Search Engine Optimization Techniques to Avoid

There are several things, considered "spamming", that you can do to try to get your page listed higher on a search engine results page. As a rule of thumb, you should never try to trick or deceive a search engine in any way, or you risk being blacklisted by them and all your efforts will be wasted. Since the majority of your traffic will come from search engines the risk far outweighs the benefits in the long run. Search engine operators spend a lot of time trying to create a useful tool for finding related content on the web, and we have the utmost respect for these efforts. Below is a list of some things we recommend that you never do when trying to achieve better listings.

Do not:

• Do anything to try to trick the search engines into listing your site better. If what you are doing is not listed as one of our search engine tips the search engines will likely view it as spam and penalize you.


• List keywords anywhere except in your keywords meta tag. By "list" we mean something like - keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3, keyword 4, etc. There are very few legitimate reasons that a list of keywords would actually appear on a web page or within the page's HTML code and the search engines know this. While you may have a legitimate reason for doing this we would recommend avoiding it so that you do not risk being penalized by the search engines. When you integrate keywords into your title and alt tags, integrate them into a readable sentence that will not raise the red flag of a simple list.


• Use the same color text on your page as the page's background color. This has often been used to keyword stuff a web page. Search engines can detect this and view it as spam.


• Use multiple instances of the same tag. For example, using more than one title tag. Search engines can detect this and view it as spam.


• Submit identical pages. For example, do not duplicate a page of your site, give the copies different file names, and submit each one. Search engines can detect this and view it as spam.


• Submit the same page to any engine more than once within 24hrs.


• Use any keywords in your keywords meta tag that do not directly relate to the content of your page.


• Use a search engine optimization or submit service that promises you a top ranking by optimizing your page and submitting and resubmitting your site to thousands of search engines. We have yet to find a service like this that really works, and many will use some or many of the techniques listed above, which can actually hurt, rather than help your site to rank well.