Search engine sites such as Google don’t want you, or anyone else for that matter, to know how they rank pages. If you did, anyone could be on page one. That is why search engine optimization has an air of mystery about it.

Even though these sites hide their methods, we can gain perspective of their approach by analyzing the sites that make it to the top. In the past, web developers would take advantage of this knowledge and would try to out maneuver the engines. This happened not long ago with keyword meta tags. When it seemed this was an important factor in placement, keywords were repeated within the tag. Because of this misuse, meta tags are basically ignored in search engine placement today.

Because search engines cannot see what you the visitor sees (for example, they cannot read images), some websites will present one version of a page to the viewer and another version for the engines. Keep this important principle in mind: The text on the page should be designed for the site visitor, not for search engines. Using behind the scenes text to try and influence ranking can be very dangerous. Remember that anyone can report a page to a search engine site. Your competitors are watching (as you should be watching them.) Don’t give your competitors a reason to raise a red flag. SEO Agency in Doncaster 

Creating a duplicate site with duplicate pages, referred to as mirror sites, is another tactic that can work against you. In my business, we create training portals for Chambers of Commerce. These portals are very similar and provide a wealth of information for Chamber members; however, they contain duplicate information. There is a purpose for the duplication. If you are creating duplicate sites for the purpose of increasing ranking, then you are using tactics that would be looked upon as trying to circumvent the system by the search engines.

How do you determine if what you are doing to improve ranking is a trick or a good strategy? This is sometimes hard to determine. Are you strictly trying to increase ranking without regards to the effect on the reader? Then it is probably not a good approach. If you are using tactics that are frowned upon by the search engines, at the very least your site will rank poorly. The ultimate price will be your site will not be indexed which makes it totally invisible to your target audience.