Search Engine Optimization Tips

Search Engine Optimization Tips

7 SEO Tactics to Avoid

There are numerous SEO or Search Engine Optimization techniques that may be part of one`s New Year`s resolutions for 2011. With all of the planning and excitement that comes along with a fresh year it can be easy to be overwhelmed with ideas. Finding the money, time and resources can be the real trick. There are 7 Search Engine Optimization tactics that we feel are a waste of time. If any of these have made it onto your 2011 task list, definitely cross them off as they will only hinder your progress and will not help you reach your goals.

Hiding Stuff On-Page

There are over a hundred ways to hide links and keywords from your users` view and a have then behind the scenes on a web page for the search engines to crawl. The collective mind of Google`s web spam team is smarter than all of the others. The first five points of the SEO tactics to avoid list covers some of the most popular methods for hiding links and copy. At the very worst, you will land yourself a penalty, while at the very best; you could experience a temporary, tiny boost from some of these tactics. 

The top five things to avoid while hiding stuff on-page are using white text on a white background, or any other color on color combination, hiding text over an image, linking from a hyphen, comma, period or any other small character, hiding text with CSS and finally, linking keywords in tiny text or trying to use the font size '0' either.

Keyword Stuffing

There are many of ways to overdo your keyword usage beyond the hidden methods mentioned above. Here are a few to give you an idea of the type of things to avoid. Definitely do not use your Title Tag as a place to list keywords or use the Meta Keywords tag. This is a huge waste of time. Do not name your images with the character limit in keywords, or fill up your Meta Description with keywords, forgetting about click-thru rates, or try to put 2000 words of keyword rich content under the footer. Also do not bother to list every zip code and city within a ten hour drive and finally, do not keep track of your keyword density.

Link Network Schemes

If your link building plans potentially involve any of the following, you need to do a little more research on link building. Do not bother to sign up for Link Wheel, Reciprocal Linking, Link Schemes, Link Farms, Three Way or Two-way or any other way linking, or Link Exchange. The exception to signing up for Link Exchange is only if it is a real and substantial business relationship or partnership.

Other Link Types to Avoid

Here are some other link acquisition tactics to avoid, it is not just the networks that are a waste of time…Do not segment your content and launch sub-domains so you can link to yourself, bother submitting to thousands of directories for just over $12 or forum or comment spam. 

Publish/Index as Many Pages as Possible

Even if you have 3 million pages, it does not mean they should all be indexed. Similarly, even if you have a list of 900,000 keywords and misspellings to describe pepper mills, it does not mean your e-commerce site should have a web page to represent each one. The moral here is that quantity is not quality in this case. Having more pages in the index does not automatically translate to more traffic.

Some more Search Engine Optimization tactics to remove from your to-do list include not publishing a new page for every single keyword target and do not try to get the search engines to index all of the search result pages on your site.

Google Local Tricks

Google Local continues to fight spam that works. Here is a list of some of the items they have determined should be avoided altogether. Do not create a bunch of Google Places that all list the same physical address. Do not place location keywords in your places page categories either. Do not try to get plenty of negative reviews by tormenting your customers or provide different keyword rich business names to local sites.

Random Uselessness

If any of these ideas are on your list of things to do, please immediately take them to the garbage. Do not bother to blindly target keywords just because your competitors happen to be. Do not find out which pages are ranking well and never touch them again or try to measure your website`s strength or success with PageRank. Do not use robots.txt to control robot access or automatically submit to hundreds of search engines automatically for $10.