The world of SEO is complicated, and search engines have algorithms that consist of a large number of factors that determine how a website should be ranked. Bad SEO campaigns are not anything new, and can really have devastating results on your rankings. Bad SEO practices are those that are unethical, outdated, and simply don’t follow Google webmaster guidelines. The main goal of SEO is to optimize your website for search engines. Bad SEO will get you quite the opposite results. In this article, we are going to discuss some of the most common bad SEO techniques that some webmasters tend to utilize when building their websites.
Keyword Stuffing
If you are repeating the same keyword a great number of times merely for the purpose of optimization, while ignoring their actual usefulness in the text, you are doing a bad job. This is not just something that your website visitors will certainly be persuaded by to leave. It signals the search engines that you are attempting to trick their algorithms. The best way to go is to mention the keywords in the title, description, first paragraph, and a few more times in the text so that it sounds natural.
Purchasing Links
Purchasing links is a bad SEO tactic that some people still manage to get away with. Google makes use of three methods in order to detect such links. The Penguin algorithm has automatic detection for bad linking patterns, and instantly affects the website’s ranking. If you get hit by Penguin, your business will surely suffer. Google also accepts spam reports, which could result in a manual review of your site. If you’re being reviewed, it’s best that Google doesn’t find any problem with your website. Finally, Google has quality rating editors that review search results. Part of their job is to find purchased links and flag them.
Duplicate Content
When it comes to your content, it is extremely important that it is original and unique. Duplicate content is one of the greatest sins of bad SEO. The fact is that content that isn’t one-of-a-kind simply will not do. If the search engine has already indexed the same content, it will find no reason to do the same with your webpage, because it doesn’t have anything to offer. If you really need to have duplicate content on your site because that’s how your business works, you should set those pages to “no index” and “no follow”.
Cloaking
Cloaking consists of presenting the search engine spiders with different content than the one that you present the user with. No matter how “good” a reason you think you have for doing this, it is considered a bad practice by search engines. Google refuses to take responsibility for assessing what your intent is. The fact is that this practice has been very popular with spammers. That is why search engines come up with new bots from time to time with the sole purpose of cloaking detection. If your website is detected as one that implements cloaking, there is a high chance that it will get banned.
A lot of Outgoing Links
Incoming links aren’t the only kind that can have a negative impact on your website. The same can happen with outgoing links. SEO expert websites such as websitesthatsell.com.au will tell you that a large number of outgoing links that don’t use the “no follow” tag lead to the site being seen as a link farm or a paid directory. It’s generally the best practice to tag any links in comments, ads, and websites you potentially don’t trust as “no follow”.
Slow or Unavailable Website
The fact stands that your website needs to load in less than 5 seconds, and needs to be available for your users all the time. Not following this is considered a bad SEO practice and comprises a bad user experience. In order for your website to be available 24/7, you need a good hosting provider. You also need to set up your site on a good CMS, such as WordPress.
In Summation
Never try to trick the search engines’ algorithms. Instead of trying to be shady or simply following bad SEO practices, do your research in the ones that are actually good and endorsed by search engines, and focus on implementing them into your SEO campaign.
