Part 1: Search engines, spamdexing, cloaking and the rules

Your background is definitely multifaceted--from Genetics and Developmental Biology to Japanese to Search Engine Guru. How did you come to be the search engine expert you are today?
Back in 1995, I worked at an international transportation company, where I was in charge of creating multimedia presentations. The company decided to create a website, and the design and marketing responsibilities sort of fell onto my lap by default. That's when I had to learn about search engine optimization and directory enhancement.

Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Watch) and John Audette (Audette Media) also launched their sites around the same time. They have been my cybermentors for years, and I finally was able to meet them in person after 3-4 years of emailing back and forth. Now, I am a speaker at Internet.com's Search Engine Strategies conferences with Danny and am the founder of I-Design, an Audettemedia publication.

You were a founding member of the World Association of Internet Marketers (WAIM). What is your current role with WAIM?
I am a board member, and my fellow board members and I determine [professional] standards [for] professional online marketers, search engine optimization (SEO) specialists, banner specialists, affiliate marketing specialists, email specialists, etc. Membership is based on both professionalism and experience in the chosen field.

Membership is not automatic. If a member is caught utilizing unethical and unprofessional practices, WAIM will revoke membership with a 30-day appeals period.

I help design the site and some banners. Mainly, though, I speak at WAIM conferences on search-engine friendly design.

What are some of the best conferences coming up later this year and why should our readers be interested in them?
Hands down, Search Engine Watch is the best conference to attend because Danny Sullivan will be speaking and representatives from the major search engines and directories will be there. The I-Search moderator, Detlev Johnson, will be moderating the advanced roundtables. So if you have a specific question, you will be able to ask the search engine reps directly.

And pay attention to the guys. They are always fun to watch.

Search engine reps also speak at the WAIM conferences. What is great about the WAIM conferences is that you get a different set of online marketing specialists.

Do search engines constantly reinvent their listing rules for to foil cheaters?
Always. Search engines change their algorithms almost every day. So it's pointless to try and reverse engineer because you are always shooting at a moving target.

The goal is to help your target audience find your site. Site statistics software, such as WebTrends and MediaHouse  will tell you whether or not your target audience is finding you.

How can a website guru keep up to date with search engine listing rules?
The search engines and directories all have general guidelines on their own sites. So it's important to bookmark those pages and revisit them every month to see if they've added new information.

A subscription to Search Engine Watch is also a must.

I-Search is a great place to keep track of what-has-happened-in-the-past-24-hours.

About.com has a Web Search Guide who is outstanding.

I know that bookmarking pages, reading weekly or monthly digests, etc. is time-consuming. But it's necessary if you want to stay on top of the search engine game.

How does keyword order factor in to search engine optimizations and where does it count the most?
This is just common sense. Search engine spiders do two things: they index text and follow links. So if you don't put VISIBLE keywords on your web pages, your site won't get optimal results.

Meta tags are overhyped since many of the major search engines don't use meta-tag content when determining search results, such as Google. But meta-tags should be written well for the search engines that do use them.

The title tag is more important than meta tags. The title tag has always been more important than meta tags.

Keywords are only 1/3 of the equation. Link architecture and popularity are the other 2/3. Flash sites have a link architecture that search engine spiders can't follow, so I would not recommend building a site entirely in Flash if you know you are going to utilize search engine optimization as an online marketing strategy.

Besides using keywords repeatedly in a row (spamdexing) or using a white background to hide white text keywords (detected by search engines, not users), what other methods will get a site permanently banned from search engines?
Any type of coding or scripting that hides information from end users is considered spam by the major search engines. Take the "white background to hide white text keywords" as an example. The only reason people use this technique is to boost rankings. How does utilizing this technique benefit your target audience? It doesn't.

Spamdexing is the technique of trying to obtain optimal search engine positions via unethical and unprofessional means.

Doorway pages are web pages created specifically for search engine positions. They are not created to benefit end users. Information pages, on the other hand, are specifically created to benefit your end users because they provide information that your target audience is interested in.

Cloaking is the technique of feeding search engine spiders one web page, and feeding all other end users a different web page. All of the major search engines consider cloaking to be spam. In fact, I was just speaking at a search engine conference in London, and representatives from AltaVista, Google, and Inktomi all stated that they consider cloaking to be spam.

Many search engine optimization companies use scare tactics to convince people that cloaking is necessary. They will tell you that others can figure out your online marketing strategy just by looking at your web pages. ("Stealing your meta tags" is a common scare tactic used.) This is not an accurate characterization of the situation at all.

Three elements are necessary in obtaining long-term search engine positions: keyword-rich text, a link architecture the spiders can follow, and popularity. Cloaked pages and doorway pages cannot get popularity.

What many people do not understand is how doorway page/cloaking companies work. They create thousands of pages for a single keyword or keyword phrase. All of these pages are fed to the search engines, polluting their indices with unnecessary information. They are not pretty, and they contain so much gibberish that I understand why they have to be cloaked. End users would never continue visiting a website if they viewed these pages.

My philosophy is simple. The search services' goal is to provide relevant search results. So if you want to use the search services, you should help them deliver relevant results. Follow the rules and guidelines they have set forth in their own sites, in publications like Search Engine Watch, and at conferences. That way, both you and the search services will benefit.

Are there any shortcuts for website managers to translate their business definitions into search phrases?
No, unfortunately there are no shortcuts. And people who believe there are shortcuts will end up paying in money and time in the long run.

The ultimate goal of search engine optimization is to determine what your target audience is searching for and then to use those phrases throughout your entire website. To reach that goal, a company must do keyword research (on the search services) and monitor the site using statistics software, such as WebTrends and MediaHouse.

There is software available to assist people, but I have not found it to be very effective. Others might not share my opinion.

Continued...