THE DEADLIEST SINS OF SEO
Search engine optimisation is renowned for being
the best tool to be used for driving as much traffic
to a website as possible. However, when used incorrectly
in unethical terms, search engine optimisation can
result in the downfall of a website and have a fatal
effect of the overall success of the company concerned.
Many companies are not aware of the negative effects
they will get from not performing search engine optimisation,
which is the reason why the biggest search engine
optimisation sins have been listed below, to increase
a knowledge in how to accurately implement search
engine optimisation into a website.
Spamming:
The first thing to avoid in search engine optimisation
is spamming. It is unethical to spam and for this
reason search engines have been made to now be sensitive
to the various techniques which have been developed
to achieve top rankings for a website quickly and
almost effortlessly. When performing search engine
optimisation it is therefore important for you to
use only ethical methods as, in the case that spamming
is identified, the website will be blacklisted by
the search engine concerned.
Irrelevant Keywords:
To choose to implement irrelevant keywords to your
website is another option you need to avoid. Being
similar to spamming, by placing keywords which are
popularly searched for, yet have no relevance to your
website, is unethical, and can waste a lot of time
for those who are specifically looking for a website
which provides relevant information concerning the
keyword they performed a search for. Including the
wrong keywords to your website therefore means that,
even though you will have increased traffic to your
website, you will not get an increase in sale conversion
as the searches made were irrelevant to what you are
offering.
Having hidden text placed on your website in the
same colour as the main background is a deadly SEO
sin to commit!
— J. Nortje (Marketing Director)
Hidden Text:
Having hidden text placed on your website in the
same colour as the main background is a deadly SEO
sin to commit. Yes, it does allow to have more keywords
on your site for search engines to pick up on, but
it is unethical, and more and more websites are being
blacklisted for doing just this.
Doorway Pages:
Doorway pages use the “bait and switch”
technique, which functions though a web page being
specifically designed for the search engines so as
to achieve top rankings in particular keywords, yet
when the link is clicked redirects the user to another
page. Search engines have become aware of this trick
which many rely on to achieve good rankings for their
website and now focus on detecting such sites and
having them blacklisted.
Doorway Domains:
A doorway domain functions in a very similar way
to that of doorway pages in that a user may see a
specific URL, but when clicking it get redirected
to another. In most cases both the URL's contain the
same content with the hopes of increased search engine
rankings. Search engines are also aware of this trick
and are in turn detecting these sites and having them
removed.
Duplicate Content:
Having multiple pages (either on the same site or
by copying them over the other domains) with exactly
the same content and in turn the same keywords may
be good for achieving high rankings on search engines,
but it is unethical and one of the deadliest SEO sins
to be avoided.
Cloaking:
All-in-all what cloaking entails is methods used
to allow a website to show content to the search engine
which is different to what the visitor sees. Through
cloaking, a website is able to send through web pages
filled with keywords to the search engines, without
compromising themselves with regard to what a visitor
would like to see on a professional website.Yet again,
search engine are aware of this SEO trick and penalising
websites for doing this.
Keyword Spam:
Because success in the eyes of search engine optimisation
can only be achieved through incorporating good keywords,
the latest way to ensure that a website gets the highest
possible ranking on search engines is to incorporate
an excessive amount of keywords. This is unfortunately
identified as a form of spamming as it is the easy
way to get a website noticed by a search engine for
particular keywords which have been overloaded into
the meta tags.
Excessive HTML Markup:
As has been mentioned above, text plays a vital role
in determining the success of a website in search
engine rankings, and many ways have been developed
to include an increased amount of text out if view.
To hide this increased text many websites have an
increased amount of HTML markup. Search engines have
a pretty good idea of balanced HTML markup and so
can readily identify those websites that are being
unethical just through their HTML markup.
CREATING SEARCH ENGINE ROADBLOCKS
When in the process of website development, there
are a number of things you can do so as to ensure
that you do not encounter any search engine roadblocks.
These are not unethical measures of achieving higher
rankings in search engines but are rather based on
tweaking the general structure of your website so
that it makes it easier for websites to read it. Some
of the best methods to use for achieving this are
listed below:
Text in Images:
It is impossible for search engines to read text
which is embedded in an image. It is therefore suggested
that to be effective to achieve results in search
engines the ALT-tag be used for all the images.
Websites with Flash:
A flash-based website is highly attractive, yet links
and text implemented herein is completely unreadable
for search engines. For this reason the use of flash
must be limited, or a text-based website can be created,
so that search engines will be able to easily index
your web content.
Frame-based Websites:
Those websites which are created mainly from frames
create a big problem in terms of web content being
indexed as search engines can not read text in frames.
For this reason, the frame-based website needs to
be restricted with the removal of frames so that text
can be indexed.
Placing Free Content Behind Login:
There are websites out there who prefer to have their
visitors login with a password. These website may
be safer than others but the problem is that search
engines can not pass the login page so that they can
retrieve the content inside, hereby meaning that the
site cannot be indexed on search engines. For this
reason, deep consideration should be taken into restructuring
the website so that there is no longer the need for
a login page.
Having not enough original web content:
To ensure that your website does well in search engines,
it is important to include as much text as possible.
This is because search engines thrive on text and
will only index sites which have as much original
content placed on its pages as possible. Some suggestions
for creating original web content is to write articles
which are rich in relevant keywords and are differentiated
accordingly.
Site Inter-Linking:
When it comes to navigation on your website, it is
important that this is easy and user-friendly, so
that users can get to the various pages of your site
quickly, on average in less than two clicks. Poor
site navigation and inter-linking on a website proves
to be an obstacle for search engines to index it.
Directory Structure:
Be sure that when creating your site that the directory
structure is kept to the most two levels. Having a
deep directory structure which makes the URL too long
discourages others to link to your site.
Link Exchange:
One of the easiest and most effortless way for you
to increase the popularity of your website is to exchange
links with other sites. Having your link placed on
other sites and having their links placed on your
website is a good way to improve your rankings with
search engines as link popularity shows how important
your site is.
Performing Constant Search Engine Optimisation:
Search engine optimisation is not a once-off activity.
For a website to achieve good rankings on search engines,
and to continue doing so, search engine optimisation
is something which needs to be constantly updated,
with new keywords and search engine marketing campaigns
being implemented on at the least a monthly basis.
In conclusion, by acknowledging what has been said
above regarding the do's and dont's of search engine
optimisation, you can be sure that you will be implementing
the best website marketing strategies to ensure that
you achieve amazing results in better search engine
rankings and at the end of the day a good return on
your investment. For close to a decade now Intoweb
Marketing has been developing and carrying out search
engine optimisation for clients who through our expert
assistance have achieved even more than what they
had ever dreamed of from investing in a company website.
For more information on how Intoweb Marketing can
guide and assist you in all your search engine optimisation
and website-related endeavours, be sure to get in
touch today.
By waiting, you could be possibly losing millions!!
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