The 10 Commandments of SEO Thou Shalt Not Do

The 10 Commandments of SEO Thou Shalt Not Do

When it comes to SEO, and doing SEO, in order to improve your websites rankings in the SERPs, there will always be people who think they are clever and smarter than Google is and try to engage in shady, questionable, black hat methods.

But despite all the Google Algorithms which have all been introduced to thwart and prevent people from artificially improving their rankings with, there will always be people who still try to use sneaky, dirty tactics. But just like how your sins and lies will eventually catch up with you, all your black hat techniques will also eventually catch up with you as well. And that comes with a penalty of some kind.

So to prevent being penalized for doing some black hat technique, here's 10 Commandments for common SEO mistakes you must avoid doing!

Thou Shalt Not;

I. Have an Unnatural Link Profile

If you're building too many links of one kind and not enough of the other, then this can be counted as an unnatural link profile. So don't go creating too many blog comment links and don't use the same keywords over and over again in your link building. Don't spam forums and blogs and don't hack sites so that you can inject links onto them.

II. Cloak and Use Hidden Text

People cloak content to try and trick Google into seeing different content than your sites visitors see. But Google can easily see and identify this. It's best not to do this unless you want to land in hot water. And don't put text in hidden divs or make it the same color as the background in order to trick people as this is also easily detectable and shamed by Google.

III. Steal and Duplicate Content

It's okay to use other peoples content in the context of a review, provided you are "quoting" it somehow and/or linking to the original source of that content with a citation of some kind. But don't go copy/pasting large amounts of other peoples text and using it on your site as not only will you not rank as high for it as the original will but you'll find your website wont do well in the SERPs.

IV. Use Spun Content

Spinning content on your site not only creates a rubbish user experience for people but it's also detected by Google much easier than it used to be. Spun content doesn't convert very well and it's better to just write something new and unique that will make good sense when read and will be indexed and ranked by Google much faster.

V. Stuff Keywords

You might think that people don't do this anymore but you'd be wrong! Lots of new webmasters are guilty of keyword stuffing and try to fit as many keywords into something on the page as possible in the hopes that Google will see it and give you more credit for having it. But Google doesn't need help in understanding what your page or site is about other than the title and meta description and content on the page. Stuffing keywords into every field on your site will likely get it pushed down in the Search Results and even give you a penalty for doing it.

VI. Spam Google Maps

Don't create a fake listing on Google Maps just to get a link to your site. If you get found out that you have created the listing just to try and improve your websites ranking in the SERPs, you'll likely get punished for it come a manual review of your site as it's heavily frowned upon by the Google web spam team.

VII. Create Microsites

Since the Panda Update, microsites have taken a huge whack in the SERPs. So don't create small microsites (AKA satallite sites) that only target one particular keyword or long tail keyword as they are often flagged as thin sites and are no longer a good way to build related links to your site.

VIII. Sell Links

Selling links on your site is a sure fire way to get a slap from Google. Google sees selling links the same way as it does buying them. They don't like it when people do that as they know it can improve your rankings quickly and not in a fair and organic way. It's okay to sell advertising space on your site, and buy advertising elsewhere. But if you do sell links, don't advertise that you're doing it on your site!

IX. Go OTT on Ads

Ads can bring revenue to your site which you can then put back into the site to have a site up and running in the first place. But if you use too many ads on your site, you'll find that peoples user experience is decreased and it can even upset some of your readers. Using up all your space for ads and not for valuable content on your site is something that Google has started to become very good at identifying and punishing.

X. Create Multiple Websites for the Same Business

This is something that is quite prevalent right now. Where a business will have many small sites created for them that all link to their main site. Very similar to creating microsites. It's done so that people an occupy more of those spots in the top 10 SERP results. But Google has many ways of detecting this and if you're caught doing it you can lose the rankings for ALL of your sites so it's really not that worth it!

Well that's 10 commandments for things thou shalt not do when it comes to SEO.

Follow these 10 commandments as though you was Moses himself and you shall surely be fine and successful without hindrance from the God of SEO.