I screwed up my redirect. Can I get my rankings back?

Is everything lost if you try and redirect an old URL to a new one and make an error? Here's the answer.

There are easier things to do online than to create a brand new domain name and try and move your current website so that it's attached to your new domain instead of your old one.

It's possible to do it and hang onto your rankings by redirecting people temporarily from the old address to the new one, but if this process goes wrong you will lose your rankings within the search engines and you'll have to start again from scratch.

Why is this? Despite the fact that your site essentially remains the same, the search engines look at each individual URL as being just that - individual. It seems that although the search engines have plenty of complex algorithms and robots to do their crawling for them, they can't recognize an old site under a new name.

In short, if you mess up when it comes to redirecting people (including the search engine spiders) from your old URL to your new one, the only comfort you will have to fall back on is the fact that your site itself is well established and has all the elements in place to start ranking highly under your new domain name in as short a time as possible, although this can still take a while to achieve.

This is why it's essential to plan ahead when you are thinking of changing your domain name. A good rule of thumb is to only change it if it's absolutely necessary. Don't do it on a whim. And if you do decide to go ahead with it make sure you are familiar with all the steps and you know exactly what to do, because you only really get one shot at getting it right - and there is a lot of traffic and ranking points at stake.

My Rankings Plummeted Overnight. What Happened?

It's every webmaster's worst nightmare, yet it happens to more people than you might think. Here are some suggestions as to why this can happen.

One day you're on page one of Google and the next day you're languishing on page fifty - if you're lucky. It's small wonder that some people panic when this happens to them and start changing everything in sight to try and rectify the problem.

But if this should happen to you the best thing you can do is to hang fire, don't panic and definitely don't change anything. There are a lot of sites that experience an unexplained drop like this and then find in a day or two that they are back to where they were. Unfortunately sudden drops in ranking do happen and they are not always explained.

Having said that there are reasons why it can happen. Small tweaks to the html in your site or to the tags can cause a drop. Check your positioning on different search engines as well, because they all have slightly different methods of ranking sites and you may find that while you have dropped like a stone on Google, other search engines such as Yahoo and MSN may still be ranking you very highly. If this is the case then the drop could well be temporary, but keep an eye on the other search engines over the next few days just to make sure.

Another reason for a sharp drop in rankings occurring is when people find your listing in the search results and attempt to visit your site, only to receive a 404 error message in return. If the search engine spiders pick up on this - even if it's only a temporary situation - it can prompt them to drop your ranking as a result.

While most people who employ black hat SEO techniques to get ranked higher expect to be punished sooner or later by experiencing a severe drop in ranking (or being banned altogether), some people inadvertently use techniques that they shouldn't touch with a bargepole.

This is why it's worth taking a look at your site to see whether you have done anything you shouldn't have. Have you relied on link farms to generate some incoming links? Have you overdone the keywords in your content? Do you have very little in the way of content at all?

If you can answer yes to any of these questions then you may well have found the reason for your change in circumstances. The route to take here is clear - refrain from doing anything for a few days to see if you regain your position and if not, start examining your site to see where the red flags are.

Blackhat Techniques: Don't Shoot Yourself In The Foot

Why you need to know what black hat SEO techniques are - so you can avoid them like the plague.

There are two types of SEO - search engine optimization - techniques in existence. These are commonly known as white hat ones and black hat ones, and you need to make sure that where SEO is concerned you stay whiter than white at all times.

But why is this? What's so bad about black hat techniques?

In short they are either banned outright or extremely unethical to use as ways of promoting your website and getting it a higher ranking in the search engines. But black hat methods aren't just unethical because they unfairly try to manipulate your ranking. They don't take into account the most important reason for having any website in the first place - and that's the customer.

We all want to get ranked higher in search results, but if that requirement becomes more important than the service we are giving to our visitors then we run the risk of crossing over into black hat territory.

Some people worry about whether their attempts at search engine optimization are legitimate or not. Keywords, for example, can be used for good or evil when it comes to SEO. Perhaps the best way of working out whether or not you are straying into undesired territory is to ask yourself whether the presentation of your website is being altered to suit your attempts to maximize your SEO techniques. If it is, you may have problems.

Let's look at the keyword example to see what's meant by this. It's a good idea to make sure that each page of your website has a good sprinkling of keywords and phrases, to attract visitors and ensure your site shows up in relevant search results. But if you start trying to manipulate the content of your site to fit in more keywords - re-editing a paragraph several times just to see how many times you can get those words in for example - then you may be going too far.

Two to three per cent of the content should generally be dedicated to keywords; any more than that and red flags will start to go up. The main rule is that your content should sound natural. You've probably read an article before where the keywords might as well have been standing out in 3D; it looks and reads very unnaturally and should be avoided at all costs.

One of the best examples of a black hat technique is using hidden text to put in more keywords that won't be seen by anyone who visits a website. The idea is that they won't be noticed by the search engine spiders either - but that doesn't work for long.

Hidden text is achieved by inserting text which is the same color as the background - white on white or black on black for example. The webmaster can then in theory stuff as many keywords as they like onto their site without anyone being any the wiser.

The problem with search engine optimization is that many techniques can be used for good or bad purposes. Keywords can be used carefully or thrown in left right and center. Links can be cultivated slowly and be of a high standard - or they can be generated quickly and with substandard sites. Some beginners to internet marketing can trip themselves up without realizing, which is why it's important to educate yourself about what's right and what's wrong.

On the subject of linking it's important to have both incoming and outgoing links that are of good quality. Don't fall for the tempting promise of link farms. They can certainly provide you with links but they are not regarded as being valuable or worthwhile sites, and they can only do you harm. You're much better off creating quality links over time if you want to avoid being penalized for having dubious ones.

There will always be some people who persist in using black hat techniques to get ranked higher in the search engines. Their success - if they achieve any at all - will always be short lived because Google and the other main search engines are very good at finding out who is doing it and banning them from their search results completely.

If you make quality your watchword you shouldn't ever be in any danger of straying over into black hat territory. Unethical techniques are never good quality techniques - and that will never change.