SEO Techniques That Should Be Avoided

Search engine optimisation (SEO) plays a crucial role in improving your website’s visibility and organic ranking. While implementing effective SEO strategies is essential for your online success, it’s vital to be aware of the SEO techniques that should be avoided. Using outdated SEO practices, often referred to as “Black Hat SEO” techniques can not only harm your website’s search engine rankings but also damage your online reputation.

Black Hat SEO Techniques

In this article, we will cover some of the SEO techniques that you should steer well clear of to ensure a sustainable and successful online presence, and if your digital agency is using any of these it may be time to question what you are paying them for.

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing refers to using keywords or phrases in a webpage’s content repeatedly, with the sole purpose of manipulating search engine rankings. This technique used to work many years ago, and some older websites may still have things in place, but this firstly does not give the best user experience or readability and can result in search engines penalising your website. Instead, focus on producing high-quality, relevant and fresh content that provides value to your visitors, and naturally incorporates keywords or phrases in a meaningful manner. You can use a keyword density checker tool to ensure the keywords and phrases you want to target are embedded to the correct percentage, ideally around 2% or 1-2 keywords for every 100 words of page or blog copy you are writing.

Cloaking Content

SEO cloaking is a technique that involves presenting different content to search engine crawlers than what is shown to website visitors. The purpose of cloaking is to manipulate search engine rankings by tricking search engines into believing that the website offers valuable and relevant content. When in reality the real content of the pages may be very different. This practice violates search engine guidelines and can result in severe penalties, including the removal of the website from search engine results. Cloaking undermines the trust between websites and search engines, as it aims to deceive rather than provide genuine and relevant information to users. Search engines have become increasingly sophisticated in detecting cloaking practices, making it a risky strategy to use for SEO and should be avoided. Transparency, honesty, and delivering quality content are far more effective and sustainable approaches to achieving organic search engine visibility.

SEO Link Farms

Link farms are networks of websites that have been created solely to manipulate search engine rankings for SEO by artificially generating a large number of inbound links. These links are typically from low-quality, often spammy websites with little relevance to the content of the website they are linking to. Link farms aim to deceive search engines into thinking that a website is popular and authoritative by boosting its link profile. However, this practice is being increasingly detected by search engines as this is considered a violation of their guidelines.  Engaging in link farm activities can lead to severe penalties, including a significant drop in rankings or even removal from search engine results.  Many cheap guest blogging or link-building services that offer backlinks in large volumes for low prices are actually running link farms through many hundreds of sites that they manage themselves purely for this purpose.  It is crucial for SEO to focus on building organic, high-quality backlinks through legitimate strategies such as content creation, guest blogging, and forming relationships with authoritative and industry or subject-related websites. Quality and relevance should always be prioritised over quantity when it comes to link-building for sustainable SEO success.

SEO Article Spinning

Article spinning is a technique used in SEO that involves taking an existing article and using automated software, AI tools or manual methods to create multiple versions of the same content by replacing words or phrases with synonyms or reordering sentences. The purpose of article spinning is to generate a large volume of content quickly for the purpose of building backlinks or increasing keyword visibility. However, doing article spinning in this way usually produces low-quality, nonsensical content that offers little value to readers, and thus the readability and engagement with this sort of content will be very low. As such, search engines have become increasingly sophisticated in detecting spun articles and consider them a form of duplicate or thin content. Certainly reading up or learning about a subject from other online content is a great way to become an expert in a subject but it is important to prioritise creating your own original, well-written content that provides value to users, rather than resorting to artificial methods like article spinning. High-quality content that meets the needs of your target audience is a more effective and sustainable approach to SEO.

Hidden SEO Text and Links

Manipulating the appearance of your website by using hidden text or links, such as making them the same colour as the background or positioning them off the visible screen, are deceptive SEO tactics that used to be heavily employed many years ago and would help a site to rank organically. However, this technique clearly aims to deceive search engines while hiding content from users, thus the content is bad from the perspective of both the user experience and the search engines. Google, Bing and the other search engines can detect this technique, and if identified, your website may be downgraded in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Always prioritise transparency (but not text transparency!) and ensure that all text and links are visible and easily accessible to users.

Duplicate Content

Publishing identical or near-identical content across multiple pages of your website, or clearly plagiarising content from other sources without proper attribution, is a detrimental SEO practice. Search engines strive to provide users with unique and valuable content, so duplicating content can lead to your website being flagged as spam or experiencing a decrease in rankings. Create original, engaging content that caters to the needs of your target audience, and ensure proper citation when referring to external sources. You can make use of the Canonical tag to tell the search engines where the original source of the text should be attributed to, and that will also ensure that your site is not penalised for this duplication of text.

Google Bombing

Google bombing, also known as link bombing or search engine bombing, is an attempt to manipulate search engine results by coordinating a large number of backlinks with specific anchor text pointing to a particular webpage on a site. The goal of Google bombing is to influence search engine algorithms and cause the targeted page to rank prominently for unrelated or specific keywords. This tactic is typically executed through coordinated efforts, such as link campaigns or social media campaigns. However, Google has implemented measures to combat Google bombing and reduce its impact on search results. While Google bombing was more prevalent in the past, it has become less effective due to algorithmic advancements and improvements in search engine technology. Contextual links, those backlinks to a page from related keywords or phrases on a good quality page or post are the way to do this properly, as Google now prioritises relevancy and quality of content, making organic, legitimate SEO practices a more effective approach for improving search rankings.

Misleading redirects

Misleading redirects in SEO, also known as Bait and Switch refers to the practice of redirecting users from one URL to another in a way that is deceptive or misleading. This technique aims to manipulate search engine rankings and user behaviour. For example, a website may redirect users from a Search Engine Result Page (SERP) to a different page than the one indicated in the search result. This can lead to a poor user experience, as visitors may end up on irrelevant or unrelated pages. This can be done using code in the landing page that immediately redirects the user as soon as the page loads. Misleading redirects can also violate search engine guidelines and result in penalties, including lower rankings or being removed from search results. It is important to ensure that redirects are implemented transparently, minimally and with clear intentions and relevance to the user’s query. Maintaining user trust and delivering accurate and valuable content should always be the priority over misleading tactics for SEO success.

Rich Snippet Markup Spam

Rich snippet markup spam, also known as structured data spam, refers to the practice of using misleading or irrelevant structured data markup to manipulate search engine results and enhance the appearance of search listings. Structured data markup is intended to provide search engines with additional information about a webpage’s content, such as ratings, reviews, or event details. However, some unethical SEO practitioners abuse this feature by implementing spammy or fake structured data to misrepresent the actual content on the webpage.  An example of this would be showing 5* ratings for a book review which would show in the SERP, for a website which does not sell books. These techniques can help a site to rank well initially but ultimately means the search engines are displaying inaccurate or misleading information to users. Rich snippet markup spam not only undermines the credibility of search results but also violates search engine guidelines. Search engines have implemented measures to detect and penalise such spam tactics, including lower rankings within search results or ultimately removal from the search results altogether. It is essential to use structured data markup ethically, accurately reflecting the content on your webpage and providing relevant and valuable information to users.