One does not have to look very hard to find the plethora of search engine marketing advertisements out there all guaranteeing the best seo search engine optimization page results (SERP). This of course is a result of good reasons; the better the page ranking of a website, the more traffic that will flow to it, the better the chances are of generating revenue through direct sales or advertising.
But before one runs out to hire ‘the best’ search engine marketing services or attempts to do it themselves, time must be taken to consider the search engine marketing tactics which will most certainly backfire.
Search Engine Marketing Tactics to Avoid – Hidden Keywords, Text or Links
Hiding text, keywords and/or links refers to intentionally hiding these items from the view of the visitor. Some methods used to hide such elements from visitors include:
- The font colour is the same as the background colour.
- The font colour is the same colour as a background image(s).
- The font colour to ‘almost’ the same as the background colour or background image(s).
- Using CSS of Javascript to create hidden pages.
The purpose of hiding text, keywords and links is to load the page with as many keywords and phrases as possible that would be unsightly to the visitor but possibly results in better page ranking. Unfortunately, although this may work for a short period of time, search engines consider this tactic to be deceitful and labeled as “search spam” and can result in the page or site being removed completely from the search engine.
Search Engine Marketing Tactics to Avoid – Cloaking and Doorway Pages
Cloaking specifically refers to the visitor of a website or page seeing something completely different than what the search engine believes to be there. An example of such would be a page which which shows nothing other than images (or other media files such as Flash), but contains cloaked pages or hidden text to fool the search engine into ‘thinking’ there is more valid content present.
At some point or another, many online users will come across a high ranking search result page, which when the link is followed, they find a page that’s either completely gibberish, or only contains the most generalized and valueless format imaginable (such as a lot of missing details); that is a doorway page. Doorway pages are literally groups of web pages with no purpose other than to falsely amass content in an attempt to increase page rank. Both cloaking and doorway page tactics are frustrating to visitors and seriously frowned upon by search engines.
SEO Marketing Tactics to Avoid – Keyword Stuffing
For people who have found themselves on such pages, this is probably one of the more annoying tactics as “keyword stuffing” refers to repeating specific keywords over and over again within paragraphs of text designed to look like actual useful information. Users assume the site has value or importance since it was found on the first or second page of the search results, but are then presented with a bunch of nonsense spamdexing.
Improve SERP by Avoiding Shady Search Engine Marketing
Keep in mind that the goal of search engines is to provide the reader with reliable and accurate sources of information. Search engines are not interested in whether or not a business or person generates more business or traffic by using shady search engine marketing tactics (such as using doorway pages or scraped content) because ultimately, these tactics only serve to erode online credibility and frustrate the user. Worst of all, use of these search engine marketing tactics will at some point lead to the complete opposite of what is desired for the website, removal from the search engine entirely.
Anything that’s worth doing, is worth doing right the first time. This old adage applies through to our day and especially to the search engine marketing tactics we apply to websites and web pages.