5 tips to avoid becoming Search Engine Ostracized

July 16th, 2009 | Category: Marketing, SEO

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do-not-enter

Over the last few years, I’ve written extensively on how you should optimize your website. Changing page titles, alternate keyword research methodologies, redirecting domains, and eliminating duplicate content are just a few. But what happens when you get a little out of control and start over optimizing your site. How do you know when you’re doing too much SEO? Below I’ve included 5 tips to help you know when to say when.

Everyone should see the same content
One of the popular techniques that used to be used to trick search engines into giving undo ranking is called Content Cloaking. Content cloaking allows for you to detect the user agent arriving at the site (browser, search engine spider, etc.) and display one version of content for one user and a different version for another user. For example, I may present a page laden with keywords to the search engine, and a page with a few images to the user, thereby “tricking” the search engine into thinking I have much more content than I actually do. Of course, this is an ill-advised tactic and Google (and others) specifically outline that this is not allowed. Frankly, it seems like more work than it’s actually worth.

Now, you can present the content differently, based on user agent, but it still has to be nearly the same content. An example of this could be a visually intensive website that when a user visits via the browser they are presented with all the bells and whistles, but when they arrive via mobile phone, you can strip out excess images, flash elements, etc. thus tailoring the experience to the platform, but not for undo search ranking.

Your excellent content needs to make excellent sense, excellent
Another practice that still exists, but which is becoming more and more obvious is keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is the technique whereby a block of text, alt attribute, or HTML element is loaded to the hilt with the same keyword or phrase over and over. It’s hard to define what constitutes keyword stuffing in terms of best practices, but if you read a piece of copy on a site and it sounds redundant or overly verbose or redundant, it’s probably the victim of keyword stuffing and could use some trimming. A best practice I use if you are optimizing a page on a site, is to mention the keyword phrase, at a minimum, in the page title, the page description, the H1 tag, and at least twice within the body copy. That way, you can be assured the point of the page comes across to both the user and search engines. Excellent.

Don’t hide anything from your users like this white text on a white background [highlight here]
Now keyword stuffing made it pretty obvious to search engines what you were trying to do. On the other hand, hidden text hides text from the user, but shows it to search engines. This could be done using JavaScript, CSS, or as simple as white text on a white background, as I’ve done above. This again is a no-no and, as a best practice, is frowned upon both from a search engine standpoint, but also user experience. By adding hidden text or hidden links, you are making your page less useful to your users overall and this may eventually result in your removal from Google’s index all together. On a personal note, any hidden text or links may not effect a user with “normal” vision, however, a user with impaired vision who may use a text based browser will instantly realize what is being done and may flag it to the Google content team. If you’re not HTML savvy, make sure to check your site with a text based browser like Lynx to ensure there isn’t a bunch of hidden text you don’t know about, or just to give you an idea of what your site looks like as all text.

Avoid buying links if you can, but if you do, do so at your own risk
It’s always tempting when you have an SEO campaign going and the results are not moving as fast as you’d like them to. “Why don’t we buy some links?” you might say. Well this is a path that is both dangerous and can be a logistical nightmare. The process of buying links goes something like this: you identify a site you’d like to have a link from, you approach them directly or through a third party, the link is purchased and goes live, and your rankings go up, hopefully. Now, I know there are numerous link vendors out there, and I get approached on a regular basis to sell links on my site or for opportunities to buy links elsewhere, so I know it’s a thriving market, even if Google doesn’t approve. Regardless, I’ve heard both great things and horrible things through the grapevine of “Yeah – we buy links all the time and they work great” or “No, we’ve been banned for months because of buying links and won’t do so in the future”. Personally, I try to avoid this approach like the plague. It’s a hassle for me to manage and worry about, and if I ever got one of my clients sites banned in Google, I’d feel terrible (as well as having a potential lawsuit on my hands). So the bottom line is that I avoid it all together, but I know other SEO’s who hesitantly use it as part of their optimization program.

Develop relevant and interesting content and people will use it and link to it
Now I know this last one looks like a huge cop out and you’re saying to yourself – “Thanks Matt Cutts“, but I’m being totally serious. Once you optimize your content – the next step is to merchandise it. Share it with friends on Twitter or Facebook. See if there are relevant bloggers who’d like to share it. And if your content isn’t that bold or interesting, why not start a blog of your own and link to it from a niche piece of content? You can use the blog as a sounding board and promotional vehicle and punch up the topic a bit, while still maintaining your original content website structure. The keys here are relevancy, uniqueness, and how interesting your spin or take is, in relation to the market. Just because you are in a conservative industry, doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion or a personality. And just because you are in a very progressive industry, doesn’t mean you can’t do something unexpected or even conservative. Take a look at what’s out there and try to find a unique selling position for the content you have and play it up to everyone who will listen. Eventually people will start talking and in the online space, more importantly, linking.

In fact, here are a few tools to encourage users to actively link to your site:

Just remember, there has to be some value or benefit to the user in order to get them to share your content. They are not simply going to start hawking your wares for no reason.

Anything obvious I left out or you recommend avoiding as well? Let me know in the comments.

Image courtesy of dreamsjung.