Many people now know good Search Engine Optimsation (SEO) when they see it – high rankings in search engines for chosen keywords is one easy way to spot good SEO in action, and usually a pretty fair indication that all is well with a web site, and it’s ranking.
But what about Bad SEO? If your site is filled with good quality relevant content, that you’re sure potential customers would love, but is still languishing deep within the search engine result pages (SERPs), what then? Is this a lack of good SEO – probably, but there’s also a chance your site is implementing bad SEO, and that’s, well, bad.
Bad SEO, also known as ‘Black-hat’ SEO – conjuring images of satanic computer witchcraft – are techniques that are used in an attempt to trick search engines into listing a site higher than its content would otherwise allow. It normally means trying to get a site listed on the first page or so of Google for keywords that are only loosely relevant (if at all relevant), to the topic of the site.
I can understand why some of these dark art conjurers of black hat SEO work their magic to artificially improve the rankings of the site: those who normally try and fool search engines usually have good reason to do so – their content ain’t that hot. Those that employ dark techniques are usually cut from the same cloth as spammers (probably a heavily-stained, rather musky, raggedy edged cloth. Or an often-used handkerchief.) – there sole intention is to drive more traffic to their (usually un-remarkable) sites, in the hope that some people may click on their ads, or buy a product from them. This may sound appealing to you, but I want to show you the (bright white) light.
Why is bad SEO so bad?
Most search engines have refined the way it lists sites over many years (well, a lot of Internet years), and we can safely assume that they know a thing or two about how to return results that are highly relevant to the searcher (after all, those search engines that still exist, still exist). In order to do this, they have developed algorithms to hunt out high-quality, relevant content. It makes sense that their very future depends on maintaining the relevancy of the results they return. Following this logic, it also makes sense that they don’t display content that is trying to pretend it is something it is not.
Search engines know the most common techniques for trying to disguise content, and penalise sites that are blatantly trying to fool them. In some cases, sites can be banned from search results altogether. Ouch. Not so clever now, heh, bad SEO.
As search engines understand these naughty techniques, I wanted to share some of the most common with you, so you can make sure you avoid these pitfalls – and let good prevail.
What to avoid – bad SEO techniques
To avoid a knuckle-rapping from the search engine giants, here are some of the more common forms of SEO trickery:
- Hidden Text (or cloaking). Text which is available to search engine bots (the small programs that constantly scout the web, hunting out sites and content), but is not displayed to visitors. Bots will make sure that any text it comes across is also displayed to standard visitors – otherwise it is marked as spam. Why else would you want to hide text on your web site?
- Keyword Spamming. Including an excessive number of keywords in your site copy, writing sentences that make no sense (but are stuffed with keywords), or stock-piling words and phrases at the bottom of your pages – just to promote keywords is considered spamming. Search engines are smart enough to know whether a sentence makes any sense, or exists purely to publish keywords.
- Duplicate Content. Content should be unique. Any articles which are copied, will usually only be credited to the first site which published the content. Other sites will be penalised for duplicating – as it is usually only done for the purpose of building content. Always write unique, relevant content.
- Link Farming. Encouraging links from unrelated sites in order to bolster your incoming links is frowned upon. Why would you want tons of links from sites that have nothing to do with your business or your message? Oh, probably to try and get a higher ranking – waste of energy. Search engines won’t credit you with incoming links from unrelated sites. Worse still, don’t go buying links to your site – these sites are probably known to the likes of Google, and will poison your site karma.
For other SEO mistakes, check out Matt Cutts’ blog – Matt is head of webspam at Google, and often posts about bad (and good) SEO.
Check out your site and make sure your not employing any of these crimes against search engines rankings. If you are, there’s a good chance that your ranking is suffering.
Want to repent your wicked ways? Put your black hat back in the drawer and spend your effort trying to shine in your niche through fantastic, original, and relevant content. Besides, good always triumphs.
