The 10 Commandments of SEO
Here are some commonly missed, or misunderstood rules of engagement that everyone optimizing a web site should know and understand.
Breaking any of these rules can land your web site in a search engine ban.
Following these ten simple rules can make your SEO experience worth the work:
- Thou Shalt Honor Your Users
Remember that your customers are your users—not search engines. Gear your website and content towards real users because there are other ways that you can impress search engines. Do not try to show different content on your pages to search engines and people, this is called "cloaking", and it’s a big no-no.
- Thou Shalt Not Deceive Search Engines
Using cloaking, hidden links, hidden keywords, and other tactics aimed at fooling search engines could result in a Google ban. Deceitful behavior can also reduce your page rank value.
- Thou Shalt Not Use SEO Keywords in Vain
Keyword stuffing is another big SEO no-no. While optimizing content with keywords is vital, if you stuff too many keywords in your content you will offend your users—refer to commandment #1. It will also offend Google’s crawlers, as they will then consider your web site content to be too spammy.
- Thou Shalt Not Participate in Link Schemes
While inbound linking can skyrocket your SEO efforts, posting low quality links through link schemes has the opposite effect. Link schemes don’t work. What you should do is concentrate on high-quality links to relevant sites—this will boost your SEO value, naturally. Remember, it's not the quantity but the quality that matters.
- Thou Shalt Not Duplicate Content
Having original content on each page of your web site is vital to a successful website. Content should be relevant to each page—and most important it should be ORIGINAL. Duplicate content from another page of your site or another site entirely not only damages all your hard SEO work, but could lead to a potential search engine ban!
- Thou Shalt Not Article Spin
Spinning articles appears to be a great way to fill content on your web page, but there is a much better way—write your own relevant and important content. If you cannot think of anything exciting to put on your website, then don’t add anything. If you really want original content, hire somebody to write it instead of spinning articles.
- Thou Shalt Not Overkill with Flash
While Flash content sure looks slick, search engines like Google and Yahoo are only just beginning to be able to pick up keywords within. Ensure that you have plenty of content other than Flash in order to boost your page value.
- Thou Shall use Only Relevant Keywords
Many people think that using a greater variety of meta keywords will increase their value, whether they relate to the site or not. This is not only a no-no, its bad karma. ALWAYS use mets tag keywords that are relevant to the page they are for.
- Thou Shalt Not Hide Text
Some web masters think they are being clever when they hide text in the background, text that will still be picked up by search engines. It is not clever, its deceptive behavior and can cause big trouble.
- Thou Shalt not Distribute Malware
Malware is any malicious content, including viruses, trojans, hijacking, and any other malicious software. This will guarantee you a Google ban.
