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Nobody wants to work months and years on their site, and then have Google penalize their page or drop their SERP rankings. This costs money, time and frustration. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll have to start everything from scratch. In fact, it could even mean the end of your business, particularly if all (or most of) your traffic relies on organic results.
Is Google evil? What is the big search engine up to?
In their constant effort to make the search engine a better place for its users and (AdWords) customers, Google’s team has strict Guidelines for webmasters and bloggers.
Anybody who wants to serve up content and rank an article or page on their search engine, needs to follow these rules… Or, they risk getting their rankings penalized or even various pages removed from the index all together.
When it comes to SEO, things have drastically changed in the last 12 months, and they don’t seem to stop. Both, on-page and off-page ranking factors have suffered repeated updates.
You remember Panda, Penguin, Page Layout and EMD, right? These updates were stimulating everybody to create better, more targeted content, avoid black hat techniques and provide site visitors with a pleasing reading experience… in order to boost the return rate and lower bounce back ratio.
Google is not your enemy!
Google wants (just like you and me) to provide its users with nothing but quality content (and relevant ads) so their searchers can spend quality time on each site or landing page. This helps both the search engine users and advertisers return more often to Google, and grow their business – you win, Google wins, and their clients win.
These changes and updates are required in order to keep everybody happy, and at the same time, disallow spammers and mass link-builders to take advantage of or control the Google SERPs.
Dangerous SEO Technique #1
Low Quality Content and Ads Filled Sites
You remember the famous MFA (made for AdSense) websites, and how they got penalized?
Google Panda updates revolve around thin content sites that provide less articles, and more ads for their users. Do you feel like these one page advert filled sites don’t deserve to appear on the first page of Google? I think alike.
2013 is said to be the year of high quality content-packed sites. With great content, you won’t be forced to overly optimize your page, which is another issue that might trigger Google to give you a warning.
What does quality mean?
Google has their definition. Pro bloggers have theirs. I would say that quality content (regardless its length) is first of all information that helps the user get things done (solve a problem) in their life, or business, faster, better or easier than before.
Want to write quality content?
Due diligence is required.
In depth research is a must.
Look up the top 10 blogs in your niche or industry. Target the ones publishing the best content. You know what best means from a mile away, right? It’s not general, it’s specific. It does not share theory, but gives personal insights, case studies and anecdotes.
Analyze the best featured articles, and try to grasp, what makes them hot, viral or high quality.
Then imitate the writing style, and content ideas. I am not saying to blatantly copy-cat your competitors, otherwise how will you stand out? The key is to innovate. Surpass your competitors’ content, or, at least, talk on subjects they’re not covering, or they’re often overlooking. That’s how you become visible, for both your users, and the Google radars.
Dangerous SEO Technique #2
Link Schemes and Black Hat Techniques
Google Penguin updates go against sites not abiding by Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. They frown at black-hat methods including but not limited to cloacking, keyword stuffing, duplicate content (having the same page identically appear on multiple domains which you own or control), or blatant linking schemes.
A recent example would be the Interflora penalty. Their “advertorial” marketing approach was caught by Google. How they operate was simple: they paid other people to write reviews and post them on other (non relevant) sites, in hopes that they would boost their Google rankings and search engine dominance.
Matt Cutts, recently, sent his followers a Twitter reminder, emphasizing the fact that Google’s guidelines on paid links passing PageRank (PR) apply to “advertorials” as well.
What we can learn from this case study is essential. While low quality back-links might lower your rankings or not count at all, paying for ads or links to boost your PR is against Google’s policy. This does NOT mean you are not allowed to advertise or link-build. Google is against this approach on non relevant web sites, but they like to see value pointing to value.
If you do advertise or insert paid links on targeted websites, at least, avoid keyword stuffing. In fact, diversify your hyperlinks and make them look natural. That means you have to blend in the ad or link within the content, and at the same time, do it on a small scale.
From what I understood, Interflora got penalized because of doing this paid advertising on a major scale, and targeting non relevant sites. That’s like spending your advertising budget on all kinds of TV and radio commercials, expecting to increase your brand awareness and generate sales.
That’s a dumb, and now dangerous marketing approach, as sales are generated when you’re targeting a relevant crowd of buyers or prospects, not a pool of individuals who don’t want to hear from you, yes?
Dangerous SEO Technique #3
Back-Linking Networks and Guest Posting
LinkVana and other similar networks have been hit hard by Google. And that’s well understood. Imagine you’ve been working hard, for the last few years, building a good linking profile, abiding by Google rules, writing good content, and attracting quality links, naturally.
And here comes, some guy, out-ranking you on Google SERP, because they’re using some shady linking farms and networks. The approach was quite simple. You hire someone who could throw up low quality (or even good) articles. You post them on the network, along with all kinds of non relevant sites and articles. Within a month, you’ll have gained probably hundreds of back-links. And the next month, you’re out-ranking sites which have spent years working hard and building a natural linking profile.
Don’t you think Google has to stand out and punish this irresponsible practice? We know Google like to create fear among webmasters and are a known propaganda machine, but they are smart. Make no mistake…
Thanks to them, we now may be able to benefit from all the hard work we have done for all these years, and still remain on the Google radar and get organic traffic. However, this does NOT mean you should overlook the latest Google changes, if you want to stay on top of your game.
Spammers and black hat link builders have caught on to these updates, and now are using the Google Link disavow tool to remove bad links from their site, and some of them are going to take the web by storm with a new method: mass guest posting. This is a new twist on the back-link network method.
You target (more or less) relevant blogs in your industry, you write (good or bad) content for their site, and do this on a large scale. Within a month, you could have 10… 20 and even 50 articles back-linking to your web site or page.
The approach in general is not good or bad. It depends on how you use it. If you guest post with the sole aim to increase your rankings, then Google will hunt you down, and manually or automatically penalize your site. And there you go again, you’ll have to start all over again, from scratch.
These are the top 3 most dangerous SEO techniques we have to avoid for 2013 and beyond.
Be smart, have patience, and outsource (wisely) your content marketing. It’s time we revamp our game, and be friends with Google, or they can easily spray out our web sites from the SERPs. If you really want to get a penalized website site back on the radar, learn how to clone your old domain (and remove the offending domain hosting account) to a new domain. However, seek to build new natural links and learn from past mistakes… In no time, you’ll be ranking again. But remember, visitors first – search engines second!
Guest post by:
John Gibb is a top super affiliate in the health industry and known SEO addict. Download his free super affiliate handbook: “The Road to Success” ($197 VALUE) and learn the free techniques he used to generate 109 sales in a single day.
*Photo via Roku
Really hard to do not make mistakes but hard to be penalized if user respect real quality standards, so google is more helping real users than fakes…
To conclude: thanks 😉
I agree to you for your first techniques and second techniques but I am not agree of your third techniques because you are saying that guest posting is danger but it is good for us . In future we have need only guest posting because of that we can get truth links what google never deny.
How can you tell the difference of good back-linking and bad guest-posting?
And does anybody know when the next Google update (zebra i think) is coming out?
I think that bad guest posting could mean mass scale link building using guest posting as a link building strategy. This should say it all …
I don’t understand why it’s so hard to follow the rules. It takes almost as much effort not to follow them as it does to follow.
Hi Razvan,
Nice post & my opinion is “Be smart, have patience, and outsource (wisely) your content marketing. It’s time we revamp our game, and be friends with Google, or they can easily spray out our web sites from the SERPs.”
I think we should do all the works for ranking improve in Google. Like :
1) Target a wider Range of Keywords.
2) User Exprience is #1Priority.
3). Write Compelling Content for our Audience.
4). Keyword Density Not Overly Important.
5). Content is Diverse etc.
This article is laughably misinformed. I love working in SEO sometimes. It’s people like you that make it so damn easy.
did not write it myself as it was a guest post as you seen but wondering which part you find misinformed ?
Without getting too in-depth, every single one of the techniques above still work and they work well, and I have noticed nothing dangerous about implementing them properly.
Google still hasn’t figured out how to “hunt down” anything. It was honestly that line that made me want to comment. That line is such nonsense as Cody Cahill says below.
If that line was intentionally ridiculously hyperbolic to induce discussion, bravo. That’s a solid technique for improving time-on-site and user interaction. 🙂
no one said they don’t work. they do. what worked 5 years ago still does. just tempo the velocity and refine it. it just won’t work on a large scale and time to be succesfull for a bussiness wnating to get long term results from search engine rankings.
these are techniques that are to be avoided when done large scale in my opinion.
“hunt you down” refers to various algorithm updates that will tackle these techniques. (Panda v.x, Penguin and other various animals eventually or other stuff 🙂 )
“If you guest post with the sole aim to increase your rankings, then Google will hunt you down, and manually or automatically penalize your site. And there you go again, you’ll have to start all over again, from scratch.”
Hyperbolic nonsense.
If you have some evidence in the form of a case study, or even some anecdotal suggestions, that manual penalties have been incurred due to guest post links, I’d sure be eager to see it. But I don’t believe such evidence exists.
Certainly there is a point of diminishing returns when guest posting with mediocre content on mediocre sites — but the downside is that the links obtained just won’t provide value, it isn’t going to get you “penalized”.
Writing quality content and having it published on quality sites that are relevant to your niche is still a great way to improve your overall link portfolio. Certainly it is a tactic that, when done correctly, provides more than just SERP value, there is also branding value and click-through traffic to be garnered.
But to suggest that guest posting (provided you aren’t using spun or duplicate content or robotic distribution, etc) is going to cause a penalty is either ignorant, disingenuous … or both.
did not write this, as it is a guest post by John Gibbs but I would dare to give a quick answer here also.
It is about dangerous techniques and I believe that whatever strategy you use, if you abuse it you will get penalized. Guest posting as an example … if you keep on posting on whatever blogs/publications and always use commercial anchor text I am sure that those will be devaluted if not penalized sometime in a future update … as it is a clear way of manipulating rankings. If your guest posting strategy is mixed with other strategies that dilute each other than you might have a better change on this. I do think that it is about the distribution of the link profile in terms of quantity.
If this is abused it will become the next Article Directory or unnatural links penalty … as lets be honest guest posting for the sake of links is not what Google defines as natural.
I do not think this is ignorant at all if you put it in the context of a mass strategy used for influencing rankings. it is the same as blogroll links, webdirectory links etc you name it…
maybe the name of the post is not very well chosen as a Top 3 … there are multiple others to be listed as dangerous … correction
Hi John, I enjoyed your post. If bloggers just focus on their readers with an emphasis on valuable content, they can’t go too far wrong. I guess there are no short cuts in this world.
One of the most fundamental aspects of SEO is being able to pick keywords that are going to give you a return on speculation. New technic of Niche keywords are those with a high search volume but low contest, you can rank for these very quickly, however first you have to be sure that you are going to make a return.
I don’t agree. Mass guest posting sounds like mass emailing or mass article writing or mass advertising or mass speaking or mass podcasting… you get the idea.
Is mass ___ anything spam, or wrong or unethical? I don’t think so… We all want to generate maximum traffic and sales…
Wrong link building is anchor text over do, that doesn’t look natural…
As for Zebra/any any other upcoming updates… do you really fret about such, instead of working on your content and guest posting genuinely?
Hope it helps
Abusing any method will make it less effective in a given niche or industry, be it guest posting or whatever. This doesn’t mean Google will penalize the method, unless it is directly used to manipulate your site ranking into SERPs.
Google states this clearly that regardless the method, if you’re using it (not abusing it) to manipulate rankings, then you could be in trouble.
I have some doubts in my mind about various techniques that might be useful and harmful as well. You clear all the doubts and know i have some more deep knowledge about Search engine ranking process. Thanks for sharing
Do agree with this post, In year 2013 google algo is just concentrating on quality content with out keyword stuffing.
This post is very useful according to Google latest panda.
I also believe that the only thing google has got is the ability to ban certain directories that it feels are worth banning and if you are unfortunate enough to be linked to any of these sites then google will slap you very hard. Content marketing, article writing, press releases are still worth practicing within your whole seo strategy and then use as much of the social networking sites to market the content. The only problem is that any of the good forums seem to have smartened up there act too and avoid allowing any form of back link activity taking place within their website. SEO is definitely gettting harder, compared to a few years back.
I agree to a point. SEO Mass link building still very effective. The only difference is now you can’t be as blatantly obvious. But I can still rank a page with what I call “blasting” a page. You can do this with software.
It still works the only thing now is to make sure you filter your list, so you don’t add your link to a spam filled site. You can also create a buffer site as a layer (or two) in between your site. SO you create a social bookmark that links to your homepage. Then you take that bookmark link and “blast” it with hundreds of backlinks.
A lot of the page rank still leaks through. Hard to detect, especially when using 2nd tier and 3rd tier links.
Main thing is your anchor text can’t be the title of your page for every single link. I change mine up all the time. And I haven’t noticed too much difference in ranking.
I’m sure if you got stupid you could possibly get “hit” by Google. But what if I took this URL, and blasted it on my own to 100000 comments and 100000 forum profiles with the same anchor text. Would Google bring down your sites ranking? No that’s why it wouldn’t work. The minute they start docking sites for backlinks, you could just add your competetions backlink with some anchor text and blast it all day and all night.
This post is true to a point. But not all Blackhat techniques will get you in trouble. In fact it’s quite easy to get away with, as long as you don’t go crazy with it.
Thanks for the post.
I read your blog and accept all your point. These all are the very valid points need to avoid when you want to proper SEO. If you not avoid these things, you not able to get traffic from Google and chance to get penalized by Google. Thank you for sharing useful information.