Ethical ways to improve your search engine ranking

In order to make their click popularity algorithms work, search engines need to be able to identify individual users. If they can't tell visitors apart, they won't be able to properly follow what they do and the whole system will collapse.

The two most common methods used to track user behavior are cookies and IP addresses. Most search engines use both of them for maximum accuracy, but some rely solely on IP-based tracking. With these tools not only can they make sure they get the data they want, but they can also weed out any attempts to manipulate the system. However, later we'll discover that when there's a will, there's a way.

The first thing you should do is to make sure that all of the title and META description tags you use accurately represent the contents of the pages they are on. They should also be otherwise "human-friendly" and tuned to attract as many clicks as possible.


Even if you're not interested in boosting your click popularity, spending some time on ensuring that your META descriptions and titles are in order is a good move. The better your pages look in the search results, the more clicks they will draw and the more traffic your site will get.

Your site should also of course look good and offer content that is relevant to the search so that users will stick around once they have arrived to it. However, the most important thing is that your pages have to load up fast. Most people are still using slow dial-up Internet connections and have very limited patience. If your page does not appear quickly, they'll use the "Back" button to return to the search results and find another site. Because click popularity SE's measure the time users spend on the sites they visit, having your visitors "backing out" on you will seriously damage your ranking.

Bending the rules a bit

Now, ensuring that your site looks good in the search results, loads up fast and is otherwise an excellent place to visit is not manipulation, spam or unethical in any way. However, most of the other things you can do to get a better ranking in a system that uses click popularity are. So, if you feel that you don't want to engage in such activity, I recommend that you stop reading at this point.

Those who wish to continue reading should also note that when you're doing something the search engine feels is unacceptable, you're taking the risk of being banned from said engine. To put it bluntly, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime.

Now that we have set things straight, let us venture into the dark side. After your page has been accepted into the index of the click popularity search engine, go visit it. Do a couple of casual searches, visit some of the sites for a few of minutes and then come back.

Next, search for your page by using the keyphrase you are trying to get a top ten ranking on. Keep digging until you find your page and then click on its listing to get to your site. When you've arrived there, close the browser window and do not visit the search engine at least for an hour or so.

Because your IP address has been logged, do not try to repeat this process until a couple days have passed. Before doing it again, you should also clear out any cookies the search engine might have installed to your system. In Internet Explorer 5, this can be done by clicking Tools -> Internet Options -> Settings -> View Files and deleting all of the files in that folder.

Notice that cookies are also commonly used to store other information, such as passwords and user ID's of online discussion forums and such. That is why I recommend that you do not attempt playing with these things unless you know what you're doing and have written all of your user ID's and passwords down somewhere or remember them.

Naturally, at the rate of one click every two days it might take your page quite a while to get to the top. So, if you happen to have friends, relatives or other acquaintances that have their own computers and are willing to help you, you can instruct them to follow the above instructions and give your page(s) a click every now and then. Just as long as you are using different computers at different locations and remember to clear your cookies, it's very unlikely that someone at the search engine would notice what you're doing.

Playing hardball

Clicking your own listing and having your friends help you may not be entirely honest, but it isn't a very serious offense either. Too bad that because you have to keep a long waiting period in between clicks, boosting your ranking in that way is a long and frustrating process. There are easier ways than that, but they're more risky as well.

One of these faster methods is using non-transparent proxy servers that are open to the public. They will mask your IP-address, which fools the search engine into thinking that you're someone else than you really are, just as long as you remember to delete any cookies possibly used by the SE and change the proxy server in between clicks.

While the risk of being caught for doing so is minimal, the legality of using proxies without the permission of their owners is unclear and thus I'm not going to discuss this method any further. If you're interested in it, here is a list of open proxy servers.

A second way that some have used, or at least attempted to use to improve their ranking in search engines that use click popularity is preventing users from using the "Back" button in their browsers.

While this may work, it is a medicine that tends to cure the disease but kill the patient in the process. You might be more successful in search engines that use click popularity and get a few additional visitors because of it, but your overall traffic will decline because this "feature" will annoy people and drive them off your pages. Take my advice and leave the Back button alone.

Conclusion

If you want to play nice, you can get fairly good results just by tuning your site and your descriptions a bit. It won't produce fast results, but over time it is the most effective way to improve your search engine ranking.

Those who wish to conquer the top spots promptly and aren't worried about ethical questions or the possibility of being banned might want to look into proxy servers and other ways of artificially inflating click popularity.

However, they should also remember not to get carried away with their "spamming" methods. If a search result normally receives one click per day and suddenly that figure jumps into 10 000 per day, it is the equivalent of calling the SE and begging them to remove your site from the database.