subject: Things to Avoid in SEO [print this page] Things to Avoid in SEO Things to Avoid in SEO
The rules keep changing about what Google and the other search engines use to index a site and rank it high in their search results but organic SEO will always be a powerful tool for increasing traffic and your site's rank. What works may change from time to time, but what to avoid generally stays the same.
White Hat versus Black Hat
There are two types of SEO, white hat and black hat. Although this sounds like something from an old Western, it refers to organic and forced SEO. Organic SEO is natural and upfront as well as ethical and the preferred way to drive traffic to your site. Black hat SEO engages in underhanded and unethical SEO practices that may produce results in a short amount of time and you may be tempted to use them when you make your own free website, but since search engines are more sophisticated today, black hat tactics will actually hurt your SEO in the long run. Using black hat techniques may result in your site becoming flagged and penalized by the search engines or getting removed from their indices entirely.
Examples of white hat SEO include relevant links, quality original content on your page and in the articles you post on article directories and blogs and using forums and blog comments to link to your site. Black hat SEO examples you want to avoid include such things as hidden text in your site, linking to unrelated sites or bad neighborhoods, keyword stuffing in your on-page content and articles, and using forum and blog comments on totally unrelated sites. Hidden text can be text that is the same color as you page background, text that is hidden behind images or text that is so small that the human eye can not see it (fonts set to zero). Search engines recognize these practices and hidden text is very detrimental to your SEO.
Black hat SEO also includes redirecting visitors to your site using a doorway page. A doorway page is a page that is created to be invisible to human visitors but seen by the search engine spiders. When the search engine spiders crawl pages they explore links that are found and doorway pages are attempts to create a fake network of links related to a site. While in the early days of the internet and SEO this was a somewhat common practice, it has now been recognized as black hat and using it will result in your website becoming penalized.
Keyword Stuffing
Keywords are important for SEO. Keywords/keyword phrases are picked up by search engines and help people find your site and the articles you post. Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of forcing keywords into your content. Keywords should be no more than 3 % of the body of your text and even that percentage is a bit high. To be effective keep keywords to approximately 2 percent. This enables your text to flow smoothly and naturally. If your content feels forced or is grammatically incorrect it will hurt your SEO because people will not stay on your page. If you have spent time and effort crafting the perfect site, either manually coding it or with a website builder, do not sabotage your efforts by using black hat tactics.
Links on Your Website
The links on your site should lead to other pages on your site or to related sites and posts. Search engine spiders follow the links they find on your pages and if they find that the sites they lead to are unrelated this will hurt your SEO. Link to relevant pages, related articles, comments on blogs and forums, and any articles you post on article directories. Conversely, when you post articles on article directories make sure that the links in these articles and your signature are working and lead back to related pages on your site. This creates a viable network of links to your site and search engines will recognize this and reward your site with a higher ranking in their databases.
Another practice to avoid when you make your own website is to make a page that is nothing more than links. While a link page may be helpful to your visitors, it does not contribute much to your SEO and can actually hurt it unless your link page is placed correctly. For a link page to be beneficial it needs to be one of the last pages on your site. Since most of the links will lead away from your page you do not want it to be one of the first pages they find. While a link page may be beneficial to affiliate marketing and developing a network of contacts, it does very little for your SEO.
Checking for Broken Links
One of the most important things you can do to ensure that your links are doing all they can for you is to make sure they work. People update their pages and a link that worked last week may be broken this week. Periodically check the links on your pages to be sure that they still work and lead to related pages and sites. When search engines find broken links they may assume that the site has become stagnant and unattended and may drop its ranking.
Keep your SEO practices above board and keep your page and links updated. Post articles and blog posts, link them back to your site and you will be able to drive traffic to your website using organic and ethical white hat SEO tactics.
