Back when search engines were in their infancy, many webmasters took advantage of all the techniques they could to get their Website a top ranking. However, over the last few years, search engines continued to improve their algorithm. Due to these changes, some of the techniques used became unfavorable and labeled as spamming or Black Hat SEO. Black Hat SEO is known today as the art of trying to use techniques to trick the search engines, thus, achieving higher search engine rankings.
Some webmasters still use some of these techniques; however they run the risk of getting de-listed from the search engines. Other webmasters may not even realize that they are doing something wrong on their site. Here, we’ll cover some techniques and the most common SEO mistakes that are considered as spamming as well as some techniques used that may have adverse effects on your rankings:
- Keyword Stuffing – Keyword stuffing is putting the same keywords in your keyword Meta tag over and over again. You should use only 2 – 5 keywords in your Meta tag per page.
- Same Color Text – Some sites will use the same color text as the background of the page. This will allow search engines to pick up the keywords, but it is not visible to the visitor. If you have this on your site I would suggest removing that right away.
- Redirects – Redirects can make search engines think you are trying to trick them and your visitors. If you must use a redirect, a 301 redirect is the safest one to use.
- Image ALT Tags – Many webmasters will forget to use the ALT tag on their images. ALT tags make your site more accessible, plus you can use keywords where appropriate.
- Incorrect Title Tag – The Title Tag on your page should describe the contents of the page, you should not stuff the title tag full of all your keywords.
- Using Framesets – Search engines cannot index framesets, you should avoid using frames.
- Duplicate Content – If your pages have the exact same content can hurt your rankings. Also be careful of publish public domain articles; many times these are also published on other sites as well which leads you to more duplicate contents.
- Reciprocal Link Abuse – If you get an over abundance of links in a short period of time can hurt your rankings. Also keep in mind that unrelated links will not give your site more weight or help your ranks.
- Cloaking – This technique involves tricking the search engines into thinking they are getting a different page under other circumstances. Cloaking is a definite no no.
- Over Optimization – Too much optimization can hurt rankings rather than helping them. Search engines like to see natural looking pages.
