How to get your site banned from Search Engines

SEO Tips you should and should not do

There are supposedly “over 200 SEO factors” that Google uses to rank pages in the Google search results (SERPs). What are the search engine optimization rules? well, they are not public. We can guess and experiment to see what works but these factors are speculation only.

Google says “Sites’ positions in our search results are determined based on a number of factors designed to provide end-users with helpful, accurate search results.”

PageRank
The main focus from Googlies perspective is PageRank which is a system to rank web pages. PageRank employs the democratic nature of the web by using as an indicator of an individual page’s value the links that link to a page. Based not so much on the volume of votes or links a page receives, but the quality or the importance of the page that links to a page. By having an important or high ranking page link to you helps to make your page “important” as well. With that said just because a page with a PageRank of say.. 7 links to your site does not automatically make your page more important. The linking page needs to be relevant to your page. So, a PageRank 7 page about gardening linking to a lower page ranked page about teaching English is not going to make the Teaching English page more important, and might actually hurt the teaching English page and vice versa.

Google uses text-matching techniques and goes beyond the number of times a term appears on a page examining dozens of aspects of the page’s content and the content of the pages that link to it to return good matches of high-quality websites that contain information relevant to your search.

In additions, Google does not sell SERP positioning. Yes they sell ads and place ads around the search results but they do not sell search engine results page placement.

Here is an article from Google on page rank http://www.google.com/technology/index.html

One of the main problems with Search engines and page design is that you need to keep in mind some of the rules that SEs use when developing your pages. The side effect is, If SEs did not exist and if you were to just design your page then you would not design it the way SEs like to see  your page designed. Thus the best solution is designing your page based on a combination of SE rules and not 100% on user or visitor desires.

Cloaking
Because of this some SEO developers employ Cloaking techniques. “Cloaking” is the showing of one version of a web page to search engines and another version to general users. Thus you show up in SERPs and when a user clicks on the link they get a different page than what the SE thinks it is linking you to. Cloaking is a fine technique to use when you want higher rankings in SERPs but a web page written to rank well under unrelated search queries runs a high risk of getting the entire domain banned. When a user searches for antique Duck decoys for sale and sees your cloaked link “Inexpensive Unique Antique Duck Decoys for Sale”, clicks the link and is directed to a page on acupuncture then this is a prime candidate for being banned. However, if you provide a nice graphical page on unique duck decoys that is not 100% SE optimized then there is a much reduced chance of being banned as users are less likely to complain or report your pages. In fact, the user should not even know they have been exposed to a cloaking technique. The purpose of a search engine is to provide Internet users with the information sought after. Keeping this in mind when you create your web page will ensure you higher rankings in SEs.

Duplicated Content
Duplicating content is an SEO tactic where a website owner creates multiple web pages with very similar content in hopes of receiving more visitors. The result of this is not only running an extremely high risk of being banned but the even more important risk of boring your visitors and loosing trust or being perceived as a garbage site.

Redirects
Redirects are used to gain higher rankings for a web page. Some of these ways work only in a few search engines while others may work in many. if you try to get your web page listed under a search query it does not belong to you risk having the page (or domain) banned.

Hidden Text
Another SEO Technique is the use of Hidden text, increasing Keyword density by use of hidden text or text the same color as the background page so the text is not seen. Search engines will rank pages in part by the number of times the search query is repeated on a web page. Web pages with a higher keyword density usually show up higher in results. This tactic is frowned upon by Ses and putting hidden keywords unrelated to your site is a good way to get banned. As mentioned before Google goes well beyond the number of times a term appears on a page examining dozens of aspects of the page’s content.

Doorway Pages
Doorway pages are web pages created specifically to rank high in search engines. They are typically not created with human visitors in mind which defeats your purpose of getting visitors to revisit your page and puts you at risk of being banned by SEs.

The bottom line is to just create your pages using normal English even with a few errors, in fact a few errors might help your ranking and follow traditional on-page optimization techniques. include title Tag, header tags, page content, alt tags, meta description tag and meta keywords tag.

Page Title
The page title is the number one on page factor that they need to focus on. Page title tips:
• Limit the length of your page title to 65 characters or less.
• Incorporate keyword phrases into your page title.
• Grab the searchers attention.
• Each page should have a unique page title.
• Repeat your title tag in their H1 tags.
• Their title is the link that is shown in the search results of the search engine such as Google.
• Focus on click through rates and conversion rates.

So for example if your site focus’ on
a) Make Money Online
b) Make Extra Money

The title tag for your web page should look like this:

Make Money Online | Make Extra Money

Keep in mind that you should limit your keywords to a maximum of 3 or so on each web page because too many keywords in a title tag may be seen as spamming.

People often lie to get better results and because of this Google, understanding there is a problem, has decided to rely on off page optimization. That is, what the anchor text is in a link that links to your site from someone else’s site.

Header Tags
Header Tags are an HTML tag < h1 > </ h1 >. Use the H1 header tag as the title of the content on the web page. Do not confuse this with the < title > tag. Search engines read pages from top to bottom, so make sure your H1 tag contains the most important keyword(s). It should be placed at the top of the page which will be seen by your visitors. For sub-headings, you can create a H2 header tag and include your second most important keyword(s) into the H2 tag.

Page Content
Page Content should have your keywords sprinkled throughout the page. The closer to the top of the page the better. The first two sentences being the most important. Be sure to not over due it.. Keyword density of around 3 should be fine.

Alt Tags
Be sure to use Alt Tags for your images and the alt tag should contain your keywords. Don’t add similar keywords to each image as once again search engines may see them as spam.

Meta Description Tag
Writing a keywords-rich description will surely help in improving your website’s position as search engines will use your meta description tag as the short description of your website listed in their search result pages. The length of your description should not be too long, 2 to 3 sentences should be enough and the description encourage people to click the link to your website.

Meta Keywords
Yahoo is basically the only SE that utilizes meta keywords. Yahoo encourages webmasters to use meta keywords tag to improve their websites’ rankings. You can visit http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/ranking/ranking-02.html to read more about Yahoo’s webmaster guidelines. Add your keywords to the tag in order of importance and do not repeat the same keyword.

Speculated SEO Rules
Here is the speculation - educated guesses by SEO webmasters on some of the top webmaster forums. If you want to achieve a high ranking, the various confirmed and suspected Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Rules can be found here:

120 Factors List
http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm