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Since the dawn of SEO, website owners have been using the trick of hiding text on their pages to fool the search engines. By making the text the same colour as the background, or concealing it through the use of CSS, website owners can fill their pages with as many keywords as they wish without hindering the look, or the readability, of their websites.

But does it work? Can you actually get away with hiding text on your website and achieve decent Google rankings as a result?

Well, if it didnt work, people wouldnt still do it. We see countless websites that have had text concealed within their pages, stuffed with keywords (and often placed with h1 tags) for the purposes of fooling Google and, quite, often those websites actually rank for the keywords in question. Theyre merrily lording it high up in Google for keywords theyve spammed up their pages for, flying in the face of good quality, ethical, SEO.

So if it works, wheres the harm?

This is the problem while using hidden text may well work (and often does) it is against Googles terms of service and, as such, can get a website into a lot of trouble. Many smaller websites, particularly those optimising for geographical keywords, may well get away with it for a long time but it is by no means a long term strategy, nor is it a platform on which to build a successful website.

Its like cheating on your tax return. You may get away with it, you may find years go by without you ever getting caught, but do you really want to run that risk? If you do get investigated (by the taxman or by Google) youll find yourself in a great big vat of hot water, one which youll most likely drown. While the taxman will demand money, plus interest, Google will make no such demands it will simply kick your website into touch, banish it from the index and reduce your Google traffic from a flowing river, to a trickling tap.

In order to placate Google you would have to remove the offending spam, and then request re-inclusion which may or may not be forthcoming. Once you have done this of course, even if you do get put back into the index by Google, it wont be near the top where you had previously featured as a result of the hidden keywords it will be wherever Google genuinely feels you belong; probably quite far down.

You will then need to start from scratch with search engine optimisation, done ethically, to show Google what your website is about. This will take time but, if your business has grown used to the level of traffic and conversions your website has been enjoying, can you afford to wait?

The best option of course is not conceal text on your website at all (and not cheat on your taxes) because being found out will ruin anything you have built up. Do it properly from day one, and be rock solid in terms of SEO.

SEO google, keywords, pages, search engine

Brand identity via SEO

This is a guest post by Susan Smith

Seen sniffer dogs burrowing through the scene of crime in the umpteen police dramas, how their nose never lets them down and the scent trail becomes a mental map that leads them to the source/target? Well, what if the dogs cant catch a scent to follow? A similar result will befall your website if it is not search engine friendly invisibility.

I am sure you have heard of Search Engine Optimization or SEO as its more popularly known. Its one of those small business ideas that create a huge impact by make your website/blog a part of every search engines most searched list. Its no Rocket Science, and is ideal for small business owners.

Dont believe me? Read on

Keenly pursue Keywords

I am sure you have seen the hooks that cranes use to lift goods with. Keywords have a similar function. Identify those terms, phrases or keywords that your target customers are likely to search for and place them strategically in your website/blog content. A couple of pointers:

Go for specific keywords that will get your desired clients to visit you. For e.g. promotional products is a widely searched keyword, but many companies besides you also know that and will be using it on their websites. Beat competition and ensure that a relevant and exclusive clientele visits your website by incorporating specific keywords like promotional products Made in USA or eco-friendly promotional products.

Maintaining keyword density is important too. Dont flood your content with keywords as that may impact the quality of your content. Your keywords may bring your potential clients to you but badly-written, uninformative or irrelevant content will shoo them away.

You dont need to be a techie to do this

Websites like Google Adwords, KeywordDiscovery.com, wordtracker.com etc. can help you research relevant keywords and also show you the number of hits they generate locally and globally. Most of these are free resources and hence perfect for small business owners who have a tight budget.

Use keywords in the Header and Titles

Try to place your keywords in the heading. Keywords displayed prominently in the topmost space of your website will be picked up instantly by search engines as they hunt for relevant pages.

HTML

Flash may bring in the flashy element and PDF may ooze professional charm

But whom would you show all of these to cos the search engines wont find you!

Code your content in HTML as most search engines cant find the text on websites that are Flash enabled or have PDF documents.

Small business ideas are about smartness rather than style. Befriend search engines using simple SEO techniques and instantly achieve brand identity.

Image: svilen001

SEO keywords, promotional products, small business, small business owners

This post is reprinted from the High Rankings Advisor Newsletter. Subscribe to the weekly High Rankings Advisor newsletter for regular search engine advice from the experts.

I was speaking with a client the other day who commented on my home page, which talks about my tried-and-true SEO process. Has your process changed much over time? the client asked.

It bothers me no end when I go to search marketing conferences to find perhaps 3 sessions that focus on SEO fundamentals, while 100 others focus on the superfluous SEO techniques du jour that may or may not bring more targeted visitors to your website. Dont get me wrong those more advanced sessions can provide awesome nuggets of information for those who already have their fundamentals in place. Yet sitting in on site clinic review sessions often reveals that most of the attendees websites have a long way to go with even the most basic SEO strategies.

With this in mind, todays article focuses on your first line of SEO defense keyword research. Optimizing for the wrong keywords either those that are not truly relevant to what your business offers or those that arent being used by searchers will have the dire consequence of making you think that SEO is mythical marketing magic that doesnt work.

To make it easier for you to follow, Ive broken down my keyword research process into the following 7 steps:

1. Brainstorm

2. Categorize

3. Research

4. Compile

5. Winnow

6. Determine Competitiveness

7. Choose

Brainstorm Keyword Phrases

Think about the various ways in which someone seeking your websites product, service or information might type into Google. What phrases would they use if they were looking to buy what you offer? Jot down as many of these as you can think of. Ideally, youll want to look at every page of your website, because they usually have different focuses.

While your own ideas are important regarding what phrases people might use, you should also ask others to do the same thing. Find colleagues, family, friends and anyone else who might help. If you can run a small focus group consisting of people in your target market thats all the better!

Categorize Your Keywords

Using your brainstormed keywords, start to separate them into categories. I like to use an Excel spreadsheet with multiple worksheets for this. So, for instance, if you sell consumer electronics, youd have multiple categories such as televisions, radios, computers, with specific keyword phrases listed under each category. For something as broad as this, youd likely have multiple subcategories as well, such as plasma TVs, large-screen TVs, etc.

Research Your Phrases

Head to Googles keyword suggestion tool and paste in your brainstormed keyword phrases, one category at a time. Using our consumer electronics example, you might plug in your brainstormed plasma TV keywords to start. Note: Be sure youre logged into your Google account when using the tool or it wont provide you with all the relevant keywords available.

After you submit your first set of brainstormed keywords through the tool, change the match preference from broad match to exact match or your data will essentially be useless. (Youll see the keywords in square brackets if youve set it up correctly for exact match.) Take a quick look at the phrases that the tool spits out to make sure theyre fairly relevant, and if so, export them to a comma-separated values file (.csv).

Repeat this process for each of your categories and subcategories.

Compile Your Keyword Lists

Open each of your saved .csv files full of researched keywords, and paste them into the appropriate Excel worksheet, according to the category or subcategory in which they belong. At this point, you shouldnt be too concerned with what the keyword phrases are or any of the numbers associated with them you just want to compile your lists for use later. Having them all in one Excel workbook will make things a lot easier as you continue with the keyword research process.

Winnow Out Irrelevant Phrases

While Googles keyword research tool gives you tons of relevant and related keywords to the brainstormed ones you originally entered, it also adds a lot of unrelated junk phrases. Nows the time to remove them. Theres no easy way other than using your own brain to determine whats related and whats not. You can use Excels sorting and filtering tools, however, to search for specific words that you see a lot which you know are unrelated, and then remove them in one fell swoop. In the end, you should be left with lots of relevant keyword phrases for every category and subcategory of your website.

Determine the Competitiveness

The idea here is to learn which keyword phrases are within your reach. This simply means that they are phrases people use at Google, but many of your competitors may not have thought to optimize for them yet. Unfortunately, determining keyword competitiveness has proven to be one of the trickiest aspects of the keyword research process. Its become even more difficult over the past year because Google doesnt seem to want us to be able to do this easily. While their keyword research tool has a column for competition, its based on paid search, not natural search, and therefore I find it to be not very helpful in deciding the true competitiveness of any keyword phrase.

Using my method, I try to figure out how many web pages are using the keyword phrases in their title tag. My reasoning is: Because title tags are given so much weight by Google, any page that is using the phrase in their title tag is at least rudimentarily optimized for the phrase, and is therefore one of those that youre competing against.

To do this, you can go to Google and type into the search box:

Allintitle: your keyword phrase here

and see how many pages used the phrase in their title tags. One problem: While this works if you use it sparingly, as soon as you start doing a few allintitle searches in a row, our lovely friend Google will block you from continuing. (Have I told you lately how much Google dislikes SEOs?)

The only workaround Ive found so far is to use Googles Advanced Search page and search from there. Its time consuming, no doubt, but the information can be valuable. Due to the difficulties with this process, however, these days I save it for only those keyword phrases that I feel are highly relevant to the website Im optimizing.

You may ask, What number of pages using the phrase in their title tag is a good or bad amount? All I can tell you is it depends. Youll have to use your own judgment here based on your skills as an SEO and the market that youre competing in, as well as your overall marketing budget.

Choose the Phrases for Which You Will Optimize

When trying to decide which keyword phrases to optimize your pages for, keep in mind that its not an exact science. The main criterion should always be relevancy. Theres no sense in optimizing for keyword phrases that are too general and untargeted that also have millions of other pages already targeting them. Youll simply be wasting precious time that you could spend optimizing for the keyword phrases that completely and accurately describe what your site has to offer.

If a phrase is highly relevant to what you offer on your site, you should choose it, regardless of how many other pages are also using it. Just remember that if millions of other sites are optimized for your exact keywords, youre going to have your work cut out for you. In which case, you will have to figure out why Google should show your page rather than your competitors pages, and make it so. If youre going to be throwing lots of marketing dollars at your website, you can likely shoot for more competitive keywords than if youre not doing any other marketing besides SEO.

Once youve completed all the keyword research steps above, you should end up with categorized lists of keyword phrases that you can then use to optimize each page of your website. Your next step will be to make a map of your site and choose 3 to 5 phrases that relate to each page, then work them in accordingly, based on sound SEO principles.

I hope this information provides you with a good start for creating your own tried-and-true SEO process!

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SEO keyword phrases, keyword research, keywords, page