SEO is an important strategy, but there are some wrong ways to approach it.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is popular for a reason: it’s one of the best ways to increase your brand’s visibility and get more traffic for your site. There are many things you can do to improve your odds of ranking for relevant queries, including developing more onsite content and building links. In fact, almost everything you do to promote your image online has the potential to help your relevance or authority, either by directly increasing the ranking factors responsible for helping you get ranked or indirectly increasing your visibility (and therefore your likelihood of earning links and brand mentions).
But with that being said, is there a wrong way to do SEO?
The short answer is yes. Google wants to ensure the highest quality sites and pages are at the top of the search rankings, and there are lots of businesses that try to game the system. To fight back, Google employs strict standards to monitor for these sneaky or deceptive tactics, and penalize the sites that try to use them.
For example:
- Keyword stuffing. Keywords are important for determining the relevance of various pages, but they can easily be abused. The practice of including unnatural keywords and phrases, or embedding keywords in places they don’t belong (like hidden in the background of your site), you could be accused of keyword stuffing, and earn a penalty.
- Buying links. Google uses links to measure trustworthiness, but if you buy those links instead of earning them, it could work against you.
- Engaging in link schemes. Similarly, if you engage in link schemes like reciprocal links or link circles, it could hurt your chances of ranking.
- Using deceptive redirects. Traditional 301 redirects are fine, but deceptive or misleading redirects are problematic.
These are just a handful of the strategies that could actively harm your SEO campaign. You’ll notice they have some commonalities; basically, if you’re trying to actively deceive Google or web users, you’re going to get penalized. If you need help creating or revitalizing a white-hat SEO strategy, contact us at Quez Media today!
