The Top 10 SEO No-No's and Why You Should Avoid Them

Internet Marketing Spammers are a crafty breed. They will try everything they can to get an easy top ranking in the search engines, and will stop at nothing to try. Here's a quick look at the most common search engine spamming methods and why they don't work.

1. Keyword Stuffing

What is Keyword stuffing? In it’s basic form it is simply the repeated use of a word or phrase in an attempt to increase the pages apparent attempt of having actual content on the page. The idea is to try and trick the search engines into thinking your site has content when in fact it is either weak in that regard or it might not even have anything relevant to the topic. For example, if I had a website selling sports equipment one might at attempt keyword stuffing and put usually at the bottom of a page:

sports equipment sports equipment sports equipment, sport equipment.

I’m sure we’ve all seen this before and on some sites it gets even more obvious as the web owners think that by adding in some JavaScript to the words to make them bigger when you put your mouse over them or highlight them yellow etc it’ll somehow trick the search engines into giving you a higher ranking. Guess what? It won’t, in fact now with the newer algorithms will actually punish you for this practice.

2. Invisible Text Stuffing

This technique is where spammers will insert text, again somewhere on a page (usually at the bottom) and try and make the color of the text the same as the background or the background of a table or cell so that the visitor to a page can’t see it. Again, the idea is they think this will trick the search engine spiders into thinking that you have relevant content and grant you a higher ranking. In fact, most search engine spiders now will easily recognize text being the same color as any background on a webpage.

3. Tiny Text Stuffing

Another twist on the same theme of keyword stuffing as we’ve seen above. This technique involves trying to hide text (keywords) by placing the words in a very small font size. Again trying to trick the search engines, but because of this, some search engines actually may ban pages that make heavy use of small font sizes

4. Comment Tag Stuffing

Comment tags are generally used by webpage designers as a means of organizing the mess that can be HTML. What I mean is generally a page is organized into sections and it’s easier for web designers to tweak changes by creating comment tags. These are not seen by web visitors but rather are only there to help the webpage owner. An example of a real comment tag is this

Again the idea of keyword stuffing seems to run around variations on the same theme. Stuff keywords everywhere and anywhere you can and hope to get away with it. Well using the comment tag is no exception for these spammers. Here’s an example of what comment tag stuffing would look like.

Again You can’t trick search engines into thinking your webpage has any content by using these kinds of methods. You’ll only land up with a lower search engine ranking or perhaps even banned.

5. Alt Tag Stuffing

Ah the fifth variation of the same idea on keyword stuffing. This time instead of using comment tags or making small text, spammers will try to use the alt tag. The alt tag is a little box that will appear when you hover your mouse over an image on a web page. While it is good practice to use an alt tag for images, excessive use will the spark the attention of the search engine spiders and they will subsequently flag your site and you’ll suffer for it. So when using alt tags keep the "alt name" relevant and don’t try to spam a bunch of keywords here. Here’s an example of keyword stuffing using the alt tag.

6. Title Tag Stuffing

This is a slightly different more savvy approach of the spammer into hoping they can trick the search engines. It is well known fact that the search engines view what’s sitting in the title tag as being high on their criteria for relevancy. That being said it is very good practice to use this and create a very solid title with a good use of a keyword. However the spammer will try and take it a step further. He’ll get a bit sneakier here and try and repeat the title several times throughout a webpage, hence the name title tag stuffing. The spammer will then pat himself on the back thinking his ingenious use of repeating the title within the content of page is the sneakiest, most ingenious thing he's ever done. While it may be actually not a bad idea to repeat the title in the main conent of the page, excessive use of this practice is frowned upon. Again he may try to use a few combinations found above like repeating the title in an image’s alt tag etc, small text etc Again this practice is going to get you caught by the search engines and you’ll probably see your page getting banned if you try.

7. Page Spoofing / Meta Refresh / Redirection Stuffing

A Meta refresh tag is a browser command that automatically redirects an Internet user to a new web page. This is an old trick that a lot of affiliate marketers try to use to hide their affiliate links. The idea was to send visitors to a page on their domain or another that have been "parked" and then redirect the visitor to the affiliate site, that way they could protect their affiliate code and not lose commissions. Well keyword spammers grabbed unto this idea and so what they do is develop a page for a particular keyword phrase, insert a Meta refresh tag and then submit that page to the search engines. Anyone clicking through to this page from a search engine would be automatically taken to a different page. Often, the "final" page has little or nothing to do with the keyword in the first place. A perfect example of this and something alot of people have experienced before is clicking on a page about Mom's home cooked recipes and be taken to some filthy adult site. This is what I mean about meta refresh spamming. To combat this, search engines now won't accept pages with a fast Meta refresh rate.

Search engines may also reject pages that try to use JavaScript to perform same redirection.

8. Meta Tag Stuffing

Placing keywords inside Meta tags are the most acceptable way of adding keywords to a page without resorting to keyword stuffing. However, jamming them full of keywords that are completely unrelated to a web page in order to generate more traffic is another example of keyword stuffing. Search engines can and will detect when someone tries to simply spam the Meta tag full of unrelated keywords and penalize the site. The same is true about semi related keywords. Example

I may include several keywords about sports equipment or sports equipment safety or sports equipment accesories, etc into my Meta tag but if the page has no content about sport equipment safety or sports equipment accessories then this is what I am referring to about Meta Tag Stuffing. Your not going to score any brownie points with the serach engines in trying to be subtle about your keyword stuffing practices. It would be better to create a different page if you really wanted that keyword and optimize some content specifically for it. In the end you'll actually have a page your visitors like instead of half the content.

9. Page Stuffing

Page Stuffing is simply where the same web page is duplicated or even slightly modified and then all these variations are all submitted to the search engines. The hope being that if they can get one page to score well with a keyword the other duplicates will too and you dominate the top rankings. Search engines will usually just eliminate duplicate pages and then flag your URL for heavy submissions, which is a sign of page stuffing.

10. Domain Spamming

Domain spamming involves buying up several different domain name and then having the same exact web site at all the different URLs also commonly referred to as "mirror sites." While there is some legitimate uses for "mirror" sites, operating such sites simply to increase ones search engine traffic is considered spamming. Once a search engines detects you doing this, they will probably ban all of the sites altogether.

As you can see a lot of these spamming techniques are variations on the same theme of trying to stuff keywords into webpage’s that have little or nothing to do with the topic or not enough content to make a website worth a visitors while. Search engines have come a long way in detecting these practices so it’s best to simply avoid them. The best way to get a top ranking is to create content rich optimized pages that actually have content. Your only fooling yourself if you try to not only try and trick the search engines but also your visitors as well. To do so really only defeats yourself, since you won’t make any sales if you try to use the spamming methods mentioned in this article. Do yourself a favor and practice real search engine optimization and watch your traffic grow.