Top 5 Search Engine Optimization Mistakes

There are a lot of ways to promote your website and, unfortunately, a lot of these methods are mistakes. Here is a list of some of the more common mistakes (often referred to as Black Hat SEO) that you should steer well clear of.

1. Bad Neighbourhoods

These sites are also known as free for all (FFA) pages and link farms. They serve no other purpose other than to list tens of thousands of unrelated websites. Not only will these sites not provide your site with any traffic, certain search engines will ban sites who participate.

2. Over Optimization

Optimizing your web pages for a particular search engine can be a good thing. Over-optimizing can defeat the purpose, however. Search engines are catching on quickly to pages that appear 'over-optimized'. Stuffing keyphrases into your pages is the most common problem. Never use hidden (invisible) text to add keywords. You will get caught, and your site will get banned.

3. Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are orphaned web pages that are typically optimized for a particular keyphrase and a particular search engine. They are promoted to the search engine in an effort to achieve high rankings. They are not linked back to by any other page on the website and, as such, search engines are able to flush them out quite easily and penalize the entire site.

4. Traffic Generation Scams

Services that purport to drive lots and lots of traffic to your website are typically not very useful. The traffic tends to come from seedy places like domain names that have lapsed in payment or commonly misspelled domain entries. Most of the traffic that hits these pages is accidental and is therefore of no value to you. Other traffic may come from other participants in the program who are required to visit other websites to gain 'credits' for their own site. Again, this traffic is not targeted and therefore of no value. Some traffic may even be generated by automated software!

5. Shadow Domains

Shadow domains are small, optimized, supplementary websites designed to drive traffic to a different website. The way this works is that an SEO company will design and optimize a website on your behalf. The danger here is that the you do not own this new website; the SEO company does! This means that if the relationship sours, they may choose to redirect this site's traffic to whomever they choose (see #4 above), or even sell the site to one of your competitors! Be very, very careful of this technique, as some supposed search engine 'experts' even use this method (no naming of names here, however).

One final note: Any company that tells you that it can achieve 'guaranteed' rankings is either lying to you or using some of these Black Hat techniques. Unfortunately, there is no way to guarantee a number one result within (unpaid) search results. When choosing a search engine optimization company to work with, be sure you feel comfortable with them and trust them (e.g. money back guarantee). And if you decide to promote your website yourself, consider yourself a little better educated against these common mistakes.

About The Author

Robin Eldred is the president of Apis Design, a Calgary Web Design and Promotion company specializing in building, managing and promoting quality, results-oriented websites for small businesses (http://www.apis.ca/)

robin@apis.ca

---

Gaining Link Popularity Techniques

Link popularity is very important these days for all websites... Read More

Why Articles Are Not The Route To High Search Engine Rankings

If you have any interest in getting high search engine... Read More

Expert Help From Google Answers

Web users turn to search engines for answers to their... Read More

Google Patent Application - User Data As Part of Ranking Process

In this third article, we continue to dig into the... Read More

Sales And Crawlers, Update! Update! Update!

The importance to the algorithmic web crawlers that speed throughout... Read More

Not Ranking High Enough on Search Engines? Here?s Some Help!

Search engines are frugal things. (Froogle, too, haha! Sorry, lame... Read More

Effective Keyword Optimization and Analysis Techniques

Keyword optimization involves vital keyword selection and placement strategy depends... Read More

5 Things to Keep an Eye on in the SEO World in 2005...

After the latest PR update at Google and MSN's beta... Read More

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Fix Your OnPage!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something you should be aware... Read More

Top 2 Ways To Get Higher Rankings in Major Search Engines

Top 10 search engine rankings. Everybody wants it but a... Read More

How to Pick an SEO Firm

If you're looking for an SEO firm, we recommend that... Read More

Are You Getting Nuked By Google Lately?

Since the last Google update, there have been many instances... Read More

How To Syndicate Your Content

Note: In order to preserve the proper format for the... Read More

Playing in Googlebots Sandbox with Slurp, Teoma, & MSNbot - Spiders Display Differing Personalities

There has been endless webmaster speculation and worry about the... Read More

The Disease of Google Banning: Are You At Risk?

Definition:Google banning occurs when Google removes your site from its... Read More

Do It Yourself SEO

Internet surfers use search engines more than any other tool... Read More

Search Engine Copywriting: Focus on One Topic

Perhaps the simplest of all the lessons I have learned... Read More

Increase Your Search Engine Ranking

There are methods to increase your search engine rankings which... Read More

Soliciting Search Engines

As your guide operator through the web, search engines are... Read More

The Top 3 Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Websites Search Engine Rankings- and How to Fix Them!

Getting your website up and running is hard enough. After... Read More

A Three Day Marketing Plan for Better Google Rankings

If you're reading this article, you've probably discovered that simply... Read More

SEOs Relationship With Website Architecture

SEO's Relationship With Website ArchitectureSearch engine optimization for today's search... Read More

Agressive Linking Strategies Help To Get Your Site Noticed

A good link building strategy has become an essential part... Read More

Yahoo Dopey, MSN Goofy, Google is Mickey Mouse Lost in a Sandbox

Seventy-two days ago Googlebot first showed up and crawled over... Read More

Submit Your Website to Search Engines

Some search engine submissions are free and some pay for... Read More

London Bombings and Number Patterns

Firstly, let me say that I am sure all our... Read More

An Easy Way Not to Get Banned by Google

Strategic search engine optimization involves far more than keyword research,... Read More

Search Engine Indexing - 3 Strategies Guaranteed to Skyrocket Your Success

In order to design a website that performs well with... Read More

Search Engine Optimization --- An Overview

Search engine optimization is one of most popular online marketing... Read More

Its The Same Deal For Both Search Engines And Real Estate

It's all about location, location, location!In the past...back in the... Read More

3.5 Reasons You Need To Forget About Search Engines

Have you ever stopped to think how much time is... Read More

Yahoo Listing Still Worth It?

In October 2002, the Yahoo! portal changed the way it... Read More

HTML and Search Engine Optimization - What You Dont Know Can Kill You

When it comes to search engine optimization there is a... Read More