White hat SEO services employ time-tested strategies and leverage the raw power of social media to impress their clients with steady results. Other services grasp at newfangled tricks promising quick ROI, usually to their detriment. If you want to ruin your rankings, and possibly receive a nasty Google ban for your efforts, then here are six ways to do just that.
1. Use Broad Match in the AdWords Keyword Tool
Google’s Keyword Tool in AdWords defaults to Broad Match. Say you want to be known for “outdoor clothing.” When you search in the Keyword Tool for “clothing”, every word that can be associated with clothing makes it into the results, from baby clothing to pet clothing to clothing stores.
Uncheck the Broad box and check Exact. This drastically reduces the number of results to more relevant phrases.
2. Stick with Java navigation menus only
For all their whiz-bang programming, search engine spiders still cannot read JavaScript menus like those used for navigation. You do not have to sacrifice slick Java menus for text just to appease spiders like Googlebot. Keep your Java navigation menus for visitors, but include hyperlinks to other pages for the spiders to crawl. These page links can be placed near the top or bottom of the page, for instance.
3. Make 100% of your anchor text keywords
Say your site sells seashells, supposedly by the sea shore. If you want to rank highly for “seashells”, avoid using “seashells” in every bit of anchor text. Google deems this unnatural. Rank will suffer for it.
Ideally, between 8% and 10% of anchor text on your site should be “seashells”. The rest should be variations of that keyword phrase, such as sand dollar, sea urchin, and so on. People searching for “sand dollars”, for instance, reach your site and see your other offerings.
You do, however, want other sites to link to you with “seashells” in their anchor text. Just make sure to not overdo it on your own pages.
4. Employ blocks of content just for spiders
Place a block of text somewhere on each page stuffed with keywords, 90% to 100%. Also known as SEO copy, such blocks of text are keyword-only hyperlinks that are in bold with “< strong >” tags or underlined, or both. Spiders find this suspicious. Instead, disperse keywords throughout an appropriate amount of genuine content.
5. Don’t link to your own pages
Inbound links are important, but do not neglect to link internally as well. Linking to your own valuable content sends a good message about the authority of your material.
On a related note, remember to link to pages that link to you. Once high ranking sites start linking to your content, return the favor. This is a win / win for both the linker and the linkee.
6. Build links as fast as possible
Many a webmaster and small business owner can honestly claim to have patience until they pursue a link building campaign. It is tempting to see how many links the competition has, and want to rush your progress in response. Pursuing this action is the wrong way to go about business. Increase your monthly links around 4% to 10%, depending on how much content you add. Any more than that and you risk falling under the cold gaze of the spiders.
Simple mistakes like a poorly configured robots.txt file can prevent Google from indexing a page, or worse. More serious, so-called black hat tactics like phishing invite a complete ban. Keep the basics of SEO in mind, and that SEO is an ongoing process of continuous improvement. Avoid the six bad practices mentioned here, and your site will be poised to excel in the rankings.
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I just know now that SEO can ruin your own online business too..Maybe wrong way of using the SEO technique and strategies? Or choosing the wrong services that other people offered…
Using exact match also gives you a more accurate number of searches each month for a particular term.
While using broad match can gives you many thousands, exact match for the same term can reduce the amount to just a few hundred or less.
And it is hard to not get impatient and try and get as many links as possible, since back links are so important in ranking a site.
But building links over time is the way to go.
Many thanks for the useful article.
made some good points there
its every newbies mistake thinking that if they want to rank for a particular keyword they have to build lots of anchor links just with that keyword big mistake
i always use google to find closely relevant keywords that you can use for anchot text as well
also as you say about internal linking, i think a lot of people forget about it
a good example i always use is look at wikipedia, they have lots of intenal linking so if they do it then its a good bet we should too
good post
paul
Your right. Taking action to increase your SEO without a solid plan can be disastrous. As online marketers we don’t have to fear the big bad wolf, merely the Hungry Panda.
Now that the rules have changed online marketers must adjust their SEO tactics so as not to be bitten by the Panda.
It’s plain that Google is looking for high quality, original content that provides good quality information to it’s users. Submitting content that doesn’t meet these standards is to be avoided.
Additionally, in my opinion, tactics like article submission to article directories that are now seen by Google as “low quality” sites.
Furthermore, purchasing backlinks from companies should be avoided
Great article! I would agree with most of your points and actually never thought of the Javascript menu issue for crawlers but it makes complete sense.
Your first point to me is less important because I don’t think it will HURT your SEO, it just won’t help you get as exact. I typically don’t get too crazy about targeting exact search amounts. If you’re building an authority site, it’s more about ranking for the big keywords overtime rather than ranking for small terms up-front. When I first build a site I tend to target a couple really hard keywords that I’ll expect to rank for over time.
Another thing I would add here would be linking with blantant affiliate links. If you’re posting clear affiliate links all over your site, Google is going to take notice and won’t like it. If you cloak your affiliate links and add additional outbound non-affiliate links, it will paint you as more of an authority in Google’s eyes!
You’re so cool! I don’t think I’ve read anything like this before. So good to find somebody with some original thoughts on this subject. Thanks for starting this up. tava tea