In this article Birmingham
based Online Marketing Expert, Waseem Saddique, offers an insight into
the techniques to avoid when launching an SEO
campaign.
A lot is written about the benefits of Search Engine
Optimisation (SEO), however, there
are also a number of SEO techniques
that should be avoided in order to maximise the potential of an SEO campaign.
Here are the top 10 techniques worth avoiding:
1. The
duplication of pages – They offer no benefit in improving rankings on search
engines as big name search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo will completely
ignore them and in some instances they may even look to ban the site that is
using them.
2. Using
‘Invisible Text’ – Invisible text refers to text that is the same colour as the
background of the page that it is on. Search engine moderators have quickly
identified this technique and have sought to eradicate the problem by labelling
it as spam.
3. Using
keywords in comment tags – The major search engines tend not to acknowledge
comment tags or even bother to index them. Therefore, it’s a pointless and time
wasting exercise to add them for SEO
purposes.
4. Don’t
use keywords in hidden value tags – The placement of keywords in hidden value
tags are viewed as spam by the majority of major search engines. Once again it
is a technique that does not warrant the time or effort.
5. Don’t
use keywords in style tags – Almost no search engine will acknowledge the
content of style tags, so applying them for SEO
purposes is a complete waste of time.
6. Avoid
the use of link exchange programs and links farms – The majority of search
engines view link farms and link exchange programs as spam, as they serve just
one purpose, which is to over emphasise the popularity of a website link, by
trading links between participants of specially designed schemes.
Waseem Saddique comments: “it is worth noting that link farms and link
exchange techniques should not be associated with reciprocal linking. Reciprocal
linking is a much more ‘legitimate technique’ that sees the exchange of links
between individual sites on a mutually beneficial basis.”
7. Don’t
use link only pages – The majority of major search engines will not recognise
link only pages. Therefore, it is always recommended to add text descriptions
to link pages in order to utilise them for SEO
purposes. This should also be the case for pages such as site maps.
8. Avoid
meta refresh tags – As a general rule, search engines consider meta refresh
tags, set under 30 seconds, to be spam. To combat the problem of this
technique, Search Engine specialists have resorted to using Java Script
redirects.
9. Try
to avoid tiny text – Whilst the majority of search engines will permit some use
of tiny text, if it is used excessively search engines will disregard articles
and web pages. The reason why search engines are against tiny text is that they
view it as an attempt to stuff articles and web pages with keywords.
10.Don’t
use cloaking techniques – Cloaking is considered an extremely controversial
technique, as it serves SEO pages to
search engine spiders, whilst feeding un-optimised pages to website visitors.
All search engine facilities consider cloaking to be a form of spam, however,
those that do it have yielded great success from doing so, but it is frowned
upon.
Waseem Saddique concludes: “Although the techniques above
are considered controversial, they can still be used. What’s not accepted by
some search engines may well be fine with others. The fact remains is that there
is no right or wrong way to conduct SEO campaigns,
you just have to be prepared to expect some criticism for some types of SEO techniques that are used.
