While SEO is definitely a worthwhile activity, it isn't always easy. There is a lot of bad information out there about techniques that don't work. If you use any of these techniques, it may actually hurt your rankings instead of help them.
1. Using Invisible Text
One trick that a lot of webmasters have used over the years is to put invisible text into their pages. They stuff this text with keywords that they want to rank for. This way, they think that they can make their content sound more natural for readers, while at the same time tricking the search engines. The problem with this scenario is that it doesn't actually work. Although it may have worked at one time, search engines have gotten a lot smarter in recent years and have taken care of that loophole.2. Buying a Bunch of Links
While paying for one or two strategic links may not necessarily hurt your rankings, doing it on a large scale can. Many sites get busted trying to buy 10,000 blog links or something similar for their sites. These links actually hurt your site's rankings, and it can do lasting damage to your site's reputation. When it comes to link building, you have to keep things natural.3. Using Duplicate Content
One of the best ways to rank highly in the search engines is to fill your site with great content. There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing this. However, some people rip off content from other sites and put it on theirs, thinking that it will somehow help them. In reality, having duplicate content on your site will end up in being penalized. You should only use fresh and original content for your site. |
| Photo taken from Flick with CC license. Author: Sean MacEntee |
4. Using Flash or JavaScript
While there is nothing wrong with using Flash or Javascript when building a site, it's not going to help your rankings. If anything, it might actually hurt them. Search engines cannot read content in Flash for the most part, and it might make it look like you don't have any content on a page.5. Thinking Meta tags Are Going to Help
In the past, it was vitally important to put the words into metatags on each page of your site. You had to do a meta-description, a title, a meta-keywords list, and a meta description. This helped the search engines figure out what your page was about, which helped with ranking. In today's search engine game, this simply does not make a difference anymore, and search engines get all they need from the page content itself.6. Trying to Keep Page Rank
Google PageRank is a tool that measures the link popularity of pages on your site. It is thought to be one of the most important factors in determining search engine rankings. Because of this, some people try to horde it on one particular page instead of just allowing it to flow freely between pages. This is counterproductive, and does not make much of a difference in the overall scheme of things.
Richard H.About the Guest Author:
Richard H. is a blogger, Internet Marketing strategist and a hobby photographer. He enjoys life as much as he can, biggest happiness for him is when he helps others. Richard is currently working for NYC firm called Samuelson Hause & Samuelson as an SEO specialist. Here is Richard's few tips about what not to do when you are doing SEO for your website.
