Search Engine Optimization can greatly help your business flourish. The core reason behind SEO is to ensure that your business is easily accessible to anybody submitting a related query on a search engine, most popularly Google. However, there is no cookie cutter way to search engine optimization, there are ways of course, but there aren’t really any overnight short cuts. Some mistakes, misconceptions and bad SEO strategies have gotten businesses as big as JCPenny spammed by Google. Here are some don’ts to save your business website from getting badly penalized rankings or from getting banned.
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1. Cloaking
Cloaking is termed to define the act of disguising a website so that it claims one service and provides another. Many spammers or even low key businesses use this strategy to deceive search engines by “cloaking” one purpose and serving another, especially to show ads. It is a bad strategy and can result in your website being banned by Google.
2. Duplicate or Plagiarize
Duplicating the same content on different pages of your websites is not acceptable by search engines. Same is the case with plagiarizing content from other websites. Such practices can get your content spammed or your website banned.
3. Automatic Rewrites
Many software offer automatic rewrites, it is pretty much the same as plagiarism. The only difference is that these software will just change a few words here and there and thus provide “rewritten” content. This kind of content gives a robotic feel and wouldn’t give your business any benefits. Google is on the lookout for these kind of spam and will severely drop your rankings if not ban your website.
4. Unrelated Keywords
Using unrelated keywords to optimize your website is another common practice. It means using keywords that do not relate to the goods or services that your company offers. This may be helpful for a while but can result in dire consequences if Google catches up to the spam.
5. Links
Links are like neighborhoods, you offer to link other websites and then those in turn link yours in order to increase the number of visitors. However, some websites pay to get their website linked from unrelated forums. It is unauthorized by search engines and wouldn’t do you any good in the long run.
6. Stuffed Keywords
Some websites contain stuffed keywords in the form of very small illegible fonts or by putting them at the end of the website. Another practice is to hide the text by making the background color and the color of the text the same, so that it isn’t visible but serves the purpose. This is also a temporary solution, if any at all, as Google can detect these practices.
7. SEO Spam
If you are hiring an SEO company to do the work for you then make sure that they are reputable and don’t end up implying the afore mentioned tactics to “help” your business. Hiring a bad SEO company will literally mean paying someone to mess up your business. So don’t fall for offers like 3,000 links for $30, because that is just not how it happens in the Google world.
A solid way is to invest in a website which is user-friendly, informative and reflects your businesses ideologies and ethics. This is the only sure way to attract visitors and make loyal customers.
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