Search Engine Don’ts

There are several search engine optimization methods currently available. They can help you to improve the results and performances of your business. As a result of technological development within the search environment new and useful methods are continuously developing. Therefore you have a number of options when trying to find out which methods work best.

Although many methods help you in improving your site’s rankings there are certain methods looked down upon, such as.

Keyword stuffing
It is the first trap many companies fall for. Keywords can help a business get the attention of the search engines and relevant searchers. Therefore, it often seems like a productive idea for some companies to use as many of these keywords as possible and fill them into all the content they create.

Hidden Text
Some companies resorted to tactics such as making the text color of the keywords same as the background color. Thus the keywords became invisible to the readers. Search engines have wised up to such tactics and can detect these keywords no matter what the font color. Hence you must steer clear such unscrupulous tactics.

Link Farms
Google and the other search engines use inbound links as one measurement of website popularity. A Link farm is a community of websites that exist only to provide links to other sites. Therefore many link farms were established to allow webmasters to place links pointing back to their sites, thus increasing their search engine rankings. Although this worked initially most search engines now look at the ‘authority’ of the site that is providing the link. If your site has many links from ‘low authority’ sites (such as link farms), you'll find these inbound links are given little weight in increasing your search ranking. In fact, these poor quality inbound links can actually hurt your rankings.

Link Spamming
Link spamming typically involves a software program that searches for blogs, forums, and other online discussion groups. When one is found, a link is automatically left in a comment area. The program can deposit hundreds and even thousands of links within a very short time. Most blogging software’s now have ways of detecting and filtering link spammers.

Duplicate Sites
Duplicate sites involve creating multiple copies of a website and tweaking a few elements in hopes that the new sites will rank higher and/or increase traffic. Google and the other search engines are wise enough to catch duplicate sites and removing them. It is possible that search engines won’t detect the duplication if the site is changed just enough nonetheless you can still be reported to the search engines and your site will be banned.

Consequences of Unethical Practices
The search engines are very clever and can easily spot all these false attempts at improving a website’s rankings and punish those found to be doing it. Sites which are obviously using keyword stuffing, link spamming etc. experience a drop in rankings and therefore a reduction in exposure too. These sites will also be viewed negatively by internet users who arrive on their web pages because the content within the site will be low quality and unhelpful.
Some business owners involved in SEO do not just make a few mistakes because they use    unethical SEO methods but make a major mistake because they hire a black hat SEO company to run their SEO campaign. This means numerous unethical SEO techniques will be adopted and their businesses will be damaged significantly