SEO Tips You Should Never Follow

Want to be labeled a spammer and ensure search traffic to your blog plummets? Follow the SEO tips listed below and both will happen. These SEO tips are risky, and some are considered blackhat SEO tactics, meaning search engines like Google might ban your blog from keyword search results if you're caught doing them.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="480"] Blackhat SEO Tips to Avoid on Your Blog[/caption]

Yes, these techniques can help increase your blog's search rankings and search traffic quickly, but the risk does not outweigh the rewards. If your goal is to develop a successful blog with a long lifespan, never use these SEO tips. Don't try to mislead visitors or search engines, and you should be okay.

• What is SEO and How to use it for your Website/Blog

1. Link Cloaking

Link cloaking is considered a spam technique. When users are presented with different content or URLs when they click on a link than search engines are presented with, that link has been cloaked. The content could be entirely different or the format could be different (e.g., search engines see text and HTML content while visitors see Flash elements and images).

2. HTTP Header Cloaking

HTTP headers are part of every web page. They include requests and responses that provide information about a requested page to search engines and to users via their web browsers. Don't try to send different HTTP headers to search engines than you send to visitors in an effort to get around the search engine algorithms. You'll get caught eventually, which could mean your page or blog is removed from search engine indexing entirely.

• What is Black Hat SEO and How To Avoid It?

3. Link Hijacking

Link hijacking happens when the anchor text used in a hyperlink is presented differently to visitors than it is to search engines. For example, a search engine will crawl the page and find hyperlinks with specific keywords that the site wants to increase its search ranking for, but visitors see different text. Again, this is a deceptive tactic that search engines will punish.

4. Sneaky Javascript Redirects

When search engines like Google crawl and index web pages, they crawl Javascriptcode, but the links hidden within that Javascript might not be followed or indexed at all. If you sneak links within the Javascript on a page within your blog with the intent of deceiving visitors, you could be considered guilty of blackhat SEO, which means your blog could be dropped from the Google index.

5. Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are a guaranteed way to violate Google's Webmaster Guidelines. In simplest terms, doorway pages are created in large quantities by blackhat SEO providers. These pages are poor quality but each is optimized for a single, specific keyword. Google explains in its support documentation that "doorway pages are written to rank for a particular phrase and then funnel users to a single destination." In short, never use doorway pages.

• Tips to Maximize Your Interlink Efforts with SEO Power Pages

Bottom-line

Don't be deceitful or try to get around search engine algorithms. If a tactic seems like a bait and switch or distrustful in any way, don't do it.

If you hire a search engine optimization professional or company to help you optimize your blog for search, make sure they aren't using any of the "fast results" SEO techniques discussed in this article or your blog will suffer the consequences in the long run. Instead, follow proven SEO techniques that can help you get more organic search traffic for your blog the right way.

Also, be sure to take the time to learn about more SEO mistakes that you should never make on your blog. You might be making some of these mistakes related to your blog writing and blog design without even realizing it!