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5 Bad SEO Techniques you Must not do!
While it is important to know what to do for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) it is also important knowing what not to do. This article will outline 5 of the tactics that will get you penalised. In short, it doesn’t pay to try and “fool” the search engines.
1. Duplicate Content
You’ve heard that Google likes lots of content and that can sometimes be true. While making a multitude of very similar pages might seem like a smart way to create content on your website it probably won’t benefit you in the rankings. When Google finds multiple pages on your website with the same content it is likely to ignore most of them and remove them from its index. And, the pages it does leave in its rankings will be negatively impacted too.
2. Bad Links
Yes, you can have links coming to your site that are bad for you. You’ve probably seen websites that offer no value to anyone and have been created just for link swapping – sometimes called link farms. They encourage you to switch links with them for “SEO Benefit”. Don’t be fooled!
Also, don’t take part in schemes where people will create 100’s or 1000’s of links for you overnight for a cost.
While these sites can seem tempting, beware that a link from a bad site is much more damaging than having no link at all. Google themselves make it public that link buying en masse as an SEO tactic does get punished.
3. Hidden Text
Black text on a black background, tiny text that no user is likely to see, text behind pictures… and the list goes on. It might seem clever but the search engines are well aware of it. Could you get away with it? There is a very slim chance that you could. Much more likely it will be found and when it is a severe penalty will apply.
4. Keyword Stuffing
You want to mention important words through your content so does it matter how you do it? Yes it does. Your content should be written for your visitors. It is important to mention what your customers will be searching for in your content but you don’t need to force it. Heavy repetition of words and words out of context can actually get you penalised.
5. Cloaking
This is the term for techniques which have content for search engines to find but not users. Some very big companies have even tried this technique and when they were found out they were completely removed from Google’s index. Cloaking is generally not an SEO mistake that you can make unintentionally.
From time to time you might even see competitors getting away and seemingly benefiting from the tactics mentioned here. Rest assured that in the long term the vast majority do not get away with “fooling” the search engines. Penalties range from a drop in ranking position through to complete removal from the search engine index.
What You Should Do
As tempting as it is to try and take shortcuts with SEO, if you want long term results from your SEO you must be prepared to do it properly. You will get much more value and better rankings in the longer term by building your presence online using methods approved by Google and the other search engines. Start by developing and contributing useful, user-friendly content on your own website and on relevant websites linking to yours.
If you want a hand getting your website ranking higher up the list then Eightball Media can help. No black magic. Just a well planned strategy and a process of work that is proven to work over time.
