4. Cloaking

If you aren’t sure what cloaking means in search engine optimization, it’s an SEO practice through which your blog content or a specific page on your site is presented to the search bots in a way completely different from how they are displayed to searchers.

Cloaking is feasible, as the host can present content based on the search engine bot requesting the source page, or the HTTP header or Internet Protocol addresses of the searchers. Long ago it was a usual SEO practice but not in use any longer. It’s now a substandard practice in SEO and can get your site penalized.

What You Should Do

The best thing you could do is presenting only a single version of every page to both the searchers and the search engine bots. Also, make searchers see the difference between Advertisements and blog content.

After all, chances are, your site could be leveraging technologies which search bots might be unable to access. These technologies include Flash, JavaScript, and more. Thus, it is advisable to look into Google’s recommendations on the acceptable way to make such content and pages easy for both the searchers and search engine spiders to access.



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RVsRock Premium
I know very little about SEO techniques.........good OR bad. The 5 Bad SEO Technques that you pointed out should be helpful to many.

One that I was aware of was the attempt to hide keywords and URLs in pages and posts. Unfortunately, I still see that practice used extensively and I am certain that it is hurting the chances for good SERPs for those who attempt that technique.

Throughout the course of a day, I visit many websites and view the page source for various reasons. That is where I discover those attempts to hide keywords and URLS. It happens more than one knows.

Since I am very naive about keywords, I have been using the SEO keyword section shown on the Pages section of my websites in the WordPress dashboard. It is there that I list what I think are relevant keywords.

By checking the page source of my live page on the Internet, I find the exact keywords that I placed in the keyword section....EXAMPLE:<meta name="keywords" content="camping in indiana,rv camping in indiana,tent camping in indiana">

Israel, by using the technique as described above, isn't that how it is supposed to work? Keywords........It is all very confusing to me.

Can you help to clarify the difference between the "keywords" listed in the <meta name> section of one's page source AND "keywords" one might use in their content when composing a blog post or page?

And are you saying that Google and other search engine bots are, for the most part, ignoring the keywords in the <meta name> section, but are instead searching through content itself for juicy and relevant keywords?
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Israel17 Premium
Thanks for your comment, my friend! You rock! As regards the use of keywords, it's something you shouldn't capitalize on like ever. Search engines of today are smarter than those of the old. The most important place to use keywords consciously but not injudiciously is in the headline and first paragraph of your content while the rest of the content needs to be written naturally without doing keyword stuffing at all.

Just ensure you always come up with quality, informative, and compelling content and you'll get the success in no distant time. Thanks for asking!

Israel Olatunji
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RVsRock Premium
Great answer and I will follow that advice.

Thank you,
RVsRock
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DesireG Premium
Thank you so much for this informative training article. I never forget Ben new that you can do this. It just doesn’t feel right to do this. It gives me a feeling that the website and it’s owner is in any case not someone I would want to follow or by products from. I could be naive?
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Israel17 Premium
Great, my friend! Thanks for your comment! Glad you read and found it informative and helpful for your online business! If you're going to stick to only black hat SEO, success is guaranteed. You'll make Google love your site and you'll rank your blog in search engine results pages.

Israel Olatunji
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don1rock Premium
Hey Israel,

Thanks for the interesting and useful material in your post. You hear about these things and it was great learning more about them.

Like you said Google is so smart now it's hard to run any of these bad practices by them but I'm sure there are people who will still try.

It's the same old story if some of these people worked as hard honestly as they do dishonestly they would be a lot further ahead.

Have a good one,
Don
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Israel17 Premium
Excellent, Don! Yes, Google is smart enough to detect all elements of black hat SEO and won't hesitate to penalize any site owner caught in those bad SEO practices in an effort to game its search algorithm system. Glad you found this training informative and useful!

Israel Olatunji
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CathyAllen Premium
I hadn't heard of some of these practices. Now that I know they exist I understand why search engines would take offense.
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Israel17 Premium
Hello Cathy, thanks for stopping by! Yes, these are bad SEO practices called black hat SEO that some site owners try implementing in order to game the Google search algorithm system and drive a ton of traffic to their website. Stick to the white hat SEO tactics and watch your blog skyrocket in SERPs as you keep on keeping on. Thanks for reading!

Israel Olatunji
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Tirolith Premium
Your training is top of table and just what the doctor ordered.
Thanks very much for your quality work.
Tom.
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Israel17 Premium
Hello Tom, glad you found this training awesome! Much excited! While it takes months and even years to build a successful blogging portal through a business website, many cannot be so patient to stick only to white hat SEO strategies and avoid getting penalized for those bad SEO practices. Thanks for reading!

Israel Olatunji
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Tirolith Premium
Merry Christmas,
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