SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the main way that businesses bring in new traffic. Mainly company’s, after creating a website, try to do whatever they can to have their site show up on Google, and other search engines, and then try to increase the ranking that their site has on said search engines. While there are plenty of wonderful SEO techniques and practices out there unfortunately there are just as many bad, or Black Hat, practices out there. These articles will discuss the 10 worst.
1. Cloaked content
This is probably one of the most common, and most likely to get your company banned, practices out there. Mainly a company can designate which parts of a website that Google looks at. Google then lists the website under the titles and keywords that is found in that content. The issue comes when a company shows Google content, and then makes it so viewers see different content such as ads or links to malware infected sites. This is what is known as cloaking and will get a website removed from Google in very short order.
2. Unrelated Keywords
Google often looks at the keywords that make up a site. For example a site about computer accessories will often contain that or similar links. This makes it easier for Google to index the site in the right spot. Some companies, however, try to gain new content by what is known as “keyword stuffing”. Mainly this involves hiding keywords with small font or camouflaged text to try and get listed more often. It may work short term, but will get a site removed from the ranking quite quickly.
3. Duplicate content
Some underhanded companies try to increase rankings by putting the exact same content on different pages. They can also steal copyrighted material to paste on their website. Google has gotten quite good at catching this and will happily penalize, or even remove, a website that has too much duplicate content.
4. Robot
Another underhanded technique is to use a “robot” to write content. In short, this involves writing one article and then having a program, or robot, rewrite the article by changing a few sentences and keywords.
5. Bad Neighborhoods
“Bad Neighborhoods” is how Google refers to questionable sites that constantly link to other harmful sites. While normally link exchanges are good idea, constantly linking to sites, no matter what their reputation, in order to boost traffic will quickly get a site in trouble.
6. Title stacking
Much like cloaked content, Title stacking refers to including large amounts of false titles on a page to try and drum up more traffic.
As it is always said,there is no shortcut to success.Please avoid all the above sort of practices and follow genuine white hat ways that ensure slow but guaranteed and long term success.
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Tagged as: bad, cloaked, content, duplicate, Google, keywords, practices, robot, SEO, stacking, title, unrelated
{ 31 comments }
Hi Dave,
Totally agreed with your points, these are very common mistakes which took place because lack of knowledge and understanding of SEO techniques.
Seo Services´s last [type] ..SEO Company
me too Dave.yes really its common mistakes on blogging.nice points
M.sai – Dailyblogtools.com´s last [type] ..10 Free WordPress Themes For Business
Duplicate content is very common issue and you can find it easily but after Google Panda update many sites have realized the importance of unique content.
Riya @ Couponseasy´s last [type] ..HostGator Coupon Code
Luckily I write all the content myself. All are guaranteed original and unique!
Jasmine@Top Web Hosts´s last [type] ..Telekom Malaysia Web Hosting vs Exabytes
Yeah sure Dave i’ll avoid 6 bad SEO practices..
Sample Letters´s last [type] ..Cancellation of Service by Letter
Seo is a very hot topic for good reason, it does not matters how amazing your websites and blogs are if noon knows about it ,so how to you increase your rankings and drive traffic to your site, Seo of course we are looking for tips and resources and tools to help our community members thrive online.
Sample Letters´s last [type] ..Cancellation of Service by Letter
& SEO also is the method to promote the website on search engine.well i would like to say thanks for the great tips.
Sample Letters´s last [type] ..Cancellation of Service by Letter
Hi,
That`s really true and useful post for me as well. I am not from the same online marketing field but I found it good to study this post. it is also useful for new entrants who want to know something about SEO. I have read different articles on internet and found that cloaked content is really harmful for your website. Moreover you also have to keep in mind that your content should be informative and easy to understand for reader so that it provides you chance to increase traffic on your website. All this information is from my study of different websites that I collected from different posts.
Thank you for raising awareness on this issue. Many still uses the practice of what you have explained about Robot. They are using spinner to produce more different messed up copy of one article. I hope that they will all get rid of that. Producing good unique content article could entertain your readers as well as it helps you gain more traffic.
Great post,
No doubt in that if we want to see our site on good PR in Search engine then we need to do each and every thing originally and in perfect way like we should put a fresh content every time and show our company’s logo with originality.
Beside that for achieve a good PR in search engines we need to follow as much as steps of SEO tactics which are too great for us.
goa carnival´s last [type] ..Goa Carnival 2012
All these practices might work only for a short but then lead to the opposite results, it is certainly easier to use these technics but the result is that you only lose valuable time that if you spend in white hat seo technics you will have better results that will be long lasted…
Kostas | Opportunities Planet
Online Marketing´s last [type] ..Link Baiting – Great Content generates Great Links
By point 4 you mean – spinning, correct? some see this as a good practice and a way to have more articles resulted in less time, however i think that quality matters most than quantity (although this too is important).
great article, i am sure that these practices will help me in future
Technology Blog´s last [type] ..10 Funniest Siri’s Answers & Responses
I heard Google even penalizes for Cloaked Links?
Swayam@SEO Tech Marketing´s last [type] ..Best 5 Business Marketing Strategies
Thanks those are great tips for SEO. I think most of the people commit those mistakes.
Actually, it will create awareness to all the bloggers in the wide. These 6 points will be more helpful in the future period. Thanks a lot for given up here
Kavya Hari´s last [type] ..Amazing News For Webmasters!
Excellent article and I was not much aware cloaking. Thanks for explaining various terms.
Robin@Samsung Tablet´s last [type] ..Samsung Tablet PC–Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 specification and review
Not all Robots are good.. Webmasters must keep watch on the bots activity.
Swayam@TechUpdates´s last [type] ..SlimDrivers for Microsoft Windows
Google panda has been very active these recent weeks and lots of non-quality or potential black hat seo techniques are being filtered out.
Ricardus @WordPress Hosting´s last [type] ..Oktoberfest with 50% off for Freedom Plan
Ricardus I agree with you and good quality backlinks will be required for continous improvement.
Mat@Carports Kits´s last [type] ..Used Metal Carports for Sale – Cheap Solution for your Metal Carports Kits
I noticed these too. That’s why we have to be really careful and be genuine in our web-building.
Jasmine@Top Web Hosts´s last [type] ..Telekom Malaysia Web Hosting vs Exabytes
You are right. All these might bring you some traffic or visitors for the short term, but they will do a lot of damage in the long run! Bloggers and website owners should never practice these bad seo practices.
Jasmine@Top Web Hosts´s last [type] ..Telekom Malaysia Web Hosting vs Exabytes
Have to avoid duplicate content on SEO practices and have to write high quality content on here
Its really worthy article on here 
Kavya Hari´s last [type] ..Amazing News For Webmasters!
Thanks for the share, Very helpful post for beginners like me, keep posting
Your all points about SEO are very clear and good define. May be I did some mistake in past but now I am be careful. Thanks a lot.
John Smith´s last [type] ..Price List Template
Hi Dave,
I agree that using robots to rewrite the article is a very bad SEO practice, but still many still do this. I have seen many articles about a topic that has been actually rewritten (because I can see only a few changes were done such as keywords and phrases). How does Google know which one is the original? And how do they penalize the blogs that seem to have rewritten an article from another blog and passed it as their own?
Felicia @ No Deposit Poker´s last [type] ..Groupe Bernard Tapie hires expert to close Full Tilt deal
Agreed, a lot of these practices are old black hat stuff, and Google has long since been able to detect sites that do this. If you are doing it, I suggest you stop, because it is only a matter of time before Google finds out and removes you from their index.
Actually, Google often look at their key words. And, title of the content should be most important part to attract the readers side. Thank you so much for given up here
Kavya Hari´s last [type] ..Amazing News For Webmasters!
Bad Neighborhood are particularly dangerous for long term pagerank building!
TechUpdates@Dell Inspiron Laptops´s last [type] ..Dell Inspiron 14RN i14RN-1364DBK Laptop Reviews
I have absolutely never heard about number 4 talking about the robots rewriting content? Is it like some type of software that rewrites the articles or is it a program that automatically writes the articles? Either way this seems very bad because I don’t think robots writing the articles would actually know what human beings like to read or how they think. Very weird. Good tips about the other points that were made.
I’ve seen or learned about all of these practices in one place or another, but #6. I never really gave thought to this factor, but I can really see how it could effect a website. With you titles and tags being so important if they are unrelated it would make sense to be penalized for them. I just never really gave too much thought to the idea of making sure that the titles we just as well written as the content. Always trying to be creative with the titles. lol
Thanks for the article Dave!