Over the past few months I have made an effort to be positive and tell the world of Website Owners about how to achieve Great SEO Results. However, it isn’t always a bed of roses I am sorry to say. Below is my Top 10 List of actions which can cause your SEO to fail.
1. – Relying on Meta Tags - This has to be number one because its effectiveness has reduced month on month for the past few years. Don’t get me wrong, they are still important … just not for the same reasons they used to be.
Although opinion is spread about the keywords tag and it’s use, for those in doubt use them, and even if not in doubt still use them, some search engines still rely on them!
As for the Description tag is an important tag because although not used directly to improve your search rank, it is used in search results by most search engines, along with the page title, to give the search engine user and idea of what can be found on a specific page.
2. – Purchasing Links - Please do not think by this I mean you should not advertise or sponsor another site for the means of traffic, what I am meaning is that buying links within text on a website should be thought about carefully for the following reasons (this is not an exhaustive list):
- Search Engines have things called spiders/robots. As well as reporting back about your site and it’s content they also report back on certain areas and keywords found such as “Ad”, “Advert” and “Sponsor” etc. It is believed that any links surrounding this will have no effect and will not be used for any kind of search engine ranking system.
- Google accepts report of paid linking (as do other search engines) and all reports are passed on to thier team of experts.
- Google has a large team in Asia who’s specific task is to look for (and at) paid linking, flagging any possible paid links, making it useless for the purpose of SEO (though this isn’t to say they do not drive traffic to your site).
- If a search engine finds that you are amongst the thousands always paying for links, a part of the pattern which they search for to show such a thing up they can and will ban your site, either on a permanent or temporary basis.
- Get only Meaningful Links
3. – Keyword Stuffing - This can be one of the most damaging aspects of content for a website. Spiders will report back on keyword density (amongst other things). If your site is found to have a density of above 15% it will be considered that you are keyword stuffing. Your site will then be reviewed and possibly face the same banning issues as for paid links. However if your site has a density of over 30% you are likely to face an immediate ban. The ideal density is around 7%.
4. – Invisible Text – This is text which a user cannot see, but a search engine can. It is normally hidden -9999px off a page or is disguised by being the same colour as the background. In truth this is easy to spot not least because if you perform such a (black hat) trick, you are likely to never have made a website and therefore perform the action directly in the code. However, even if its hidden in external CSS you can be certain this will have be spidered, meaning search engines know your site layout and will now look out for the attribute id’s and class names that may standout.
5. – Duplicate Content - This is normally done in one of three ways. Duplicate Websites this is normally where a company has 2 websites for the same selling purpose but with different marketing strategies. Doorway Pages / Links this is where two or more sites by the same company have “covert links” between themselves, this is to say one “about us” page may lead to the information on another site. Blog NOPP this is where a blog post does not use Old Post Promotion techniques (such as link backs with excerpts) but rather copies the whole post (making it appear like a new post), its quite easy to find two pages exactly the same on a site for a search engine.
6. – Session ID’s in the URL – if you have looked carefully at the make-up of a URL sometimes you will see the ending of .com/?user=$xxq343?$/somepagename this shows a user id (or session id) this almost always renders SEO useless as each session has a new ID which means the page a spider finds will not (in theory) exist when a user clicks on the search results. It is also a way of tricking search engines into always thinking you have new pages, so they will treat your site as bad and using black hat techniques if you do this.
7. – Using Flash - It may look pretty but it really isn’t. It is still considered fairly useless for search ranking, even though both Google and Yahoo have worked with Adobe to open each SWF file for the use of search engines (this is still very very primitive). You would be far more better advised to use Microsoft SilverLight as it has been built with the ability for the MSN search engine (live) to spider it fully.
8. – Too much JavaScript - Again looks pretty but too much spoils the broth. It works very well on most sites but you should consider graceful degradation of your design to ensure your site can be spidered by websites, this is often as simple as implementing it using call-in scripts (includes).
9. – Cloaking - Now as it sounds this is showing one thing to one person and another to another, well almost, its more you show search engines everything they want, and then show users something else (normally something filled with adverts and useless content). Primarily used by spammers several years ago, and still for the same reason used now it is very powerful….until you get caught. And your site gets an immediate ban!
10. Not admitting your mistakes - if you find that your site is banned or isn’t doing well, or simply can’t be found and you suspect bad SEO, contact the search engine, tell them the problem and the reasons for it. By admitting an issue most search engines will release your site form a ban as long as you can prove that you have no intent to be banned for the same reasons again.
Other actions which don’t quite make the Top 10!
Ill considered URL changing – Incorrect removal of pages – Poor Content (content with no value) – robots(txt) incorrect or non-existent – bad country targeting – doorway pages – no internal links (or lack of) – use of internal CSS (causing to much html tagging, aka wasting indexing time) – no 404 pages – no sitemap – large pages (+100kb) – bad theming
So that just about wraps it up, I invite you too add your own point to my list in the comments and/or ask questions about my list.
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Destroying Your SEO Efforts - Top 10 | Search Engine Secrets
January 15th, 2009
[...] Destroying Your SEO Efforts – Top 10 14 January 2009 1 views No Comment Over the past few months I have made an effort to be positive and tell the world of Website Owners about how to achieve Great SEO Results. However, it isn’t always a bed of roses I am sorry to say. Below is my Top 10 List of actions which can cause your SEO to fail. 1. – Relying on Meta Tags - This has to be number one because its effectiveness has reduced month on month for the past few years. Don’t get me wrong, they are still important … just not for the same reasons they used to be. Altho Continued here: Destroying Your SEO Efforts – Top 10 [...]
Alan Williams
January 15th, 2009
This was a very informative article. I will read your blog often.
Fran
January 26th, 2009
Great Post, will you be writing about the subjects which didn’t make the top 10? if not can you tell me where I can find the information on these?
Google pagerank
January 29th, 2009
Good resource and well written post on seo, which unlike a lot of sites i have seen, this one makes sense. I still cannot work out search engine optimisation as google seems to change it every other day.
andy
February 2nd, 2009
@Alan, Thank You for your comment.
@Fran, I will write about these subjects in the following weeks and months, if you need information now I suggest a quick look through wiki. However do feel free to ask questions on here.
@Google pagerank, firstly may I ask you use your real name in future, secondly thank you for your comment. If you are struggling to find the write SEO balance for you please do ask for some help, contact me directly via this site and I will often give free advice.
saaya
February 14th, 2009
Wow! Thank you! I always wanted to write in my site something like that. Can I take part of your post to my blog?
andy
February 15th, 2009
Saaya,
My posts are written under copyright, please email me (admin*at*andykinsey*dot*com) and let me know precisely what you would like to use and why. I am sure we can sort something out.
mp3traker
February 25th, 2009
Once I found your bloog from Google. I’m reading your post several times because it introduces a fresh idea for my business.
Money Maker
February 27th, 2009
Sweet! Awesome blog… Bookmarked it! I just recently came across this, it looks helpful too http://www.BlackHatAnswers.com , Will return and post more useful resources for you! – Chris
Applebees Menu
February 28th, 2009
I must say that you provide genuine, quality information. Thanks for this!
jake
March 17th, 2009
Seriously?! Wow!! Your post is just awesome. It helps me understand more about this internet marketing things. Appreciate it!
Michael Harrington
March 23rd, 2009
It was great article.I usually read articles and posts related to SEO and found this one interesting.Andy what is your opinion about Web Analytics
andy
March 23rd, 2009
@Micheal
Firstly, thank you for your kind comments.
Secondly, Analytics packages (dependant on which you use) can often give different results to each other. Like I’ve found that AwStats and Google Analytics and StatCounter give different results for the same page. So what does this mean… well it means they look for different things … Alexa looks for 30 seconds on a page to count a visit where as AwStats is more like 2 seconds i’ve found recently. So which is a better package to use…. none of them really. Its how you compare and contrast the information you gain from these packages. To get a full overview of you need to look at at least 2 packages, normally one server-side and one client side, and then use a free tool to “grade” your website.
If you email me I will forward the address of a grader that I use from time to time that may help you
Janardhanaya
April 6th, 2009
Super-Duper site! I am loving it!! Will come back again – taking you feeds also, Thanks.
Yagnaroopaya
April 6th, 2009
amazing stuff thanx
Hamsaaya
April 13th, 2009
Hi there I like your post
Jeremy
April 16th, 2009
Awesome post, i know ill need to be back soon
James
April 17th, 2009
Gr8 blog! Ill definitely be coming back
Brooke
April 19th, 2009
Interesting article. Were did you got all the information from…
mathew Borey
April 20th, 2009
You made some good points there. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree with your blog.
Nelson Passe
April 25th, 2009
Hi there, I found your blog via Google and your post looks very interesting for me.
Dian Baremore
April 27th, 2009
good goodthis post deserves nothing
hahaha just joking 
nice post 
ebay Popper
June 1st, 2009
More post please! you are leaving a poor old man hungry for more :[