Back in March 2008, the Vatican issued a set of seven new Deadly Sins to update and augment the original established list of seven. Within the Catholic Church, these are considered terrible ways that a person can offend God.
In the world of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) there are also a set of 7 heinous deadly sins. Whilst, these sins are unlikely to offend anyone’s God, they will certainly offend the Internet’s all-powerful deity known as Google and its lesser deities the other Search Engines such as Yahoo and MSN.
These sins can be roughly divided into three separate categories: Spamming, Style over Substance and Beginner’s Errors or Mistakes.
SIN 1 – SAME TITLE TAG – Webmasters and Website owners make one consistent deadly SEO sin. They use the same Title Tag on every page throughout the entire site. The Title Tag can make or break your ranking, why be stupid enough to risk your ranking for a lack of imagination? The Title Tag is your best opportunity to have your keywords or keyphrases read by Search Engines. Calling them all the same thing is a Beginner’s Error that could cost you dearly.
SIN 2 – SAME META DESCRIPTION – A close relation to SIN 1, this is a Beginner’s Error that is made very frequently. Rushing to get the site up with SEO friendly content, the beginner simply fills in the Meta Description with the same details on every page. Even so-called SEO gurus can make the same mistake sometimes. But unique content includes the Meta Descriptions; so don’t fall foul of this sin.
SIN 3 – ABSENT KEYPHRASES – If you optimise a website for keyphrases that don’t appear in your online copy, you won’t get the SEO value out of them. The optimised keyphrases must match the content. Keyphrases and keywords must originate from within the content. That’s why the content needs to be keyphrase rich. Write content that includes the keyphrases that you want to be found for. However, take care not to alienate real human visitors by creating content that’s difficult to read because it’s all about SIN 7.
SIN 4 – FLASH ONLY SITE – Flash websites can now be read and indexed by Google. However, it’s still very much early days and has not been fully and properly tested. A site that’s made entirely from flash components is still a major No-No. This is a Style over Substance sin and it’s patently stupid. If most search engines cannot read flash, and only Google can index it at all, if not particularly well, a site made of flash will be practically invisible to search engines looking for text.
SIN 5 – BUYING LINKS – If one of the real 7 Deadly Sins were Stupidity, this would be covered under that sin. In order to help alongside optimisation, it’s important to create backlinks. Google likes to think that the sites with the best rankings are sites that are regularly visited and sites that other people support enough to make links from their site to your site. These are called backlinks. When you have high quality backlinks, you look good to search engines.
Of course, some bright spark came up with the idea of selling backlinks to those who need quick fix SEO. These enterprises are called Link Farms or Backlink Farms and are going to get you in trouble with the Search Engines. Google severely punishes those who commit this sin and considers this practice spamming. Of course, it won’t be just the link farm that gets banned; it will be your website. Don’t spam, you can’t afford the consequences.
SIN 6 – DOORWAY PAGES – It’s become common practice on the Internet to create lots of SEO pages with just a few of the keywords or keyphrases changed. For example, you get the same page of content but where Recruitment Manchester was on one page, Recruitment London is on the next, or Recruitment Glasgow or Recruitment Reading. This type of page is considered spamming and could cause Google and the other Search Engines to ban your site completely. Is it worth getting your site banned for this?
SIN 7 – KEYWORD STUFFING – There are lots of ways that you can over-stuff your content. Since some people believe (wrongly) that up to 25% of your content density can be keywords, keyphrases or keyphrase related. But that would mean that your sentences would look something like this nonsense:
Whenever a keyphrase is used with another keyphrase, the keyphrase is employed as a keyphrase that can help another keyphrase.
It makes no sense whatsoever, it’s impossible to understand, it’s offensive to both search engines and human readers. But wait! There’s plenty more keyword stuffing idiocy that goes on.
Using white text on a white background so that only the search engine can see it is a common sin. If this sin is revealed, the search engines will systematically ban you and no one will find you by using a web search engine.
Using tiny font to create pages of tiny unseen text, stuffed full of keywords will result in the same punishment. Stuffing loads of keywords in at the end of the page, out of sight of the normal surfer is also an offence that search engines such as Google will ban the site for. It’s simple, you’ve been warned, confession will not save you from this sin of stuffing your website with keyphrases, repent now and change your ways!
These are the Seven Deadly Sins of SEO and they will lead your website straight to Google Hell.
However, don’t panic! It’s still possible to save your SEO soul, legitimately gain the SEO advantage that you seek and end up in SEO website heaven. If you need to take the steps to get there, choose an SEO company that can keep you on the straight and narrow.
For more information on how you can avoid the punishment for committing the Seven Deadly Sins of Search Engine Optimisation and achieve the rankings that you and your business need, contact Nikki at Nikki@NikkiPilkington.com or visit the Internet Marketing Expert.
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