Search Engine Positioning Poll, what is your strategy?

Cloak? Doorway? Theme? Content? PPC?

[Travoli]

POLL:

How is everyone developing their SEP campaigns?
What do you use?

1. Cloaking / IP Delivery
2. Doorway pages
3. Content optimization with title/meta tags/alt tags/text/h1 tags, etc..
4. Super ethical, no "gray area" approach
5. Themed site
6. Linking campaign(inbound/outbound)
7. Pay Per Click
8. Luck

Anyone want to add to this/change it?

I am a 3,4,5,7,8 as of right now, as I am prtetty new and still getting the feel of things.

[agerhart]

As of now I have added one more of those categories to my campaign (cloaking). This is what I currently use for my campaign:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and alot of 8!

[Travoli]

Might be difficult to claim "4" if you claim "1" or "2", at least from what I have gathered from the forums...
:-)

agerhart, are you pretty new to SEP also?

[agerhart]

ahhhh.....no no, this is not true, not all cloaking is bad. There are ethical ways to use cloaking.

>>>>>>>>>agerhart, are you pretty new to SEP also? >>>>>>>>

Fairly new, in comparison to some of the real professionals around here.

[JamesR]

3,4,5,6

at least I don't think I am doing anything unethical although I think some SEs would label any SEO manipulative.

[Travoli]

Yeah, I guess the irony is that #4 is a gray area" itself.

[agerhart]

depending on how cloaking is used and for what it is used, it can be a gray area, but when used correctly it shouldn't be conceived as a bad thing.

[url=http://webmasterworld.com/forum24/250.htm]see this[/]

[paynt]

3,4,5,6

Although I think 4 is subjective.

In my past life (before 11/2000) I was really good at 1,2 :)

[Mike_Mackin]

>4 is subjective

YES

[agerhart]

[paynt]3,4,5,6[/paynt]

for most sites that I work on I would have to agree that this is the campaign that I usually employ, but for the really important ones I try to do a little bit more.

[Vishal]

# 1 = God's blessing

3. Content optimization with title/meta tags/alt tags/text/h1 tags, etc..
4. Super ethical, no "gray area" approach
5. Themed site
2. Doorway pages
6. Linking campaign (inbound/outbound)
1. Cloaking / IP Delivery
8. Luck

[nell]

My #1 and only is:

POACHING

[kapow]

5 3 6 7

It would be good to know the kind of success everyone gets with the recipe they use, e.g. I have top position on Yahoo, Google, Freeserve for the main key phrase - but the phrase is only semi competitive. The site gets about 200 visits per day.

[legster]

You already know mine! :P

All of the above, except cloaking. I don't really use doorway pages in the traditional sense, but I try to add content to them and use them liberally.

I think number 3 is the most important one personally.

[CaveToad]

I'd have to say, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, with a dash of 4 on occasion.
nice list.

[icehousedesigns]

3-6+8

Ethical way to cloak? I need to hear this :)

[satanclaus]

I'm real heavy on 2, 3, 5 ,6
Never 1, 4, or 7
Mostly 8 of course

Ethical cloaking.......yeah right

[caine]

I don't believe in ethics or certainly non gray ethics, unless your braindead !

Alot of 3, 5, 6, as much 8 as possible. no 2, 4 or 7.
Looking into 1, will no doubt have reasons for use in the future.

[ettore]

2,3,5,6 on a regular basis
7 sometimes
1 if you allow me to say "the ethical way", so it'll be 1/4
8 adding a few little prayers...

[skibum]

3 & 5-8, and all but one important engine seems to agree on #4

[agerhart]

>>>>Ethical cloaking.......yeah right>>>>

Do some reading in the cloaking forums and I think you will realize that there are ways to cloak ethically.

How about cloaking to hide the code of your site from users so that it can't be stolen?

Do you find this unethical in some way? I would love to hear this explanation.

[satanclaus]

Theres nothing wrong with hiding your code from other SEO. To me as a whole cloaking is unethical. You're selling visitors one thing with the page you fed the spider and when they get to the page requested its something else. Glorified bait n switch to me as a surfer.

Ethical cloaking to me just runs along the same lines as ethical hacking or genetic engineering. Yeah you can do alot of good but you could also do a whole lot of bad really easily and maybe not without bad intentions. For example sending people searching for information on a product to a sale page for the product; etc.

I don't know if this gets my opinion across; I have a hangover.

[paynt]

I've started a discussion, Webmaster Optimization and Ethics - Where is the gray area in your business ethics? [webmasterworld.com]

Thought we might keep this discussion for an ongoing poll and move to a more specific discussion about ethics there.

[agerhart]

I will reply to this in the new thread that Paynt just started

[rcjordan]

>1. Cloaking / IP Delivery
No, too management intensive.

>2. Doorway pages
No doorways, yes hallways

>3. Content optimization with title/meta tags/alt tags/text/h1 tags, etc..
Go heavy on text content in body (many, many pages), try to pay attention to some of the "macro" optimization stuff, i.e., titles, keywords in path, etc.

>4. Super ethical, no "gray area" approach
Ethical as prescribed by search engine "rules" = No.

Pagejacking, bait & switch, copyright & trademark infringement = No.

>5. Themed site
Yes

>6. Linking campaign(inbound/outbound)
Yes, encourage inbound

>7. Pay Per Click
No, I tried it, but there's just no sport in it.

>8. Luck
I've found this tends to balance out. An editor lists my site in Looksmart and gives it a great description (free) = good luck. NBCi shuts down = bad, bad luck. INK happens to index the cache of my dynamic pages = good luck.

[Mikkel Svendsen]

I mostly use number: 10, 13 and 22 :)

Honestly, there are many other strategies then 1-8 - some of them being discused here, some of them not.

I do whatever works, what makes me feel good (my own ethical standards) and what benifit my clients in the long run.

So, for the poll:

1. Cloaking / IP Delivery
Yes, don't we all :)

2. Doorway pages
Not in the pure original form.

3. Content optimization with title/meta tags/alt tags/text/h1 tags, etc..
Yes, for clients that don't like PPC-SEO

4. Super ethical, no "gray area" approach
I am alwasy super ethical - but I base it my own etchics rather then some one elses

5. Themed site
Yes

6. Linking campaign(inbound/outbound)
Yes, indeed! But not straight linkfarming - only strategic linking and a few other speciel ways I found that works GREAT!

7. Pay Per Click
Yes

8. Luck
No, am so good I don't need luck -LOL. OK, we all need some luck now and then :)

[GWJ]

1. No
2. yes
3. Yes, heavily
4. Well
5. Yes, heavily
6. Yes
7. Not yet
8. Yes, heavily

[angiolo]

1. Not yet!
2. Some
3. Yes, heavily
4. Yes, heavily
5. Yes, heavily
6. Yes, heavily
7. Yes
8. Yes: Luck, and trying to see in the cristal ball.

[bigjohnt]

3,4,5,7,8, 9)a little voodoo, 10)a little feng shui, and 11) submissions according to my astrologer.
Oh, wait, do 9,10,11 mean 4 is out?

[jeremy goodrich]

3,4,5,6

I've used in the past 1,2 and am currently in the process of refining an approach for these two types of promotion.

I'd like to think I also use my 'Chi' to influence my rankings :)