Guerilla what are some of the 'tricks' you use?

My view on the tricks is that yes there will always be some who will be able to manipulate the alogrithm, but the search engines will always be looking to combat those tricks. What works now won't necessarily work a year from now. At that point the 'trickster' has to go out and find a new bag of tricks and start all over again.

Those who practice seo without using tricks won't be as affected by algorithm changes and generally won't find their site dropping from the top after algo changes. There are also many other benefits to practicing seo without the tricks. A lack of tricks tends to make for a better site overall keeping visitors on the site longer and converting them better.

Now the more I know about seo and see what does and doesn't work the easier it is for me to write optimized pages, the easier it is to find links for my site, the easier it is to build a spiderable site. Each site I do I can also get to better ranking quicker having worked out some things with previous sites. I don't necessarily consider that tricks. I just think it's a lot of learning and experience.

What do you consider tricks? And would you care to share any of them?

The reason i made that post is because the original post made it sound like there was nothing you could do apart from sit back and wait for you site to get ranked.

yahoo and msn are very easy to trick. A determined person can use a variety of link trading methods to gain a high ranking on an extremely competed keyword in a very short period of time. The trick comes in how you organise your links directory in relation to your site and the methods you use to swap the links. These are basically techniques that I have naturally developed after doing the same thing everyday over a period of years using a lot of trial and error. Also how you structure your text on your page makes a huge difference over these search engines.

Google's latest algorythm is by far the hardest to trick. It basically likes old links, one way links, page title and the page text. I've heard people banging on about relevant links in google and the whole authority site scenario but while seeing some examples through my own research, my own experiements with that method have not been very fruitful. By far the best way ive found is to get a lot of websites with different class C ip addresses and use them to hide your reciprocal linking. I basicaly have several tiers of sites that harvest thousand of links and im very careful not to interlink them, i then point these sites at sites external to my network which i want to optimise and watch these sites shoot up in the search engines. I know this is not the safest method of optimisation and I am workinging on a different method but it is very labour intensive and I am a few months off of perfecting it. The fact of the matter is that google are still a long way off detecting methods like this and if they do start filtering this way then they will more than likely kill the listings of a lot of legitamate sites.

I wouldnt recommend that anyone new to optimising start to work out ways to trick the search engines. I have had a lot of sites banned and penalised testing out how they work and I know how to structure things so that my main sites are safe from getting banned.

I am no where as advanced im my techniques as some of the search engine spammers that i have had the fortune to discuss theories with but my methods do go beyond the standard "make a good website and everything else will sort itself out".

Another "trick" is putting you link in your signature of your forum posts. Its not one that i do myself as it is overly labour intensive and i can generate the same results in a fraction of the time with other methods. One example of this is christhirst has a link like "people counting system" and if you do a back link search the only registered BL are from a few minor directories and thousands of forum posts and he has gained good rankings from that in msn and yahoo. In fact look at chris hirsts profile and you will se that he has never started a thread, he is also on nearly every forum i visit. It appears his "trick" is to spam signature links and it looks like it is working for him.

In all honesty though optimising is becoming more and more labour intensive with every update. Viral marketing and providing free services on your site is now becoming standard in my optimising campaigns as they give a greater long term stabillity in the search engines but you need the initial ranking boost so that people get to know about your services.

Guerilla that's some good info. Maybe not the best approach for those new to seo like you mentioned, but some interesting stuff. It's funny, but often when I first see a post by you I think we're going to be on completely opposite sides of the fence, but then as we get talking more I think we both come a little closer to the middle. From other posts it's always been obvious to me that you know what you're doing and you've been not only trying these types of things, but measuring the results.

One of the things I've seen others state often is that there really is no such thing as 'black hat' and 'white hat' seo and that much of seo is all about risk and how much you are willing to risk in order to see your sites at the top of the engines. I think you're more willing to take those risks than I am, though I might dabble from time to time. I think as long as SEOs are upfront with clients about the risks and then let the client decide they haven't done anything wrong.

One thing you mentioned is that you can achieve high ranking for a short duration of time. For some sites this is probably all they want. I'm usually trying to achieve longer term results and prefer to ensure longer duration in rank even if it takes a longer time to get to that rank. Most of my clients and myself for that matter are small businesses which probably couldn't even handle the traffic and calls from an immediate #1 rank on an extremely competitive keyword.

Much of my work on my own site is focused on results that I'm not really expecting for a year or so down the line. I do have strategies in place to build traffic now though since I do want traffic now. My main goal is to increase my traffic every month and in that I've been successful. I've been seeing traffic increase anywhere from 25% to 50% from the previous month each and every month. That amount of traffic allows me to grow my business in a manageable way which was one of the original goals for my business.

I agree too that all your tricks above will work at the moment though I'm not sure they always will. I tend to focus on where I think search engines are heading as opposed to where they are at the moment given how fast they can change. One algorithm update could wipe out a lot of work when attempting to go after a quick tactic though I think some will always be hard to detect and there will always be tricks you can apply no matter what the algorithm. The tricks will just be different every couple of years, but they will always exist.

Though my approach may take longer I think it also has benefits beyond seo. I think my approach will work well with converting visitors to customers. I see conversions as more important than general traffic. I've generally seen people staying on my site longer each month as well.

I'm not sure that the idea of forum signatures is really difficult to implement. Yes there is a lot of time invested in making posts, but it only takes a minute or so to add the link and then you just post the same way you were going to post anyway. I actually don't think they have a great affect on seo though. I think with sitewide links the first few will carry some weight and the rest will quickly become weightless even if they show up a lot in checks on backlinks. I'm talking more about Google than Yahoo and MSN. The latter two probably do count sitewide links more at the moment.

I agree with the different class C blocks of ip's though I don't try to hide reciprical linking. I actually don't really use reciprical linking much at all. I only link out on my site when I think the link will benefit a visitor. I do link out though and I believe in the concept of hub and authority sites (for Google anyway).

I've been having a lot of success lately with on page factors. It's mostly for less competitive keywords with less searches, but the sum of those smaller searches can add up pretty fast. Most of my blog posts recently are appearing within the first couple of pages of the results for a variety of keywords usually within a day or two of being posted. I haven't had to do much other than keep each post focused on a given keyword. I make sure to use the keyword in the title and the page headings and also mention them in both the first and last paragraphs. In between I just write and not worry about it too much. The keywords are also in the file name and consequently the url, though I don't think that has much to so with the ranking.

Again those phrases aren't necessarily highly searched, but each new post sends a few more visitors to my site daily albeit to different pages. By continuing steady link building and appropriate intersite linking I think those pages will remain at the top for the given searches.

I agree strongly with viral marketing which can really work both online and offline. If done right it can also build links rather fast. I haven't had much opportunity to practice it, but I've been working on some ideas.

Thanks again for the 'tricks' as it's always interesting to see what is and isn't working for other people. I wouldn't recommend anyone new to seo to try some of them since there are risks involved and it works well for Guerilla mainly from experience and knowing how to minimize that risk.

One example of this is christhirst has a link like "people counting system" and if you do a back link search the only registered BL are from a few minor directories and thousands of forum posts and he has gained good rankings from that in msn and yahoo. In fact look at chris hirsts profile and you will se that he has never started a thread, he is also on nearly every forum i visit. It appears his "trick" is to spam signature links and it looks like it is working for him

Caught me bang to rights, Guv'nor, I am a forum spammer
And you're obviously spending too much time visiting forums (or could that be me )

In actual fact I have the exact same signature at 3 or 4 forums where I know the signatures are crawled, it's a test I started about 2 years ago to see if forum sigs do have any weight. The cram-system site has very few backlinks from anywhere else (deliberately) and I have Google alerts set up for a specific query to see if and when the link gets found/credited by Google.

For anyone interested they usually kick an alert off several weeks after the post date and have little (no) effect in Google. As noted though, MSN loves it and Yahoo did, but seems to be getting less impressed as time goes by. Google did seem to weight them up until the Feb 2005 update, the crams site was always first page for the anchor text I used at another forum, but dropped off the face of the SERPs for that phrase then and has never returned.

The anchor text was chosen, not through word research but for the lack of competition, as the product is one that is promoted off-line rather than on-line, although that will be changing soon as a newly developed system starts to be available. So I may be competing with myself on a new site.
CRAMs is a joint project, the new one is my own, so have to be seperate, before anyone jumps on my "have one big site not several small ones" stance.

The next stage in this game of forum links is to use different anchor text at each forum and see if anything changes after that

I think the situation with Google over forum sigs is that they'll count a limited amount and then greatly reduce the weight of the rest. Google wants to see links coming from a variety of sources which is why the class C ips Guerilla mentioned will work.

MSN is counting everything being relatively new and Yahoo is moving towards where Google is. MSN probably will too at some point.

Thanks for the post Van Gogh, it is very insightful and i understand your views in regards to some of the techniques i may use. I'd like to make it clear however that i dont solely use my "tricks" for search engine placement but merely to kick off a project. I design my sites around a community and try to make a system where people will come back, add to the site and maintain/market it themselves. To be honest i've pretty much given up on promoting my services as a SEO due to the high stress factors in running the service. I now only take clients who actually understand what they are getting for their money.

Forum spamming does work but requires your posts to actaully make sense in order not to get removed by the moderator. I understand this is not your only optimisation technique and if your going to post to a foum anyway why not get a boost in the SE for free. There are however some extremely "Black Hat" ways to do this that mean you could get the same results as a couple of months constant link posting in a couple of days. The good thing also is that if you use different IP's and know exactly how to do the linking structure then at worst if these techniques get found out your spam domains get banned not your original ones (dont try this one at home). Another point that people often miss out is that cloaking is still a legitamate way to optimise your site. There are subtle ways of using it to make your msn and yahoo listings hit the roof in a matter of a few weeks and believe me if you do it right your competitors will never know unless they are doing it themselves. Another controversial method that I havent seen anyone posting about is content hijacking. Creating a script that steals content from unrelated sites and the stuffs your keywords into it. Something I do not do myself because i beleive to be a blatent copyright violation and most of the sites i see doing it are hosted out in korea or somewhere similar.

As to looking to the future i believe that all the search engines think they will be very clever and just count one way links for optimisation purposes. Frankly at first I was scared of this move but after a lot of planning and debate i believe this to be the best thing since sliced bread to an optimiser like myself. This system is still highly exploitable but will get rid of the competition for a good while until the new techniques catch on.

I am reluctant to go into too much detail about my techniques, usually because they are not always greeted with open minds. What I really would like is a private black hat only forum that is by invitation only where late breaking techiques and experiements can be freely shared (dont worry admin, WMT will still be top of my favourites).

Would anyone else be interested in a forum of that sort?

Both SEW and WMW have paid forums for "advanced" techniques

The problem with "black hat" methods is while they do work extremely well (been there and tried them) you have to have a continuous queue of disposable or "throw-away" domains waiting to put into action as soon as one (or more) gets banned, especially for UA or IP cloaking. You also have to be prepared to start all over again each time there is an update.
I wouldn't call cloaking a "legitimate" way to optimise as it is the one thing that a site will be banned for with no hope of reinclusion. ever!

For the average site the returns really are not worth the effort and expense, however if you are in the pr0n industry, gambling sites, pharmacy sites or loans & mortgages then just about anything goes.

But as you note, some methods can give a site/project a major boost from launch especially given the current Google aging delay issues, and definitely do not try this at home unless you are prepared for the consequences should you get it wrong.

I agree with you both. There will always be ways to manipulate any algorithm though I do think Google especially is making it more and more difficult, though certainly not impossible. At least they certainly want to.

I don't disagree at all with your apporoach Guerilla. I just think there are risks involved that most won't want to take. That doesn't mean all won't want to try them or shouldn't try them. They just need to be made aware of the risks. For example this might not be something to try with your primary domain as your learning these tricks since chances are on the way to gaining experience with the so called dark side of seo your bound to make some mistakes and get a few sites banned. Definitely not something for the faint of heart.

Guerilla I can understand you not wanting to share all your techniques. Even if they would be generally accepted I know that a part of your competitive advantage is knowing those techniques while most other aren't aware of them. I can't really say I've practised many 'black hat' techniques though I'm aware of quite a few. Just not the path I chose. Again nothing worng with it though.

My main argument against it for myself is the possibilty of starting over again with each new algo update. I do like learning the techniques though. Some of the experiments provide some valuable resources even for someone who leans to the 'white hat' side of things.

I hadn't noticed that about SEW Chris as I haven't paid for memebership either there or at WMW. It's obvious though from the discussions at WMW that many of the members are 'black hatters' Some of the most interesting posts are where you get the 'white hat' and 'black hat' posters arguing with each other page after page about which one of them is the better seo. Has provided many a good laugh for me.

Hi this is a good discussion, can anybody tell me and explain to me about keyword density please and how that works, thanks

rgds

Tammy

It doesn't work, just another search engine myth

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/miscel...y-keyword.html
http://www.webmaster-talk.com/seo-ta...lp-please.html
http://www.webmaster-talk.com/seo-ta...e-it-spam.html
http://www.webmaster-talk.com/seo-ta...e-it-spam.html

http://www.highrankings.com/forum/in...showtopic=7251

I was told that when google indexes your page the keywords become important. It won't affect rank, but it does make your page more likely to be searched if the keywords you reference in the meta tag are present in the body aswell.

... something like that anyway...

Also, I like some of the discussion that happened in here earlier. It's been somewhat inspiring.

I don't believe in keyword density either. Mostly because people seem to think there's a magice density that if you hit exactly you'll jump right to the top of the search engines.

Should you use your keywords on your page? Of course you should. They will help to identify that page as relevant to a search on those keywords.

Can you have too high a keyword density on a page? Probably. At some point if your keywords appear too many times it probably sets off some kind of spam alert.

Do you need to have alot of keywords on your page in order to rank? Absolutely not. The classic example is a search for the single keyword 'computer' which should bring back apple.com as #1. Look at the page and count the number of times you see the work computer. Not many.

collyer if you're going to use the meta keywords tag I would suggest having those keywords (or common misspellings) appear on the page as well. In all truth though the meta keywords tag is pretty meaningless. It was just too easy to spam so the major engines don't really take it into consideration anymore. Maybe that will change and they will find a way to use it, but I doubt it's ever going to be a way to high rankings again.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Both SEW and WMW have paid forums for "advanced" techniques .

Is it worth paying the membership for them?

Obviously I'm asking on behalf of a friend.