There is a black hat technique that I don't know what it's called. Need help labeling it.

[jmanly]

I use to pay this guy to do seo for one of my sites. I know the basics when it comes to White Hat SEO, and this guy turned me on to some blackhat techniques. . .except for one.
I'm a graphic designer by trade and I know basic XHTML/CSS and jquery, so I'm always up for redesigning and restructuring my sites. Well, he ranked this one site quick. In a week it had been indexed and almost on the first page.
Anyways, long story short, I went to re structure the html for what ever reason, rename some files, and switch out images, and he STRONGLY advised against that. He said that if I wanted to keep my strong ranking I should keep the files the same name and practically leave the HTML alone. Even so far to say to not even cut them up into PHP; because PHP is harder to rank for!
Knowing what I know of SEO, and Search Engines, I thought that that was pretty laughable what he was saying.
I've looked and read all over the forums for any resemblance of this technique, but I can't find it. No one does it.
So here are the key points:
1. all files must stay the same name.
2. If you originally built the site out of tables, they must stay tables.
3. You cannot add any new information without them "SEO-ing" it first.
4. I don't know if this is part of it or if it's actually really good basic SEO, but Meta tags must follow a certain order, and no new keywords can be added or changed.
Anyways, if you guys can help me figure it out, I'd like to know just for myself what the mechanics behind the magic technique is.

 

[xboxps3wow]

Once you change stuff on your page, google will have to re-evaluate the page and give it appropriate ranking...
Stuff you do might not have any affect at all, but if you change a lot of code... it will.

 

[speakeasy602]

Also, you can use .htaccess and mod rewrite to give php sites any extention you want, so it sounds a little flawed. I do know a bunch of SEOs that live and breath static sites, but I don't know if there's a huge benefit either way. Dynamic sites outrank static site 100/1, so I can't say that your guys techniques are anything earth shattering.

As far as whatever it's called, I call it cautious onsite SEO, but he's probably trying to make you think he's smarter about seo than he actually is.

Whether you're black hat, white hat, or grey hat, the common belief is that links are more important than onsite, so stick to that.

 

[jmanly]

s0ap: the term has search volume of around 200,000 on google. I know he runs some reports like IBP to really optimize the content. It's not luck, i've seen him produce these results over and over again.

xboxps3wow: some of the things i've mentioned to chane were primarily border jpgs. I don't understand how removing the tables and keeping the content the same affects rank?

speakeasy602: Why do your SEO buddies prefer static sites over dynamic? Especially now that G0000gle has changed to the caffeine search algorythm that prefers constantly updated material?

 

[jmanly]

sorry about the underlines i don't know why that happened

 

[bakxos]

how many visits were you receiving per month?
200k broad can be easily 500 exact and 0 competition.

Apart from that think about it a bit. How much did he charge you for that?There is someone that knows how to rank websites in the first page for sure and instead of making millions from adsense,cpa,eshops or anything else he sells SEO to you and the disappears? And if he can do it over and over again, whats the fuss with the html?You change it, he ranks you again!So simple

I suppose that the guy:
1.was lucky
2.the keyword had 0 competition
3.he is a very nice guy
4.he is not that bright.

 

[polocolto]

Dynamic sites outrank static site 100/1,

That is because 100/1 use wordpress and the like. I have static html sites ranking very high.

 

[dracony2]

if you change layout stuff may happen. For one of my sites, which was strongly image driven, at one point what google thought to be the content (and what it put in site description in SERP) was a mashup of menu anchor texts=\
so be careful)

 

[jmanly]

Thanks guys.
at Bakxos,
I've seen the traffic from one of his sites and in one month he was at 36 visitors, from what I saw on the Analytics. Still he was on the first page, 4 from the top.
at polocolto:
I don't understand why Static Sites are better?

Anyways, this guy for sure has some kind of "trade secret" that works for him. He's only charged at most 5,000 for the year, and the lowest 1,500. I don't know why he doesn't branch out and try to conquer the world. I just really wanted to know what his secret might be so he would stop running his mouth on how great he is.

Thanx guys

 

[Satan Claus]

I have to ask... are you one of those forum trolls ?

 

[desigirl]

I have to ask... are you one of those forum trolls ?

I got my dosage of amusement out of this quote. Thank you Satan Claus.

 

[plut0]

on static page : keyword density is fixed.
on dynamic page : keyword density just fluctuate.
That is the basic on page seo knowledge as i know. All we know that google are giving more attention on your xml sitemap for content, valid html structure for code and fast loading time.

 

[sammy12]

I think all he was saying was basically "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". I know what it is like to want to constantly tweak your own site, though, especially being knowledgeable in web design (I am too). If you had him do SEO work, that's what HE knows. YOU know web design. He just doesn't want what he did messed with, especially since whatever that was got you up there. What I would do is wait awhile, then just make your changes based on the appearance, not the structure.. that is, keep the image names the same (no biggie, he probably named the images according to your site), if tables are used, try to keep the structure of those the same, with keywords the same and in the same cells, link names, title and description, headline names, etc etc, try to keep the same, or at least similar. Once your site is established and has age and more incoming links, you should be able to get away with more onpage changes.

 

[phas3d]

"2. If you originally built the site out of tables, they must stay tables."

I call BS! Did your contract state that any tweaks or edits were covered under the original contract? Meaning, is the extra work he will do work he won't get paid for???

 

[rakka]

Assuming you change the site and the ranking drops, if you change the site back to exactly how it was, will the ranking recover? If thats the case I'd change it just to see if the ranking drops or not. (depending on how much the page was making me)

 

[jmanly]

Thank you guys,
at Satan Claus, I'm very noobish, what is a forum troll?

at phas3d, no the contract didn't state anything about making changes. The warning came after work was completed

at rakka, I don't know, that would be a great test.

 

[jmanly]

I think I may have a clue on how he does his strategy! I think he uses invisible links to or from his website. Any one have any thoughts on this? Could it work?