Cloaking is practically a black hat SEO method that presents a totally different content rather than the content it should present. So how can cloaking be an ethical SEO method?

Consider a full Flash site with all the content embedded on it. How can search engines crawl the content on your Flash-based site? The solution is simple–cloaking. By utilizing the CSS method of making a block invisible, you can display your Flash site as well as the content you intended to get indexed on search engines.

Consider this Flash site with cloaked content: Wideout Technology Services, Inc.

The content you see is embedded on Flash itself but I did include the same original text within the HTML and did use CSS to hide the text to the actual audience. Now, try viewing the source code (View then Page Source or CTRL+U on Firefox). You will notice the original content on the HTML itself and if you look more closely, you will see the context enclosed in this block:

<div class="noflash">
 <h1>A True Global Workplace</h1>
 <p>We believe that a business should not submit to geography.
  ...
</div>

And in my style sheet goes the trick to hide the text content to browsers but not to search engines and text/screen readers:

.noflash {
	display: none !important;
}

For the conclusion, you can ethically use cloaking to your site’s pages provided you are still showing the same original content to both search engines and your actual viewers/users.

You have to concentrate on you business–the services and products you offer and prepare quotes for different types of clients if necessary. Introduce yourself to the market of your choice. Here are the ways of doing it:

Create your own website or personal portfolio. With just 9 per year for domain name plus 36 for hosting, you will be able to get a decent web space. Look for online tutorials regarding web development so you can build your own  or just let friends help you with the design and development of your site. If you can afford a developer, then that would mean more convenience to you.

Participate to different community forums. Be friendly and don’t go straight ahead telling them the details of your business cause they might think of you as a spammer. If you are welcomed, that’s the time you can introduce them to your products and services. Be sure to review their forum rules and post in a correct category. Consider being a regular member by posting often, helping members search for what they are looking for, and by giving good advices concerning topics you are an expert of.

Join internet groups of a particular interest. Internet groups such as Yahoo! Groups or Google Groups are not the same as community forums. Groups are more focused on a specific subject matter. Make sure you join a group that perfectly describes your business.

Create signatures and use it. Your  signature is not just for display but will be a good reference to your business. Signatures are placed below email messages, forum profiles or posts. These signatures  appear everytime you send email or post into forums and appear as links to your site. Remember in SEO, the more relevant site that links to your site, the more page rank you get. You can have a signature like this on your email:

--
Jonathan Discipulo
Philbyte Web Services

http://www.philbyte.com/

And you can have this signature for your community forum profile or groups profile:

Philbyte Web Services

http://www.philbyte.com/

Always  put a link under your posts and email messages so your audience will have the chance to reach you and know more about your business. Those are some approaches to selling yourself to your target audience and eventually will help your business visible to search engines.

HTML compliance – Make every page comply with the HTML version you are using with consistency. We currently have HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.1. You must understand that both versions are different and should not be used together–just choose one. After making your page with proper HTML syntax, you may use this link to verify that your HTML is properly coded:

http://validator.w3.org/check/referer

Meta Tag compliance – Most search engines, crawlers and spiders ignore meta tags that aren’t written correctly. This can make your site out of their indexes. There are search engines today that don’t rely on and totally ignore meta tags; But still, it is a good practice to include those in every page of your site.

Image Optimization – Images should be optimized accordingly to make it load faster even in browsers running with slow internet connections. This includes dial-up and wireless connections. Also, including correct dimensions in <img> tags, stuffing title and alt properties will make search engines crawl your site seamless and faster.

CSS compliance – If you are using cascading style sheets, you should validate every line and comply with the CSS rules. This link will verify that your CSS is properly constructed:

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/check/referer

There are lots of standards to follow like banner sizes, ways on displaying links, hierarchy of categories/sections, content management, etc. After you have complied with all those in mind, you can be confident not only of your site’s visibility in search engines but also about your site being developed in a professional way. You can even tell your clients about those standards you did apply on their sites. This will make them trust your web professionalism and spread the word about your business.