The ten things that should not be done in SEO
SEO is based on an ever-changing set of algorithms and has evolved over the years. The internet is an ever-changing medium, and one of the worst things you can do is use outdated or outdated SEO methods. Many old tactics are now considered ‘black-hat’, meaning they are looked down upon by the SEO community and can result in penalties for search engines.
1. Keyword Stuffing is stuffing as many keywords onto a page as possible, without regard to the consistency of the page. Anything above 2-3% density is now considered “filling” as it typically results in a high “bounce” rate (visitors become upset and leave the website without making a purchase). Keywords-filled pages are slowly disappearing from search engine indexes.
2. PageRank manipulation is commonly seen among black hat webmasters who still think that PageRank will improve their site enough to get rankings even with poor content. They will exchange links, buy links, and sign up for link farms to try to artificially increase their value in search engine estimation. This behavior can result in you going back three to nine pages in the rankings or even losing your index status!
3. Irrelevant links are another way to increase links to a site – just go out there and ask anyone to link to you. Once again, links to your site are now mostly ignored by search engines if they come from somewhere totally unrelated, for example a payday cash loan site linking to a site about dog training.
4. Article spinning almost ruined the value of article marketing. When Google installed a duplicate content filter to prevent identical content posted in different places from crowding the SERPs, the black-hatters developed software to shuffle articles and create dozens of new articles from just a few originals. Paragraphs were changed and words substituted using a bad synonym reference, resulting in a bunch of unintelligible articles that were then automatically submitted to all the article sites on the net. Google is working on a way to recognize threaded articles and ignore them. Don’t use ‘rotating software’, it’s not worth it.
5. Spamming blogs and forums is one of the worst things you can do to ruin your online marketing reputation. Becoming an authority on a topic is fine, but most communities prefer an active participant than someone just commenting to get a link. in your signature. Play fair and do your best.
6. Flash-dominant sites look great, but are very difficult for search engines to index correctly. If you’re in love with Flash, use it sparingly and have alternate HTML pages for the world wide web spiders to crawl. You need text and tags for a Flash site to perform to its full potential.
7. Ignore sitemaps. A good sitemap is a must. A newbie mistake is to think that directory submission is the fastest way to get indexed. A good XHTML sitemap can do wonders for your site, and when combined with a ping from a blog, it should get new content indexed the same day once you’re up and running.
8. Paying for links has been covered a bit above, but it’s important enough for its own bullet point. Don’t, unless you’re doing it strictly for traffic and not following the links you buy. Google will apply a quick penalty if a single person reports you for buying links.
9. Footer links (contrary to rumors) don’t surprisingly improve your rankings. Don’t waste time with intrigues: go out there and build links naturally and organically, producing great content and advertising it through social media.
10. Last but not least, don’t be evil. That’s the biggest search engine mantra of all, and it covers all of the sneaky and covert activity mentioned above. Follow Google’s directive and thrive: disobey and you’ll find yourself languishing in the wastelands of page six of the SERPs, wondering what happened.