The Internet
is full of great SEO marketing advice. However it’s also full of terrible
advice that could get your Website on Google’s blacklist. Here are the worst
SEO tips that you should never follow.
There is plenty of SEO marketing advice on the
Web today; some good and some bad. It's important to be able to distinguish
between the good advice that comes from white hat, ethical search engine
optimization professionals and the horrible advice that comes from the black
hat SEO spammers. If the tips and tricks seem too simple and too good to be
true, they probably are. Here's a list of some of the worst SEO advice that you
should avoid at all costs.
Hide lists of links on your Web
page to be picked up by search engine spiders.
Many black hat SEO firms hide keywords behind the scenes of the Website to
be crawled by search engine spiders. Although these cannot be seen by the
visitor, if they are discovered by the search engines, your site could be
penalized. If you are using META tags in the correct manner, you have
nothing to worry about. However, hiding full lists of keywords on your
site is a definite no-no.
Stuff your content full of
keywords. Keyword stuffing is a horrible
idea for two reasons. One is that your content becomes unreadable and your
visitors will leave the Website immediately. Two, keyword stuffing is
forbidden by Google and other search engines and doing so will get you
sent straight to the Google blacklist. To avoid keyword stuffing keep your
keywords to about one per paragraph. This will allow for Google to pick up
on your key phrases but ensure they don't interfere with the readability
of your copy for your visitors.
Use any link exchange to
increase link popularity. Although link exchanges are a
great way to generate links and more links equal higher rankings, it's
important to make sure the site that is linking back to you is relevant.
If you own a salon and your Website is to promote your business, having a sporting
goods store site link back to you isn't a relevant, reliable source.
Search engines will not reward high rankings to sites that have irrelevant
links, so make sure you go with quality over quantity in this department.
Try to rank for unrelated keywords
to generate more traffic. Trying to rank for every
keyword in cyberspace to drive the most possible traffic to your site is
useless. You aren’t going to be able to rank for unrelated keywords and
even if by some miracle you do, once people click your site and realize it
isn't what they thought it was going to be, they’ll leave in hurry and
never return.
Submit your Website to
thousands of search engines and directories at once.
Websites that promise to submit your site to thousands of directories for a
fee are untrustworthy. Don't fall for their schemes. Instead, concentrate
on increasing your link popularity organically and you'll receive more
rewards in the long run.
Believe an search engine
optimization marketing specialist that guarantees a number one spot on
search engines. Although it's possible for an
SEO specialist to get your site to the number one ranking, it takes time
and a lot of effort. Also, there are a lot of factors that cannot be
controlled and search engines are ever-changing. For this reason, you
should not believe an SEO firm that makes promises to get your site to
number one. If they express that they're doing what they can to get your
site as high up in the rankings as possible, then it's more likely that
they are an ethical, organic SEO firm. However, remember that the only
people who really know how Web crawlers operate are the Web crawling
programmers. There are so many variables that determine page rank, it's
impossible to know them all, which makes it impossible to guarantee high
rankings.
Listen to SEO marketing experts
who say search engines can’t index your site because of the coding.
Although there are some poorly coded pages that create problems for search
engines, for the most part, whether you code your Website using HTML,
XHTML, CSS, ASP, PHP, Javascript or a mix, search engines will be able to
find and crawl your Web pages. If an SEO firm is demanding to re-design
your entire site to make it more SEO-friendly, ask a second opinion before
going through with it, because they may just be trying to squeeze more
money out of you.
Conducting your own research, talking to many
different search marketing firms and experts and continuing to educate yourself
on SEO is the only way to ensure you don't fall for the black hat SEO tricks.
However, if you follow these tips and make yourself aware of the dangers of
unethical SEO, you will be able to stay away from the bad SEO firms and build
an Internet marketing team that will actually help your business rather than
hurt it.
Wendy Suto, President
and CEO of Search Circus, which is a full service certified and ethical SEO and marketing firm that offers corporate blogging, PR and more.
