Thursday, January 12, 2012

4 Ways to Hurt your SEO


            Last week we touched on a few ways to boost your organic search results.  Now I would like to reveal 4 factors that can lower your SEO score and hurt your website’s reputation with search engines.  There are short term actions web developers and marketing firms do to make you think your SEO has been boosted.  Yes these actions might show a sudden increase in your site’s search ability; however, in the long run there is a negative impact and will hurt your Internet credibility.           

1)      Stuffing: This is a term used when developers overdose your page with keywords.  Using key words and phrases in your heading code, and page content is ideal, but you don’t want to overdo it.  An example of stuffing your website description would read “accounting software, businessworks accounting software, businessworks payroll, businessworks support, peachtree accounting, peachtree support, peachtree accounting reseller.”  A good description would utilize these keywords without trying to trick the search engine.  Ex: “McDaniel & Company sells and gives support on a variety of accounting software such as BusinessWorks and Peachtree.”  

2)      Hiding:  Hiding a group of nonsense keywords on your page’s content will drop your SEO score.  No one wants to visit a website with a bunch of random words listed at the bottom.  To avoid this, web developers will put a list of key words, but write it in white text on white background, thus hiding it from the viewer, but still having it read by search engines.   I want to have content on my page that includes words such as support, North Carolina, BusinessWorks Accounting, but I need to make it relative and viewable.

3)   Paid Links:  Having several links on the Internet directing pages to your website will boost your SEO score.  Keep in mind these are credible websites providing your link.  Ex: social media sites, news articles, other business pages.  Web developers and marketing companies sometime use paid hosting sites to provide your link on the web.  This is another form of cheating that search engines look to prevent and in return lowering your SEO score.

4)      Link Spam:  Again, this relates to the theory of creating more links on the web to boost your score.  Some developers or marketing companies will create links for your page anywhere possible.  They’ll find random websites with areas such as discussion boards, forums, guest books, and comment areas to submit your link on.  Once more, trying to cheat the system. 



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