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When thinking about SEO strategies and techniques to use to increase traffic to your website, make sure you don’t try to trick the search engine. Google is the all seeing all knowing equivalent of Sauron on Mount Doom, Zeus of the Olympians, or Buck from HodgesNet in the SEO world. What should you not do to upset Google and incur, what is commonly referred to as, the ‘Google slap’? Here are five key aspects of search engine optimisation not to divulge in.

Avoid these 5 things to stop your website getting banned from Google

Cloaking – This is the term used to identify cheating the search engines by appearing as one thing to the end user, and appearing as completely another to the search engine. This can be done in a number of devious and underhand ways through programming or re-directs. This is a sure way of making sure your website won’t be seen in the search engines by your potential visitors for a while. Duplicate Content – One sure way of not getting indexed in Google is making the majority of your content duplicates of others. This lazy SEO practice, copy and paste ignorant excuse is not only annoying to your potential visitors but also to the search engine who has to decide out of all the content, which one is the original unique piece. This technique is known in the trade as ‘scraping’ where you scrape certain phrases from competitors or higher valued sites, and essentially attempt to rip it off. Keyword Stuffing & Stacking – A harmful and infuriating way to gain unpopularity from potential customers and Google alike is to fill your text and website with duplicate and multiple keywords. Known as keyword stuffing, this technique is unsuccessful for high placement and ranking in the search engines and should be replaced by relevant phrases and variations of these and the keywords in question. The brother of ‘Keyword stuffing’ is ‘Keyword stacking’ which is where additional keywords are inserted in the title tags. Each title should include just the one keyword or phrase, or on occasions maybe two or three if using a dash; for example “SEO services – Email Marketing – Mobile Marketing”. Doorway Pages – If all the above isn’t harmful enough; why not include some doorway pages onto your site which act as re-directs to your main site. These main pages are there again to trick the search engine by being a page which is highly optimised with one keyword or phrase, however when clicked on will go straight through to the main site unbeknown to the user. The doorway page is often of poor quality which leads to the conclusion that websites should be made and designed for the user and not for the search engine. Selling & Exchanging Links – The fifth way to get your website banned is to sell or exchange links with other websites and networks (particularly bad ones). Exchanging links with sites of known authority and security can be good for your website if safe and of higher value to your own. Moreover, if links are sold this will result in an indefinite suspension or ban, which is exactly what happened to florist giants ‘Interflora’. This huge online presence was distributing bouquets to bloggers in exchange for links on their page.

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