SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the art and science of making search engines rank your site high in the natural search results when someone types in a query. That’s the intent of ai seo, however. Since SEO is still an emerging field, there is no “governing body”, and the rules sometimes change. A good SEO professional understands these changing rules, and knows how to properly apply them. A bad SEO specialist generally makes mistakes, or purposely tries to deceive the system to win “fake” high rankings.
It is not true that you have no control over what appears in the search engines. The content that you put on your site determines where you appear in the search engine results page (SERP). If your site is about “widgets”, you’re probably not going to appear in search results about “bus fares”. The most important thing you can do on the web is to represent yourself honestly. If your site is about “widgets”, and the content on your site talks about “widgets” then you’ll probably appear somewhere in the SERP for “widgets”. A good SEO professional can help you rank higher for “widgets”, among other well-researched, and relevant keywords
A bad (“blackhat”) SEO marketer is like a vendor walking down the street selling snake oil. You may think you’re getting a deal, but you can’t be sure of the consequences. A good SEO marketer is like a pharmacist. They have studied all the tried and true techniques to solve your problem and probably have a good idea of how to safely and effectively address your issue.
Don’t believe it? In February 2006, BMW was given the Google Death Penalty for employing blackhat SEO practices. They presented a slick design to anyone with JavaScript, and showed everyone else (that means the search engines) a keyword-rich page. Showing one content to visitors and another to Google is a no-no. BMW Germany was banned from Google.
What Is “Bad” SEO, and Why is it So Undesirable?
- Doorway Pages: Many pages stuffed with keywords are placed on the web, and all link back to your site
- Cloaking: Showing one version of the site to visitors, and another to search engines.
- Dynamic Content: Not all dynamic content is bad; in fact, most is perfectly legitimate. But having the server generate large lists of keywords that change frequently is generally a bad idea.
- Scraping: Some sites visit high ranking sites, copy bits of the content that has the keyword they want, and post it on their site. This is a very good way to really annoy other websites.
- Hidden Text: Keywords on a page that are the same colour as the background, or that are hidden by CSS are a bad idea
- Setting up links pages that use the keyword-rich link text of other sites to gain ranking. This makes the link page appear to be more relevant for the desired keywords. This annoys not only the search engines, but also the visitors.
- Keyword Stuffing: Writing almost meaningless text in the site that is basically a long list of keywords. Responsible SEO will use keywords carefully in the text, but like all things, you can overdo it. Search engines appreciate good grammar.
- Overdoing RSS: Go ahead and syndicate large portions of your website. But syndicating all of your website may raise a flag. There are rumors suggesting that there might possibly be changes in the way Google indexes RSS in the future.
- Bait-and-Switch: Submitting the search-engine friendly page to the search engine, then after it’s indexed, uploading the “real” page. This is a very temporary boost in your rankings.
- Irrelevant Keywords: WHY would you promote the keyword “sex” on your site about “widgets”? Do you honestly think someone looking for “sex” will see your site and say, “oh wait a minute, I think I wanted a widget”? If you sell “widgets”, then promote “widgets”, so people who want to buy “widgets” can find your “widgets”.
Why do Search Engines Dislike All This?
Search engines are in the information business. Specifically, search engines provide helpful answers to questions. Sites which use these techniques dilute the relevancy and usefulness of the search engines. The search engine that allows their results to become irrelevant is useless and out of business. No-one will search that engine, no-one will click on their ads, no-one will want to buy or display their ads, and eventually no-one will want to invest in them. Search engines are protecting their investments and their future by ensuring the continuing relevancy and usefulness of their results.
