How Negative SEO Can Harm Your Search Campaign
When thinking about SEO for your company, the traditional methods come to mind. You need to write original content that is keyword rich for your blog/body. You need to include several links to reputable sites in order to seem more authoritative. It is also important to select a proper domain name in order for visitors to find your website more conveniently. On the other side of the coin, there are several tactics that can harm your SEO campaign and drive your search results down. Here are some tactics to avoid when planning your interactive campaign.
Smack Talk
One of the most negative things someone can do to your SEO campaign is complain about you on another site. Google is always looking for contrarian viewpoints and if you post a link in a blog article that takes a different or controversial stand on a subject, you will rank yourself higher. Google does this because it is easier to find majority viewpoints as opposed to minority opinions.
A particular method of black hat marketing actually has enterprise SEO agencies spreading links to certain websites with less than favorable page rankings and malicious content. This causes the website to which they are linking to show up considerably lower in the search results. While this style of SEO is unethical, it is hard for companies to acquire legal ordinances to keep it from happening.
Spamming
If you are running a link building campaign, be careful not to plaster links to your website everywhere you turn. If your links show up in articles that do not fit the topic, comment threads, or Internet chat forums, Google will think you are spamming just to get your link
Dead Links
If you have links on your website that don’t lead to anywhere, they will not matter in the search results. Not only will the links not matter, they will also taking up valuable website real-estate and act as a distraction to viewers who are trying to access your content. Before posting links, make sure they actually lead to the specified destination.
Lack of Content
In order to continually rank in Google’s search results, you must update your site regularly. If you are a blogger, creating new articles, posting rich media, and posting pictures is a good way to go about this. If you are an e-commerce website, you should be up to W3 standards and have the fastest payment systems in addition to detailed product descriptions.
Too Many Social Media Links
Have you ever been to a website and been bombarded with requests to Tweet, Facebook, Stumble, Tumble, and +1 content? It can get annoying after a while and there is no way you are going to click on every single social media link. Instead of having an icon for each and every social media page, decide which platforms are the most valuable to your overall SEO campaign and emphasize them.
SEO is a lot like a good story in that there has to be an antagonist to create conflict. This antagonist can appear in several different shapes and forms, and can even be the protagonist working against himself. Make sure that everything in your SEO campaign is related to content you and your viewers would actually like to see online.