Bad SEO Techniques YOU Should Avoid!

Have you heard of bad SEO? Maybe black hat SEO? Reminds me of Spy vs spy, right? We’ve got the black hat and the white hat guy. 

Today, we’re going to talk about bad SEO techniques and how to make sure that you’re not stabbing yourself in the eye every time you go to create a piece of content, and that you’re actually doing it right and you’re following the rules of Google.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO

I actually hate that word because it’s riddled with misunderstanding. I actually had a guy stand up in the middle of a presentation and say, “You people are snake oil salesmen and you’re full of it.” And my brain said, “Game on.” 

I asked him “Why do you think SEO people are snake oil salesmen? and his answer was “I’ve gotten all this mixed advice and every guy seems to be an expert.” And you know what? He’s right, also I should mention that after this interaction he actually ended up becoming a client. That just goes to show you, you never know.

Look a lot of SEO Companies try to claim they’re an expert and using smoke and mirrors and SEO Tactics you have no idea what happened, as a business owner, it’s hard to know who to trust. So, I’m going to give you a shortlist of things to avoid. Never do any of these unless you want to get banned by Google. 

• The worst thing you can do is not do SEO, don’t make the mistake of thinking that you don’t get business that way, or I’ve got a guy for that. Don’t be thinking those things because it has to come from you, no one knows your business better than you do, so when an SEO Expert Claims to know your audience they really have no clue, that is why I pull back the curtain and show people that there is a method you just need to follow it. 

It’s all about how people search, and the keywords and phrases they are using, it’s not rocket science but you need to do it right.

• Let’s talk about techniques and what not to do. White copy on a white background what is this and why is this a no go when it comes to Google. Keep in mind, Google has some pretty smart people working there. They have hired the best of the best, they have been finessing that algorithm ever since the day that it was born. 

They know every possible trick in the book. So when you think, “Oh, I could just do white text on a white background. Stuff it with a bunch of keywords.” Or in an image of something called an alt text. 

The all text is where you can stuff a bunch of keywords in there. No, just anything that feels deceptive is deceptive. Google knows about them all. Let’s just kind of put that on the table. In other words it’s not worth it and don’t do it.

•  Don’t buy links. You want links to be coming from organic engagement with your company. You’re doing a kick-ass job of doing what you do best and if you go and buy false endorsements, you found a guy on Fiverr that can give you 10,000 links overnight. Guaranteed. 

That’s a deceptive practice. So links, yes. They’re important. You have to think about how to get organic links from a Chamber of Commerce or from a conference that I’m speaking at. 

It can also be from a Google Local listing. You’ve got to think about building what they call a backlink profile. People who are linking from their site to yours.

There are three levels of linking:  

Gold 

The Gold standard of linking it’s going to be from something like harvard.edu It’s going to be from a college, a university, a news outlet. Something that is very trustworthy for Google. Now, those are always the hardest ones to get. 

But if you can get them, that’s why oftentimes, I will volunteer at colleges, junior colleges, local vocational schools. I want to give back of course. But in most cases, I’ll get a really highly valuable link back to my site. Just volunteer at your local college give back and it pays off for you. 

Silver

Let’s talk about the silver standard of linking is where you are linking out to other people. Which is great. Google expects that you will link to other resources but that’s good but it’s not a gold standard. But Google still expects that you’re going to link inside your own site as well as you’re going to link out to other people. 

Because you’re a professor. Remember, we’re professors in our space. When we highlight something and make it clickable, that turns it into a citation. So, if you go and think about when you wrote your last term paper, there are specific elements on there and you had to have a bibliography. 

Do you guys remember that? Now, you can go like bibliography.com and just enter in the thing and it does the whole thing for you. When I was an English major at Colorado State University… Go Rams! I was having to write these massive bibliographies and to be just perfect they to be bolded and underlined. 

I think I don’t have to do that anymore. But Google’s saying. “Look, if you’re an expert in your space, then, of course, you’re going to validate the content you’re talking about.” So, those are great links and we want links. 

Bronze

The bronze standard is You link to me, I’ll link to you. So, you’re all kind of colluding together to create a webring, right? We’re all sort of like in the party and you’re going to link to me and I’m going to link to you, and don’t do that. It’s considered deceptive practice and you just want to make sure you get organic gold and silver level links. Okay? So, no buying links. Promise me. 

• Keyword Stuffing. So think about a page and a website. There is an organic usage of a keyword on a page for sure. If you’re talking about a topic then, of course, you are going to be tough. 

You’re going to have that keyword in there. I mean that’s part of the copy. The problem is people think, “Well, if it’s 300 words or is it 10,000 words?” Is it hundreds of references of that keyword on the page? 

Part of what findability university does is we teach business owners and their marketing teams tools that will tell them exactly how much content to write. We’ve got some amazing tools that will say, “For this keyword, this is how much you’re going to write. This is who the people you will link to.” 

When you have that cheat sheet, you don’t have to guess anymore. Is it 300 words, is it 10,000 words? Do I paint the page with keywords? Do I just sprinkle them throughout? So, the best practice is to think of chocolate chip cookies, right? You’re not going to take the whole thing and most of you might. 

But you’re going to take the whole thing and just load it with all chocolate chip cookies and very little dough. You want it evenly sprinkled throughout. A little bit at the top, through the middle, and at the bottom. 

I think about hugging the content. Oh, there’s so much you know about this game work. So, you want the keyword at the top of the very first sentence. Keyword in the very last sentence and then sprinkled throughout like those chocolate chips.

Let’s take a look back. Biggest deceptive SEO practices. One, reverse texts over and over on the same background. Don’t do that. Number 2, never buy links. I don’t care how wonderful the offer sounds. Don’t buy them. 

Google knows about every possible scam, workaround, hack blackhat thing you can do. Just don’t even think about it. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. 

We all know that. And then finally, of course, make sure that you are thinking about how to write content that really speaks to my profession.  

We are not going to stuff. Remember keyword stuffing? We are not going to stuff keywords in images, in content, in title tags. You know, if you keep watching my material, we’re going to get into deep concepts around how to write optimized pages? 

If you are interested in learning more about how we can help you use the link below to book your FREE hour call with me 

Book Heather Lutze: Empowering Businesses To Dominate Online!