Bad SEO Practices You Need To Always Avoid
Bad SEO Practices You Need To Always Avoid
I have used website SEO for my application development business site to make it rank much better over the last year, especially in my local area of Cleveland, Ohio USA. I implemented a number of strategies including keyword research for competitive and relevant search terms, appropriate keyword density per page, keywords in the title tag, minimal use of headers and a naturally conversant style of page content with just a few keywords included. These are all appropriate onsite optimization techniques or what they call “white hat” SEO.
But what about the bad practices aka “black hat” SEO. I would like to discuss some counterproductive site optimization techniques that you should always steer clear of. They can get you “red flagged” if not banned from the search indexes. If your URL isn’t visible anymore, then that defeats the purpose of even having a website to begin with.
On-Site SEO
“A flash website” can be visually stunning, but it won’t get you very far with the search engines. They are crawling your site in search of text that will assist them with configuring your search rank. Takeaway – a picture is not worth a thousand words to a search engine, so don’t bother with this one.
“Cloaking” means designing your website so the search engines see one version and visitors see another. A word to the wise – don’t!
“Doorway pages” are highly optimized for one topic, but then redirect you to another page containing unrelated content after you click on one from the SERPs. Hint – no one likes to be tricked and that includes the search engines.
“Duplicated content” is another problem area with regard to article syndication. This is less risky and may not even carry an outright penalty. However, this can lower the ranking of the page in your site. In other words, your page that contains the article that has been syndicated on other sites now has less leverage with the search engines since it is not unique. Google, Bing and Yahoo prefer unique content.
“Hidden text” is a big no-no. The search engines will wise up to this very quickly and you could find yourself in search rank hot water.
“Keyword stuffing” is a big red flag that can get you in real trouble with the search engines. I have heard that a keyword density of more than 10% is considered to be keyword stuffing. This can get you penalized or even banned from the search indexes.
“Swap links” are also called reciprocal linking and they are one of the oldest tricks in the book. They are also very easy for the search engines to detect, so don’t waste your time here. Swap links represent a form of barter to the search engines. They want to see one way back links to your site, because this is more indicative of an endorsement of your website.
“Use of session ids in web pages” will do a very good job of creating confusion among the search engines. If the web crawler sees one session id in your web page now and a different session id when it reaches it later on, then it thinks it has found two different pages on the same site. Neither version will be ranked and further, your website will be perceived as unstable. Search engine web crawlers like to see static pages when they reach your site.
What are some examples of SEO misinformation?
Good SEO Practices
There are other boo-boos I could mention here, but I think you get the idea from what was discussed. Search engines are designed to reward those who contribute substance to the internet. Keep this in mind when you orchestrate your SEO and you will be fine. Please be sure to also visit my website to learn more about my computer repair services.
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Bad SEO Practices You Need To Always Avoid
