| Introduction | | | | several ways, including but not limited to the following |
| Webmasters perform SEO and want to get good | | | | "black-hat" SEO techniques: white text on white |
| search engine ranking in Google because it is the most | | | | background, use of CSS display:none or display: hidden |
| popular search engine in the world. However, you must | | | | to hide text, including text behind an image via DIV tag |
| be aware that Google is very strict in fighting against | | | | or layering techniques, small font size such as setting |
| manipulation of search engine ranking. | | | | font size to 0. Some SEO companies believe that |
| To make sure your website has potential to get top | | | | Google cannot detect spam if CSS tricks are used. |
| Google ranking, your SEO effort must alert the | | | | Unfortunately, this is wrong. |
| following: | | | | Links can be hidden including but not limited to the |
| Website Structure and Content Development | | | | following "black-hat" SEO techniques: link consists of |
| Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every | | | | hidden text, use of CSS to make tiny hyperlink such as |
| page should be reachable from at least one static text | | | | text with one pixel high, link hidden in a small character |
| link. The key point is a clear hierarchy, and reachable | | | | such as hyperlink a hyphen in middle of a web page. |
| from static text link. | | | | "Keyword stuffing" refers to the practice of loading a |
| Offer a site map. It is a very important SEO element | | | | webpage with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a |
| for Google to index your web pages and assign | | | | site's ranking in Google's search results. Excessive |
| appropriate search engine popularity scores (link | | | | keywords in a meaningful web page can be perceived |
| popularity) to your web pages. It is particularly useful | | | | as keyword stuffing. Proper SEO must take care of |
| for large websites. | | | | this element. |
| Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages | | | | Duplicate content generally refers to substantive |
| that clearly and accurately describe your content with | | | | blocks of content within or across domains that either |
| words users would type to find your pages. Google | | | | completely match other content or are appreciably |
| clearly states that they love information-rich website. | | | | similar. Google tries hard to index and show pages |
| So, SEO should emphasize on content development, | | | | with distinct information. This filtering means, for |
| and not SEO tricks. | | | | instance, that if your site has a "regular" and "printer" |
| Try to use text instead of images to display important | | | | version of each article, and neither of these is blocked |
| names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't | | | | in robots.txt or with a noindex meta tag, Google will |
| recognize text contained in images. If you use images, | | | | choose one of them to list. |
| make sure you provide descriptive and accurate ALT | | | | In the rare cases in which Google perceives that |
| tags. | | | | duplicate content may be shown with intent to |
| Avoiding SEO Spam | | | | manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, Google |
| The fundamental works for SEO is to ensure only | | | | also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and |
| search engine acceptable practices are used, that is, | | | | ranking of the sites involved. Google implies that your |
| make pages for users, not for search engines. If you | | | | website or whole network of websites can be |
| or your SEO company implements unacceptable SEO | | | | penalized with low search engine rankings or removed |
| practices or tricks, your website can be banned and | | | | from their index. Are you willing to take this risks and |
| removed from search engine index. This is especially | | | | continue to build shadow websites? |
| true for Google. From experience, they are very | | | | For some reasons, if you cannot avoid duplicate |
| determined to fight against search engine spam. | | | | content, Google suggests you can make use of |
| Therefore, you must alert that you do not commit in | | | | robots.txt file to avoid Google indexing duplicated web |
| unacceptable SEO practices listed below: | | | | pages or websites. |
| Don't deceive your users or present different content | | | | Alternatively, you can re-think of consolidate duplicated |
| to search engines than you display to users, which is | | | | pages into 1 or expand each page to contain unique |
| commonly referred to as "cloaking." Cloaking refers to | | | | content. |
| the practice of presenting different content or URLs to | | | | Conclusion |
| users and search engines, for example, showing | | | | SEO is not meaning of applying tricks to manipulate |
| different content to search engines than to users, or | | | | search engine ranking. SEO is about making a website |
| present HTML version to search engines and present | | | | search engine friendly and trustworthy, and building |
| Flash pages to users. Serving up different results | | | | reputation to your website. To be search engine |
| based on user agent can be perceived as cloaking. | | | | friendly and trustworthy, you must avoid unacceptable |
| Hiding text or links in your content can cause your site | | | | search engine optimization practices described above. |
| to be perceived as untrustworthy since it presents | | | | If your SEO service provider is committing to those |
| information to search engines differently than to | | | | practices, stop to use them now and remove all |
| visitors. | | | | spammy elements before your site get banned. |
| Text (such as excessive keywords) can be hidden in | | | | |