Using unethical SEO practices isn’t worth the time or effort. Search engines often severely punish people using these tactics and it can stop your website from receiving traffic. Google’s new Panda algorithm is smarter than ever and the most recent update Google Penguin includes a filter to find and punish over optimised websites. Great content is still the best way to gain an audience. Instead of using these sneaky tactics, it’s a better idea to spend your time on providing viewers with relevant content. Here are five SEO practices we suggest to avoid.
This concept is somewhat self-explanatory. Keyword stuffing is forcibly putting too many keywords in your content to try rank higher on a search engine. This often has the opposite effect as it makes the content less readable for your viewers and Google is known to punish websites which employ this tactic. While using relevant keywords is still important, key word stuffing is known to be an outdated method, which search engine bots now ignore. Another related practice is spamdexing.
This is another sneaky tactic related to keyword stuffing. In an attempt to try make the content more readable but still stuffed with keywords, some people try to hide text all over their website. This can be as simple as rendering the text invisible by making it the same colour as the website background or something more complex like putting it in your code. Google bots are now smart enough to spot this tactic and your page rank will decrease as a result.
Don’t be scared off by the vast amount of information and technical jargon out there. Using SEO is important for any business no matter how big or small and it’s relatively easy to get started with. Avoiding SEO isn’t a wise decision as it is a rapidly growing form of marketing and can help you gain thousands of new clients. Think of SEO like a phone book or a directory. If you are not listed, your customers will struggle to find you and you will be missing out on a lot of business while your competitors reap all the benefits.
Gaining links to your website from other popular and relevant websites is a great way of getting new viewers and Google’s attention. However, paying unrelated or spam websites for links is a violation of any search engine’s Terms of Service, and it can get a site banned.
Google is constantly on the lookout for websites which are copying other people’s content and punishes them accordingly. This is potentially illegal due to copyright issues and most importantly, it’s immoral to steal other people’s hard work. If you have multiple websites with the same content, it’s probably a good idea to set up a redirect link as Google may still punish you for duplicating your content.
Check out our article on basic SEO terms you should know to get started. Alternatively if you’re still stuck, Guaranteed SEO are experts in this field and can help. With over 15 years of experience we can help you make the most out of SEO, no matter what type of website or company you have.
