Many of the search engines, including Google and Yahoo are continually increasing their sophistication on methods for detecting sites that try to spam the search engines to gain top positions. There is no definite outline as to what the search engines class as spam and their algorithms are constantly changing so it can be hard to pin point however the following techniques are renowned for getting on the bad side of most search engines and generally results in the perpetrating website being penalised or even banned from the search results.
Keyword stuffing your meta tags – A lot of people seem to have the miss conception that the more keywords you include within your tags the more search results your site will appear on. This most definitely is not the case. If your meta tags are filled with too many keywords ,aka “keyword stuffing”, your website will either be penalised or your tags will be so diluted that your site wont appear on any search phrases.
The key to writing your tags is to keep things very focused, targeting around 5-7 key terms per page generally works well and results in a far more effective optimisation campaign.
Hidden text – We are seeing more and more people trying to hide text on their website either by making the text so small that it cannot be read by the human eye or trying to disguise it by using the same colour as their background, it seems its thought by some that by entering paragraphs stuffed with keywords that your site will rank better. This is a big no no as most of the search engines spiders look out for hidden text and penalise websites that are seemingly trying to increase their positions in this way.
Web Page Redirects – Sites that are used to redirect visitors to a page that isn’t usually seen by the search engines are usually doing so to no benefit of the visitor and the search engines have picked up on this therefore such redirects can be detected and can land your site with a penalty or ban.
Link farms – Although these make link building a lot easier it seems that such resources are frowned upon by Google so it’s definitely best to avoid these.
Using duplicate content – Always try to avoid using any duplicate content that has been taken from another website, this gets picked up by the search engines and can hinder the performance of your website within the search results.
Overdoing inbound linkage work – It’s very important not to overdo the amount of inbound links you create for your website. Some people believe the more inbound links you have the better and therefore start creating thousands each month, sometimes from websites that have completely no relevance to their own. Creating such an excessive amount of links will flag up the spam filters within Google and the other search engines, especially if they are built within very short succession to one another. There are a lot of stories out there of websites being banned for using such techniques, plus your optimisation will prove far more effective if you target quality links from trusted websites related to your own sector.
Many SEO experts define the above techniques as Black Hat SEO and using any of them is a very risky business and may have a detrimental effect on your website. Its best to stick to using ethical techniques that may take a little more effort but definitely pay off in the long run. If you’re not sure of the best techniques to use it pays to get an SEO expert on-board.
