you choose to do your seo. Your first tip off to whether a seo firm is a scammer, is in the method they use to contact you. Did they email you "spam"? Did they use a contact form on your website (reserved for current and prospective patients) to get their message into your inbox? Do they promise to get you on the top of the search engines, or get you lots of incoming links? If so, run from them! Even Google warns about firms that make such promises. Nobody can guarantee top placement!
Good quality SEO, done by a reputable firm that understands your business and your industry, is a good thing and can dramatically boost your site's ranking in the search results. Legitimate seo experts will focus on your website content, landing page quality, and generating relevant (and legitimate) incoming links. ProSites offers advanced seo services that include only "white hat", legitimate seo techniques that focus on creating a better visitor experience - and that's what the search engines love and encourage.
Go with the wrong firm, like JC Penny, and your site can get demoted in the search results, or possibly banned entirely.
For more information about dental website design or search engine optimization visit http://www.prosites.com/ or call (888) 932-3644.
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