Webmasters and SEO Experts like you and me want higher rankings in Search Engines therefore we try to do Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for our websites by using multiple SEO Techniques. In this post I will be discussing five of the most dangerous SEO Techniques that one can use.

Link Farms
When I say link farms, I dont mean web directories, but what I mean are pages that consist bunch of links. 100s of links that have no bearing to the content what so ever. Alot of people would make a page in their inner directories full with links and make multiple pages to boost rankings of their other sites. This technique was used once by alot of old schoolers until Search Engines figured out the issue, and start BANNING the sites, yup not penaltising, you will be banned. Meaning no page left in Google… so when you hit site:xxx.com you won’t see anything.

Embedding Invisible Text links

Yeah this is a sneaky way also called black hat. In this technique users actually embed text links on their page by making them the same color, so users don’t see them while they are there. This technique is old. As time goes, users were getting smart, so they would just select all and eventually find the text links. Then these black hatters came up with a technique to add their link in the content by having a display:none; css tag. This technique is a BIG NO NO, and google has even said it. Be very careful when you use free templates on your website because some cheap designers will sell out and put links in your website and you won’t even know it. I remember reading about a year ago, Jeff of Aviva had this one designer who did alot of free templates for him. In each template he added his own links and other websites and set them there. Someone found it and reported it to Jeff. Jeff immidiately released a note to everyone, but this designer’s reputation went down. (I can’t find the article otherwise I would’ve showed you). But the bottom line is this method is unacceptable, and you shouldn’t do it because this can lead to a ban as well.

Using Irrelevant Keywords

Alot of webmasters just want to rank high for every keyword, so they will put tons of keywords on their website even though when the keywords are not even related to the site’s content. When a bot spiders your website they will see the keywords, and when they try to match your site’s with related sites they will have tons of different sort of sites which will cause you to rank high temporarily until the Search Engines catches you and penaltize you. I haven’t heard of anyone getting banned by just using this technique, but I know people who have been penaltised by doing this.

Cloaking (BIG NO NO)

Cloaking is the worst thing you can do to your website because not only it will get your website banned, but it will get you a bad reputation. How? Did you ever hear of Fake PR? Cloaking is the way to obtain fake pagerank. Cloaking is basically when a webmaster places a code in their header which distinguishes the users and search engines. So if the visitor is a user they will see the visible page, but if the user is a search engine than the server will show them something else. Black Hatters who use this technique tend to show the search engine some really high pr site which leads the black hatters to get a high pagerank, but not for long because usually within one – two pr updates they get caught and banned from google and pagerank (GREY). Also people can see it if they know what they are looking for in your website’s code.

Overuse of a keyword / Keyword Repitition

This technique can get you penaltise, I haven’t seen anyone getting banned from this technique. Basically this is when a webmaster uses the keyword improperly in their website. Such as an over use of a certain keyword to rank high for that website. Example: Myspace proxy is a myspace proxy that allows proxified pages to proxy users who uses proxy etc etc. As you see the keyword doesn’t make sense and it is just a repetition of one keyword.

I just want to give this as a headsup to the beginners, so they don’t start doing this type of techniques because people who do these preach them also. They say this works, and it does work for short term, but you get banned for long term !!! I don’t think it is worth it.