RSS Feed (xml)1. Keyword Spamming
One of the most common SEO mistakes we see is “Keyword Spamming”. If you shoehorn your chosen keywords into your page within each and every key indicator then you will be guilty of Keyword Spamming. Keyword density needs to be no more that 3 – 5%. If you exceed this then
you will fall into the beginners trap of thinking that more is better, when in fact, more is definitely less in terms of your rankings.
2. Invisible text
This practice falls into the realm of “Blackhat” activity. It is also quite basic in terms of non compliant behaviour. It is very easy for Googlebot to compare your text colours with your site background colours and to determine that you are trying to add invisible content. A word of warning, Googlebot is not 100% accurate in thes regard. In the last year, we have seen a site penalised for using invisible text when the actual crime was non existent. The site was predominantly dark grey on white, with a couple of text boxes that were white on dark grey. Googlebot failed to pick up the text box background and the site dropped out of the
rankings.
While it might have been an isolated event, it is worth considering taking steps to prevent the same thing happening to your site.
3. Bulk Linking
If you add too many links too quickly then you will be penalised, as simple as that. Google wants to see natural organic growth, so unless you are Britney Spears and have just done something newsworthy, the odds that your website will attract thousands of new links all at once is remote.
Google knows this, and as it works primarily on probability and statistics, if in doubt you will be thrown out.
There are many sites online offering you lots of links for a few pounds. No effort involved, no hard work. Most, if not all of these sites offer very little in terms of a benefit for your site.
4. Paid Links
Google hates paid links. Having said that, Google also makes all it’s money from paid ads. So expecting the rest of the world to cease is maybe asking a bit much. Google terms and conditions states that it will penalise sites that use paid links, but it doesn’t go as far as defining what it considers to be a paid link, nor how it intends to police this. Is a banner ad a paid link? Yes, but not particularly well targeted.
5. Linking to bad neighbourhoods
When you receive a link request, take the time to check out the link site. If Google doesn’t like the site then you should not either. Check that the site has some Google PR, or at the very least is cached if it is a new site. If you link to sites that are doing things wrong, then you will be “Promoting” sites that are doing things wrong and as a result you will be tarred with the
same brush.
6. Cloaking
Cloaking is the process of showing one page to your visitors whilst showing another to Googlebot and fellow bots. It is extremely bad form and will see you removed from any competitive listings very quickly. If you cloak your site, then the sites that you out rank will complain and Google will send round a big man in a dark suit to have a look at you….. this always results in the offending site being removed from the rankings. It is then incredibly difficult to be reinstated back into the rankings, so DO NOT do it.
7. Duplicate Content
Googlebot wants to rank original content. If you consider what Google is looking to provide for its searchers, then you will see that the answer is “Original, Fresh, Informative Content”. However if you scrape your site content from another site then you will only be duplicating existing content. If you managed to locate the content to copy, chances are that Google knows of it too. Googlebot can easily check your content for duplicates, if in any doubt, Google will devalue a site with duplicate content, the only exception for this are Article directories who often host the same articles.
