Are Your SEO Methods Spammy?
Optimizing your blog for SEO has never been any easier. On the other hand, getting the desired results has never been any harder. The competition is incredibly tough these days and Google, whose trends everyone needs to follow, is quite harsh when it comes to punishing those who are trying to abuse its ranking system.
So what are some of the spammy methods that are likely to be punished by Google and other search engines?
In this article, we are going to look Are Your SEO Methods Spammy? :D
Are Your SEO Methods Spammy?
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is one of those things that Google have been warning about for quite some time already – and, as many webmasters and bloggers have already found out, the search engine can indeed punish you very harshly for that tactic. Keyword stuffing is the practice of trying to place as many keywords as humanly possible on a page, no matter whether it makes sense to do so or not.
It goes without saying that overdoing it when it comes to keywords does not bring anything to the readers and visitors of the website – so why should it count for anything in terms of search engine rankings?
Avoiding Anchor Texts Over-Optimization
Knowing how to link webpages through the right anchor texts can be very beneficial to the search engine ranking of any given webpage. The thing is, it is not that great to over-optimize things by trying to manufacture keywords and anchor texts that just are not relevant to what the webpage is about.
Think about it as an exercise. If someone had to connect your webpage with a list of anchor texts, what words would he or she choose? It is easy and simply – just don’t forget to go through with those words. The key rule one has to follow here is staying as relevant as possible. Irrelevant keywords and anchor texts simply are not going to get you anywhere.
Duplicate Content
Just a few years ago, copying content and having poorly-written texts on webpages was quite okay. In fact, many webmasters were more than happy with hiring poor copywriters or even with just duplicating content without any shame or regrets. However, those days are gone. These days, trying the very same strategies can lead to a very quick fall of rankings when it comes to search engines.
In all honesty, Google has really stepped upped its efforts in this particular department. Fortunately, it is quite easy to avoid getting punished by Google – all one needs to keep in mind is that quality is worth more than quantity. Hiring good writers is one of the best and most obvious solutions.
Bad Linking Practices
And, finally, let’s also talk about what simply does not work in the world of linking practices. One thing that can really hurt the search engine rankings is the participation in various link schemes. Yes, that’s right – the practice that was considered to be okay a few years ago is not that great anymore. And it is not only about excessive link exchanging – far from it. It is also about trying to create multiple webpages in order to cross-link between them, linking to unrelated and irrelevant sites, and trying to gain additional links in the form of comments with optimized links.
It is also not a good idea to think that you can get anything from the so-called cloaking practice. What you are showing to the users should be exactly what you are showing to the search engine crawlers. So no, trying to show HTML code to the crawler instead of the animation that visitors get to see is not going to get you anywhere either.
Summing Up
At the end of the day, it is clear that it is getting harder and harder to trick Google into thinking that you have a better site than you really do. The best strategy to get a high search engine ranking is to simply focus on the over all quality of the website. Using clean and simple SEO strategies is still a great way to improve search engine rankings, but it is much better to invest one’s time into making your blog better than into trying one’s luck with shady methods.