SEO no-no’s

Three Things NOT to do in Search Engine Optimization and Marketing:

1. Don’t Lie:

Possibly the biggest Search Engine Marketing No-No of all, DO NOT misrepresent your site! If your SEO (search engine optimization) is geared towards keywords that are irrelevant to what a viewer sees on your web page or site, you're just begging for problems.

2. Don’t Cheat:

DO NOT hide keywords. Most, if not all Search engines have learned this tactic by now. Making hidden keyword text the same color as the page background is considered spam And altering the text color slightly to get around this will result in trouble in the end. Taking the "do not hide" concept to the extreme is Cloaking - sending one page to the search engines while displaying something entirely different to viewers. Most engines condemn cloaking and actively work to locate, remove and prevent it. In January, Google said that they have improved their methods of cloaking detection -- fair warning!

DON'T OVERUSE keywords. The old Catch 22 -- if you use too many keywords in website content, you may be accused of keyword spamming. Of course repeating the same word over and over in a single row is the worst and most obvious offense, but general overuse of a keyword or words can have a negative impact on search engine rankings as well. Since there are no set rules for ‘how many is too many’ -- each search engine employs their own criteria -- it is advisable to do your homework.

DON'T use Meta Tags or script to REDIRECT viewers. Webmasters will often try to hide SEO content by redirecting to a ‘public’ page using a meta refresh tag or java script, etc. - see cloaking above. Of course there are valid reasons for needing to cloak a url (affiliate urls for example), but this is not the way to do it - use your .htaccess file instead.

3. Don’t Steal:

While it is common practice, and perfectly acceptable to review and use some basic elements of a top ranking page in an effort to boost your own, it is unethical to copy entire text and HTML of any page - not to mention ILLEGAL -- this breaks copyright laws worldwide.

I hope this helps.

DLPerry