4 ways to avoid SEO penalties

Technology Articles | February 1, 2010

In this article we will briefly touch on 4 things an SEO practitioner can do to avoid these penalties, and ensure their website sees unobstructed growth towards the top of search results.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a critical part of any internet marketing strategy. Although there are significant benefits to be had from properly executed SEO, improper SEO tactics can result in serious penalties that will send your website tumbling down the search results.

1) Never plagiarize – Simply put, plagiarize and you will get penalized. If you must leverage existing content, make sure to rewrite every last sentence. Even a single copied sentence can potentially result in a penalty. Carefully re-write and re-organize content if you are taking inspiration from a pre-existing source.

2) Avoid Keyword stuffing – As a rule, content should always be keyword rich. Filling your web pages with relevant keywords helps search engines, and users, determine the page’s value. However, overdoing your keyword density will result in a penalty. Ensuring that your keywords comprise no more than 5% of your content will keep your page safe from search engine penalties and help maintain their climb up the search ladder.

3) Never use hidden text – Hiding text behind images or by blending the text color in with the background is an easy way to get your page penalized. These tactics are underhanded and fall directly under the ‘black hat SEO’ category. Unless you have no desire to elevate your page’s results, always avoid hidden text.

4) Take it slow – If your site has 10 back-links on Monday, and 10,000 back-links on Tuesday, it will likely be penalized on Wednesday. Link building should be a gradual and organic process. Legitimate news events and trends can easily generate this amount of links, but this is where the human element comes in. A sudden influx of links will cause the site in question to get flagged. At this stage, a human we will be brought into the equation to determine the validity of the links. If your links were generated artificially, they will know.

Jefferson Spooner writes on behalf of inSegment, Boston's leader in search engine marketing, internet marketing , and the home of Boston SEO.

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4 ways to avoid SEO penalties

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