Achieving high search engine rankings is crucial for online businesses. Search engine optimization (SEO), or the process by which companies can strategically increase their ranking on major search engines is a widely used approach that naturally increases the ranking of a website on the search engine results page (SERPs).
As with just about everything, there are good ways and bad ways to go about increasing your website’s ranking. Black hat techniques, or those based on unethical practices, are rarely a good idea and can lead to serious consequences.
Don’t Do Black Hat Marketing
Here are four black hat strategies to avoid if you want to stay on the good side of search engines.
1. Don’t “Cloak” Information – If you website works in a way that visitors see something different than search engines, it’s a bad sign. Rather than creating cloaked content, remember to use optimized title tags, meta descriptions and other basic SEO techniques visible to search engines.
2. Don’t Try and Trick Google – No matter how sneaky you think you are, it won’t take long for Google and search engines in general, to track you down. Don’t use domains with duplicate content, hidden keywords, invisible text, or use keywords irrelevant to your website.
3. Don’t Use Link Schemes – Link farming and link exchange programs are seen as a dishonest practice that Google frowns upon. The links to your website should be built naturally with good content. With excellent active content comes great links from outside sources.
4. Don’t Use Unauthorized Computer Programs – Using programs that submit pages, check rankings, or send automated queries to Google use up computer resources and violates the terms and service of Google.
Increasing the ranking of your website is important. Doing it the right way is even more important. For detailed information on Google’s guidelines be sure to check their Webmaster Guidelines found here:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
Clickx focuses on using white hat practices that will get you the results you want and keep you from getting blacklisted by search engines. For more information or help with your SEO campaign contact Clickx today at 312-945-7150.
