Unlike the previous post this is a list of exactly what not to do, and what will assure you of negative results. Make sure that you don’t do these things if you are trying to accomplish good Google rankings.
1) Be Careful
Always make sure to do a little research on the people you are linking to. A general rule of thumb is to never link to internet pharmacies and gambling websites. Like everything there are exceptions, and there are a few sites under these categories that have a good PR. To make sure that your site or a potential partner’s site is not blacklisted I suggest using this DNS Lookup.
2) Don’t Use Link Farms
Link farms are a weak attempt at an easy way out. It is relatively easy for Google to discover these sort of schemes. On ground level it may seem that you will not get caught. However, when Google overlooks many websites at one time it becomes fairly easy for them.
3) Spam
Whether it is on forums, social networking sites, wiki’s, blogs, or email. This is the most obvious and should be common sense for most people.
4) Paying For Links Through Brokers, or Blatantly Purchasing Links
If and when you buy text link advertisements try not to make it obvious. Also if you decide to sell links on your site, be careful and have potential clients e-mail you for more “advertising” information. Google now has a section where you can “snitch” on other people that have paid for links.
5) Keyword Stuffing
Did you have a brilliant idea to cram your target keywords throughout your site? This may work for high rankings on MSN ( for a few days ) but once you are caught, your site will be the newest member to the search engines blacklist.
6) Hiding Text
This relates to the previous don’t do. Never hide text using the same color for text and background. Enough said.
7) Meta Spam
There is a bit of controversy as whether or not meta information is a key deciding factor in search engine placement. The one thing that you can be sure of, is if you overwrite your keywords in the meta description, keywords, or even the title section, you will be noticed and possibly banned.
Being Lazy
Some have stated that using tools to submit your site to numerous search engines and/or directories will have a negative affect. Don’t spam Google. Don’t ask them to re-index your site every day. For the most part you should use your common sense, and you should be fine. Also see my article on how to rank higher on Google.
Good luck everyone!
