Domain crawling is probably the best solution for maintaining both a main site and a regional version. With domain crawling the regional listing is far more comprehensive as compared to the other mechanisms explained above. Some pages, although regional may be listed in the main listing as well.

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A couple of years ago spamming may have worked wonders for your website. However, with sophisticated algorithms being developed by all popular search engines, spamming can only backfire. Algorithms, these days, can easily detect spam and not only ignore your website but also ban your website.
Besides, instead of spending considerable time and effort on spamming you can always follow other proven strategies and have a higher rank with most search engines. Spamming can also easily irritate readers. Think about it — if your homepage has unnecessary repetitions of a particular keyword, it is bound to frustrate a reader. Consequently your site, instead of being content rich, would be junk rich. This can have nothing but a negative impact on your business.

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Search engine cloaking is a technique used by webmasters to enable them to get an advantage over other websites. It works on the idea that one page is delivered to the various search engine spiders and robots, while the real page is delivered to real people. In other words, browsers such as Netscape and MSIE are served one page, and spiders visiting the same address are served a different page.
The page the spider will see is a bare bones HTML page optimized for the search engines. It won’t look pretty but it will be configured exactly the way the search engines want it to be for it to be ranked high. These ‘ghost pages’ are never actually seen by any real person except for the webmasters that created it of course.
When real people visit a site using cloaking, the cloaking technology (which is usually based on Perl/CGI) will send them the real page, that look’s good and is just a regular HTML page.
The cloaking technology is able to tell the difference between a human and spider because it knows the spiders IP address, no IP address in the same, so when an IP address visits a site which is using cloaking the script will compare the IP address with the IP addresses in its list of search engine IP’s, if there’s a match, the script knows that it’s a search engine visiting and sends out the bare bones HTML page setup for nothing but high rankings.
There are two types of cloaking. The first is called User Agent Cloaking and the second is called IP Based Cloaking. IP based cloaking is the best method as IP addresses are very hard to fake, so your competition won’t be able to pretend to be any of the search engines in order to steal your code.
User Agent Cloaking is similar to IP cloaking, in that the cloaking script compares the User Agent text string which is sent when a page is requested with it’s list of search engine names (user agent = name) and then serves the appropriate page.

The problem with User Agent cloaking is that Agent names can be easily faked. Search Engines can easily formulate a new anti-spam method to beat cloakers, all they need to do is fake their name and pretend they are a normal person using Internet explorer or Netscape, the cloaking software will take Search Engine spiders to the non – optimized page and hence your search engine rankings will suffer.
To sum up, Search engine cloaking is not as effective as it used to be, this is because the search engines are becoming increasingly aware of the different cloaking techniques being used be webmasters and they are gradually introducing more sophisticated technology to combat them. It may be considered as unethical by Search Engines if not used properly.

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Domain Names play a huge role in search engine optimization for obtaining high search engine ranking. Type in any keyword into Google for example, and the chances are high that you will find that more than 80% of the first 10 sites contain that particular keyword in their domain names. Thus, domain name is one area that can be fully utilized (obviously taking into consideration that you are optimizing a brand new site from scratch and not an existing one).
It is also a good idea to include hyphens (-) between each of the keywords within your domain name. This tells a search engine spider that each word is a separate word, not

one continuous word. The search engines which use keywords in the domain name as a part of their ranking formula will not be able to recognize keywords unless they are separated by a hyphen (or a slash or underscore for sub-directories). Search Engines prefer the use of hyphens in domain names because they can produce more accurate search results by being able to recognize specified key words in your URL.
Keep in mind that a domain with words separated by hyphens will be harder for users to remember (and may also decrease the value of the domain). However, if keywords are used with hyphens the keywords may be interpreted as such by search engines thereby helping rank a site higher.

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To have a good web site marketing plan, you must realize alphabetical priority of domain names is still used by some search engines as a key factor in their ranking formula. Alphabetical hierarchy is even more important to web site marketing, because this method is used by directories, which strictly list sites in alphabetical order based on the results of the keyword(s) search.
Your web site marketing plan must acknowledge Yahoo!. Yahoo! is the number one directory and search site with 52.7 million different visitors each month, accounting for 69.1 percent of all Internet surfers. An astounding 53.4 percent of all search-related traffic comes from Yahoo!, or as much as half the traffic received to many sites. Many

prefer to use Yahoo! because each site submitted to Yahoo! is human-reviewed, delivering more accurate search results for their visitors.
To include alphabetical hierarchy in your web site marketing strategy, realize that alphabetical priority does not only consist of letters, it includes numbers that can rank higher than an “A”.
This is the order: -0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
This means that the domain “www.l-800-ABC-NEWS.com” will rank higher with the search sites that use alphabetical priority in their ranking formula, than just “www.ABC.com”

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Another factor influencing search engine placement in some search engines is Click Popularity. The number of users clicking on links to your page from the search results is counted. Pages that are frequently clicked will get a popularity boost.
Your site is awarded a certain number of points each time someone clicks your link from the search results. If your Web site already has a high ranking you will get fewer points compared to a low ranking site. This way all sites have an equal chance to get click through points awarded.
Don’t be tempted to click your own link over and over again. Repeated clicks from the same IP will be detected. Clicking on your link and quickly returning to the search engine again might actually hurt your rank. The search engines will believe you did not find anything interesting at the page. That is not a good search engine optimization strategy.
How can you influence click popularity then? By putting some work into your page title and description Meta tag. These are the main factors influencing people’s decision to click your link. High quality content will make visitors stay at your search engine optimized web site, and will stop them from .quickly returning to the search engine.

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Domain name registration is one of the most important things to consider when you are designing a site for high search engine placement. Here are some dos and don’ts of domain name registration.
Some Webmasters use shared domains or sub-domains available for free from popular Web hosting services, or some kind of free domain name redirect service. This might be cheap, but if you want a good search engine placement, it’s not an option.

• Some search engines do ban free Web hosts because search engine spammers frequently use them for hosting duplicate sites (mirrors) and doorway pages.
• Sharing domains or IP addresses with spammers can get your search engine position penalized or your entire site banned. Note this statement from AltaVista: “You could wind up being penalized or excluded simply because the underlying IP address for that service is the same for all the virtual domains it includes.”
• Most search engines limit the number of submissions or number of listings for each domain. This will make it very hard to get your site indexed. Other sites on the same domain might already take all the available spots.
• If you do manage to get your site indexed, the search engine will have a hard time finding the “theme” for your site if you are sharing a domain with other sites on many different subjects. Pages are no longer ranked one by one, all content within the domain is considered.
• Without your own domain, you will be forced to start working from scratch again if the host goes out of business or if he decides to change your URL. Many Webmasters have lost their search engine positions, link popularity and Web traffic because of this.
Keywords in the domain name are crucial. It makes sense to put your primary keywords into your domain name.
• Separate multiple keywords like my-keywords-phrase.com instead of typing it all in one word: mykeywordphrase.com. This will make it possible for the search engines to understand your keyword phrases correctly.
• Keep in mind that Yahoo and some other search engines reject domain submissions with URL’s in excess of 54 characters. You would be wise to stay under the 55 character limit when choosing a domain name.
• Directories like Yahoo, LookSmart and ODP will not look for keywords in the text of your page, and editors will often edit keywords out of your title and description. This leaves your internet domain name as the single most important place to put keywords for your site.
• Too many dashes in a domain name might trigger the spam filters of some search engines.
• Yet another benefit of keyword rich domain names is in reciprocal linking. If the domain name keywords appear within the text of incoming links, you will get a major boost in ranking, especially in Google.

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Some Search Engines are case sensitive. This gives rise to a new dilemma for webmasters. Should they include keywords in both lower case as well as upper case, especially in Meta tags? Most webmasters actually do so. For instance, they would list the keywords as a set of all possible combinations of upper and lower case.
Webmasters may feel that this is the safest technique to avoid losing potential visitors. However, such repetition may be considered by the Search Engine to be Spam! After all, higher the number of words, higher the combinations.

The best way to get around this problem is to list keywords in lower case only. Most surfers always search in lower case. There are very few cases where surfers use capitals even if the word is a proper name. Of course, you may run a very small risk of losing a few visitors who use upper case, but this risk is minimal. Besides, you do not want to be banned for Spam.

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There is an abundance of search engine information available on the web- some of it valuable, much of it contradictory. Throughout the years some prevailing search engine myths have developed. Some of these myths are still encouraged. Others are based upon techniques that were effective years ago but no longer work. Still others come from simple misunderstandings that inevitably come with a relatively new medium. Here is a discussion on some of the most common myths around
Myth: Meta tags are the most important factor in search engine rankings.
Fact: Many search engines (most notably Google) ignore meta tags completely due to constant abuse by webmasters. The only importance placed on meta tags these days is actually the meta description tag, which will appear as the description for the corresponding page on engines that use inktomi data (such as MSN). Meta tags are virtually irrelevant in the ranking algorithms of the top engines- but many people continue to believe that they are the only optimization strategy that they need.
Myth: It’s impossible to do search engine optimization in-house.
Fact: It often is done in house, and done effectively. This is typically when a large corporation hires in-house talent that is largely devoted exclusively to promoting the website. However, it is unrealistic to expect someone with many other job functions to do a credible job of SEO. Much of the skills are acquired through experience- and it isn’t usually desirable to have someone “experimenting” with the company website (especially considering that certain techniques can get sites penalized on engines or banned outright).
SEO isn’t rocket science, but it also isn’t something that can be learned overnight. When deciding whether to outsource SEO or do it in house, it is important to consider the actual costs involved. Often, when the necessary hours it takes to pay someone to learn on the job are taken into account, it is cheaper to outsource (and the results are almost always better). Only a careful evaluation of your goals and resources can determine the best course of action for your company.
Myth: Sites must be constantly resubmitted to retain rankings.
Fact: This is a scare tactic popularized by various submission services and software companies. In fact, it is a waste of money to pay to have your site resubmitted once it is

already listed in an engine’s database. It will not hurt your rankings to constantly submit (or else people would submit their competitor’s sites to get them penalized), but it will not help, either.
Myth: Search engine optimization is not as effective as “traditional” marketing.
Fact: In many ways, it is more effective. Companies often spend countless dollars on direct mail, television and radio advertising, and bulk email without a second thought. The common thread with each of these strategies is that the prospect is “approached” by the company, and that the company must reach a great number of people to find a few motivated prospects. On the other hand, search engines can deliver highly motivated prospects directly to your website- people who have already demonstrated, through their use of particular key phrases, an interest in your products or services.

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Doorway pages are pages that have been designed for one purpose only, to rank high in the search engines for a particular keyword and then direct the arriving visitors further into the site. Usually their design is relatively simplistic and includes a lot of text, but contains very little graphics or other fancy effects.

Doorway pages focus on particular keywords and phrases targeted for search engines and serve as an entry page to visitors. These used to be a popular means to achieve high rankings with Search Engines, but recently, many Search Engines have started completely ignoring websites with doorway pages.
Because creating doorway pages used to be so easy, especially when using programs that can automatically generate hundreds or thousands of pages in a heartbeat by using a simple template and merely placing the keywords in the right places, many sites lost control and created enormous amounts of them.
The search engines initially tolerated this behavior, but as their databases started being filled with doorway pages they soon realized that these pages would quickly conquer the top ranking spots from normal content-rich pages. This would reduce the quality of their indices and lower the value of the search results, resulting in users abandoning the search engine.
Search Engines such as AltaVista began removing doorway pages from its index and in some cases even banning the sites that were using them. Other engines followed suit and soon it was safe to say that the age of doorway pages, at least in the form we used to know them, had passed.
Instead of focusing on doorway pages, you should focus on optimizing your actual content pages.

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