A few things that you shouldn’t do for SEO
There are a number of strategies for achieving high positions in the search engines, and there are a few which ensure you won’t! This article addresses some of the more common ones. So, this weeks nominees in no particular order are:
Duplicate Content
This is quite a common problem throughout the web, either the website owner thinks they can just copy some text from another page because they can’t be bothered, or is reselling products and uses the vendors descriptions from their website. If you really can’t write a page from scratch, try reading each paragraph through, then rewriting it in your own words, this should make it unique enough to make sure it is indexed (unless you have a photographic memory!)
Linking to Bad Sites
The search engines know that you control who you link to, so make sure you only link to reputable sites and certainly not those which employ the methods listed in this list. If you do they will likely penalize your site and your rankings will drop.
One Title Tag Per Page
The Title Tag is an important seo factor on each page of your website. Many moons ago there was a flurry of webmasters realising that you could add multiple title tags to a page and this would help to increase search positions, this is no longer the case and again will almost definitely have an adverse affect, as search engine spiders can easily find this little trick.
Cloaking
If you don’t know how to do it, don’t learn, it’s a very old trick which is likely to get your website banned altogether. It’s a way of showing different content to the search engines to that which a visitor views, easily detected and a big No No!
Keyword Stuffing
This is repeatedly using the same keyword over and over throughout a page, the SE’s really aren’t that stupid, if it doesn’t read properly, you have probably overdone it. (see my recent post about the length of web pages, this talks about keyword density)
Hidden Text
Another one which is easily spotted by search engines. This is when you have white writing on a white background (replace with your favorite colour’s) usually stuffed full of keywords.
Hidden Links
Not usually so easily spotted, but it’s against the Google law. If you are competing with other sites and they spot you doing this they may well report you, if so big G may do a manual review of your site and again, if these are found you may have a penalty heading your way.
Doorway Pages
This is when you have a page set up for a particular keyword, but it redirects to another page, another old technique that will not work in the long term.
Don’t get me wrong, many of these techniques may work well for a short time and some of them are the kind of techniques which are employed by search engine spammers. But if like me, you want to get a good position and keep it, Just don’t do it!
What about the speed you build links to your website? I was always told that it’s not a good thing to build them too fast, and if thats right, what is too fast?
Hi again Andy,
The points listed in the post were only really to do with on page factors, however it’s a valid point and worth mentioning. Yes, you should build backlinks slowly and steadily, although how slowly is unknown, I think as a general rule of thumb, if a site is very new or does not have a history of links being addd, you should start off very slowly, perhaps as slow as 5-10 per day, then build it up.
Although, if a site has been around for some time and you have consistenly added links to it over that time, you could get away with a lot more. I don’t want to put a figure on it in case I’m wrong, but I have never tripped a filter yet, probably because I am always very careful
Wish I had the time to build more than 10 per day, the only thing I can do that fast is directories, but you don’t want all directories.
Articles and Press Releases are fairly quick,although not as quick as directories, but the links are probably a bit better (particularly the press releases)