Internet Marketing is an ever-evolving field and in order to stay on top of
constant changes you need to stay vigilant and be prepared to learn new ideas and concepts on a daily basis.The changes that have arisen within search engines since I began working in Internet marketing in 1997 have been far-reaching and indicative of continually changing environment that Internet represents. It therefore stands to reason that techniques required to achieve top organic search engine placements constantly change as well.
Our full guide on legitimate way to optimise your web site for both “organic” search engine listings and your users can be found within our book “Start at Beginning” which can be downloaded here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html
Search engines constantly strive to advance their technology and algorithms in order to provide most relevant search results for their users. Achieving effective results require identification, and ultimately complete eradication of, manipulative search engine optimisation tactics. As Internet marketers, it is up to us to achieve high listings for our customers and this requires that our search engine marketing tactics change and grow with new technology.
Unfortunately there are many search engine optimisation strategies still being used by ill informed or unscrupulous Internet marketers and webmasters that became obsolete a long time ago. In many cases, these strategies are not only ineffective but are now considered spam and can have dire consequences for your rankings and even result in your web site being banned permanently from some engines.
The following is a list of what are now considered within professional Internet marketing world to be Top 10 worst search engine optimisation tactics:
1: Doorway Pages (or Gateway Pages, Information Pages, Ghost pages, etc.) These are generally multiple web pages that are devoid of useful content but heavily optimised for search engine rankings with each page being created for a particular key phrase. The idea of this concept was to fool search engines into thinking that these pages were highly relevant and provide top rankings for them under their targeted phrase. When a surfer came across on page they were often shown a "Click Here to Visit Our Web Site" link that surfer had to click on to actually arrive at legitimate website. Isn’t that what they were trying to do when ended up at this page?
Once among most popular methods of attaining multiple search engine placements, doorway pages were widely used until 2000 by many Internet marketers and web masters. Since then, Doorway pages have become most obvious form of Spam that a search engine can find and repercussions are dire if such a tactic is employed. Unfortunately, many web masters and marketers still employ this tactic and then wonder why they suddenly drop from search engines results after being banned for using this technique.
2: Invisible Text Invisible text is used in a variety of ways in an effort to increase frequency of keywords in body text of a web page. Some methods are: making text same colour as background of web page, hiding text behind layers, placing text at very bottom of over-sized pages, etc.
This tactic is particularly perilously as it is obvious to search engine spiders. In 1999, search engines began implementing automated methods of detection and penalization.
For legitimate ways to use text to greater effect within your web site download a copy of our book “Start at Beginning” here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html
3: Content Misrepresentation Misleading search engines into believing your web page is about topic ‘A' when it is in fact about ‘B'. This tactic was used primarily for promotion of adult, gambling, and other extremely competitive search markets.
Unfortunately this tactic is still in use by unscrupulous web masters and marketers. The fact is that this tactic is simplest for a search engine to identify and result will be swift and complete; banishment from search engine index indefinitely. The worst offence against search engines is to try to fool them.
4: Redirects Redirects have some innocent uses (practical, legal, etc.) but they are also used to mislead search engines by making them believe that page they have indexed is highly relevant to a particular search phrase. When a surfer visits page, however, they don’t see original page and are redirected to an entirely different one.
In most cases search engines have advanced enough to see this technique being used and act accordingly. In fact they usually ignore any page with a redirect (assuming correctly that content is useless) while spidering redirect destination instead, i.e.; page that surfer sees. Redirects, unless blatantly Spam-related do not directly result in intentional ranking penalties; however, they have no positive effect either.
5: Heading Tag Duplication Heading Tags were created to highlight page headings in order of importance. Thus Heading Tags that are available: H1, H2, H3, etc. This duplication technique involves implementing more than one H1 tag into a web page in order to enhance a particular keyword or phrase.
This tactic is still very prevalent and likely still works on some search engines; however, none of major search engines will respond well to this technique as it has been identified as a common manipulation.
6: Alt Tag Stuffing Alt Tag stuffing is act of adding unnecessary or repetitive keywords into Alt Tag (words that appear when you hover over an image with you mouse pointer).
