A big group of 11 of us from SEO.com recently returned from a week in Las Vegas at PubCon. When we arrived at PubCon the first day, we checked in at the registration desk and were given a SWAG bag with a few goodies from some of the partners and sponsors. Because Bing was one of the sponsors at PubCon, they had some stickers they were giving out in the SWAG bags.

Shuey was the first to be “Bing Slapped!” Unbeknown to him, someone, lets call him Greg, discreetly placed a Bing sticker on Shuey’s backpack so that he didn’t feel it. A few seconds later “Greg” yelled out, “Ah Shuey! You got Bing Slapped!” Everyone around frantically tore off their backpacks to make sure they also hadn’t fallen victim to the Bing Slapper. This became an ongoing joke throughout the rest of the conference. Some other victims included Dave Bascom, Nelson James, Dustin Williams, Todd Julien, Scott Smoot, and Dan Patterson.

Not all of our SEO.com guys were able to attend PubCon this year so we though we would bring some of the PubCon fun back to the office. Scott Cowley was the first in our office to have the honor of being Bing Slapped!

Thanks to all the hard working SEO’s who held down the fort while we partied it up in Vegas!

Search engine algorithms’ are getting more and more complex. When a website gets crawled by search engines, they are taking into account the keywords and phrases found in the indexable text of the web site. All indexable words on the page factor into which keywords and phrases the page ranks for. Of course, the frequency and placement of consecutive words are the biggest factors into which keywords and phrases rank the best.

Because of this fact, long tail keywords serve a dual purpose. They can refine search terms to a web page, as well as assist a searcher in locating something very specific. For example: if a consumer is looking to purchase “pink furry strawberry slippers” it makes more sense to search on the entire phrase than to put in “furry slippers,” “furry strawberries,” or “strawberry slippers” and attempt to filter through irrelevent search results.

Another big difference between short and long tail keyword phrases are the search results. If you were to search the keyword “counseling” in Google, you will receive 55,200,000 results. Then, if you look up the short tail keyword phrase “counseling jobs” in Google, it returns 10,900,000 results. Finally, if you enter the long tail keyword phrase “drug counseling jobs” in Google, it provides 323,000 results. Although the long tail keyword phrase is searched less than the shorter keyword phrases, there is much less SERP competition.

Using long tail keywords to corner a smaller market has just as much potential, if not more, than using short tail keywords in a larger, more exposed market. Some sites may discover that the long tail isn’t quite as rich in their market, while other sites will do far better by targeting the long tail. Either way, using long tail keywords where you can, will definitely give you the advantage over your competitors.

Everyone wants to have high rankings in the search engines, and sadly, some abide by the philosophy of “Lying, Cheating or Stealing” their way to the top. These deceiving tricks often include:

• Hidden text
• Hidden links
• Cloaking
• Sneaky redirects

Yes, these tricks may work for a short time, but if there is one thing I learned well from my childhood, it is that if you lie, cheat or steal, you will inevitably get caught—and when you do, there are always consequences.

Search engines are ever improving their algorithms to increase ranking accuracy and to improve the overall experience of their users. Their goal is to serve up the best, most relevant results to their users. They don’t like to be deceived and as they find deceitful acts, they apply a consequence. These consequences may include being banned from search engines.

Search engine optimization is not about tricking search engines to get anyone and everyone to your site. It is about building an effective online marketing strategy that delivers a flow of highly targeted prospects who are seeking your product or service. It’s a matter of good traffic over bad traffic, of quality over quantity. The goal of search engine optimization is to increase the good, quality traffic comprising of relevant visitors who are likely to fulfill a desired action on your site, whether it’s to buy something, to contact you, to subscribe to your service, or what have you.

Deceiving search engines may provide you with more traffic to your site for a short time. But in the long run, it typically ends up hurting your rankings and may result in getting you banned from the search engines.

The easiest way to not deceive the search engines is to make sure your site is actually relevant for the terms you are trying to show up for. This of course, is easier said than done, but focusing on making your site more relevant for your consumer is what will ultimately add to your bottom-line.

There are many ways search engines could view a web page as deceiving an end user. Probably the most common form of deceit on a web page is presenting different content to search engines than you display to human visitors. This is commonly referred to as cloaking. Doing this may cause your site to be perceived as deceptive and can result in removal from search engines.

A common form of cloaking is serving up a page of HTML text to search engines, while showing a page of images (or Flash or JavaScript) to your site visitors. You may be doing this on your site right now not intending to deceive your users or the search engines. If you are employing these cloaking tactics, or are designing a website rich with Flash or JavaScript, you should make sure that your end users are your main priority.

To prevent your site from being a deceiver, there are a few ways to correctly provide crawlable data for the search engines.  These will also be helpful to your visitors who have screen readers or images turned off in their browser.

• Provide alt text that describes images on your pages.
• Provide textual content of JavaScript in a noscript tag.

Make sure the content you provide is the same text for both the JavaScript and the noscript tag.   Having substantially different content in these different elements is viewed as extremely deceptive to  the search engines and they may take action against your site.

Keep your site visitors in mind as you build out your site. As I’ve mentioned before, a good rule of thumb is to think about what you are doing and who it is for. Ask yourself if what you are doing helps your users, and would you do the same thing the search engines didn’t exist.

1. Don’t Deceive Your Users – Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. The practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines is commonly referred to as “cloaking.” Some examples of cloaking include:

• Serving a page of HTML text to search engines, while showing a page of images or Flash to users
• Serving different content to search engines than to users

2. Don’t Deceive Search Engines – Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. These tricks may include but are not limited to:

• Hidden text
• Hidden links
• Cloaking
• Sneaky redirects

A good rule of thumb is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”

3. Don’t Participate in Link Schemes – Everybody knows that links play a big role in ranking your site in search engines. What everybody doesn’t necessarily know is that the quality and relevance of links count much higher than the quantity of links. Participating in link schemes can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results.  Some examples of link schemes can include:

• Links intended to manipulate rankings
• Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
• Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (“Link to me and I’ll link to you”)

4. Don’t have Duplicate Content – Creating multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantial duplicate content can result in a drop in rankings or even removal from a search engine’s index.  Here are some suggestions on how to handle duplicate content issues:

• Consider blocking pages from indexing (robots.txt)
• Use 301 redirects
• Use top-level domains (www.domain.de vs. www.domain.com/de)
• Minimize similar content

5. Don’t Keyword Stuff – Keyword Stuffing refers to loading a web page with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in search results. Typically, keyword stuffing will be found in lists or paragraphs of keywords, hidden text, hidden in title tags or alt tags. This practice results in a negative user experience and can harm your site’s ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.

Following these guidelines will get you going on the right track to having an SEO friendly website which will help search engines find, index, and rank your site.