Despite the name, “cloaking” doesn’t refer to making spaceships invisible, or any Harry Potter-esque wizardry. It’s a method used to rank well for certain keyphrases typed into a search engine. In SEO terms, cloaking (sometimes called ‘IP Delivery’) means to present different versions of a web site to human visitors and web search ‘spiders’, based on their browser’s user agent or their IP address. One page is usually rigorously optimised for the search engine’s ‘spiders’ indexing the page - which would be terrible to read - and the other, separate page is designed to impress human visitors, usually with graphics that aren’t very effective for SEO purposes.

 
Question:
 
I have been to an internet marketing seminar, and have begun implementing certain SEO strategies in my website, but there is an area I am confused about - can I achieve better rankings in search engines, if I place a site map on my website?

Question:
 
I’ve recently set up my own business online and, even though I’m convinced I’m one of the world’s true undiscovered geniuses, when it comes to SEO I am prepared to hand over a little time and money to the experts in order to get it right. However, I don’t want to [...]

 
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As I haven’t been living under a rock for the past few years, I know that when it comes to search engine rankings, Google is the most important player to impress. I am really getting frustrated because try as I might, I can’t seem to rank well in Google anymore for my important key [...]

 
Anyone who can draw a parallel between Search Engine Optimisation and Martial Arts is, in my books, somewhat of a visionary. Turns out, the visionary in question is a young man with big ideas, achieving some big results with his online marketing solutions. Garrett Miller is a young entrepreneur fast gaining a reputation for his [...]

 
One of the first things we do when preparing for our Internet Marketing Training seminars is to analyse the delegates’ websites. Without being too condescending, it’s amazing how many companies haven’t even got the very basics right. But given the nature of most small businesses it is understandable. It’s a rare manager or owner who [...]

 
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I keep hearing the term ‘Alexa Ranking’. Just who is this Alexa anyhow and why should I care if she ranks me or not? Isn’t it just Google I want to give me a good ranking?
Thomas, Cornwall