Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Stay Away From These Black-Hat SEO Strategies



The world of internet marketing is a constantly evolving one. Search engines are regularly coming up with updates/changes in their algorithms, in their bid to maximize user-convenience on the web. As a result, several search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that were in vogue earlier, are now categorized under ‘black-hat (or, unethical) SEO’ activities. Given below is a list of such potentially punishable SEO strategies that you should avoid:


  • Using software-generated content – Presence of software-generated or ‘spun’ content can lower visitor-experience on your website by several notches. The quality of such web content tends to be on the lower side, and it often fails to provide users the information they are looking for. Avail of the services of a top SEO company in India that is into professional content development for the web. The content needs to be unique, factually and grammatically correct, engaging, and regularly updated.
  • Keyword-stuffing – Internet marketers earlier often used to stuff their web-content with a very high percentage of focus keywords. This was done to bolster the search engine rank of websites – but such keyword stuffed content was practically useless for general users. As per the latest Google algorithm updates, the keyword density on any section of your website must not exceed 1.5%.
  • Submitting articles to spammy directories – The efficacy of submitting articles to a large number of directories has significantly gone down – as the professionals from any SEO company in Kolkata would confirm. Guest blogging has emerged as a much more effective substitute, in its place. Even if you are still into article submissions, make sure that you do so only on high-quality, reliable online directories.
  • Building fake backlinks – If the anchor text(s) of your website are over-optimized, most of the visitor-traffic would be generated from a single source only. This is not looked upon kindly by Google, which prefers websites with a more varied and natural set of backlinks. Never try to build fake backlinks by tweaking the anchor text – serious penalties can be imposed for doing so!
  • Link farming – Buying links is also a strict ‘no-no’, as far as ethical website promotional tactics are concerned. Make sure that the SEO company in Kolkata that you have hired is not involved in any such link-farming activities. Instead, it should be able to help you learn how you can generate free, valid and high-quality links from other websites.
  • Spam comments in blogs – Do not put irrelevant comments on business blogs, simply to promote your website. Read through the blog post(s) first, make sure it is related to your line of activity, and put insightful comments and queries. You can put your website URL in some of them – but don’t go overboard while doing so!
  • Publishing hidden/concealed texts – If a reputed SEO company in India is in charge of optimizing your website, this problem is not likely to occur. You must not keep lines of your focus keywords (comma-separated, without any other content) concealed on your website (e.g., in the same font color as the website background). Google will easily detect the presence of such hidden texts, and your online visibility might get adversely affected.
  • Website cloaking – Do not create separate versions for your website – one for the general visitors, and the other, keyword-stuffed version, for the search engine bots.  Once popular, such ‘cloaking’ activities are one of the most serious ‘black-hat SEO’ strategies currently. Request your SEO company in Kolkata to ensure that a single version of the website is being displayed to people, and the search engine crawlers.
Avoid creating ‘doorway pages’ for your website, which can mislead the general web visitors. Hire the services of a SEO company in India that is conversant with all the latest algorithm updates. Black-hat SEO can spell doom for your website – and it’s vital that you stay well away from such underhand strategies!

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