If what you do right in SEO is extremely important, know that what you do wrong is equally important when it comes to affecting your search engine ranking position.
I spend most of my time teaching people what they should do to implement proper SEO, and what I realized is that there’s a lack of knowledge from these people as what is bad SEO.
Unless you get rid of your bad SEO habits, no matter how hard you try to implement good SEO; you are very unlikely to see positive results.
In this article, I’m going to review with you the 7 things you should do if you want a bad search engine ranking position — guaranteed.
1) Write and Design for the Search Engine, not the Visitors
Who cares if my page is unreadable a full of crappy keywords everywhere? I don’t care if people come to my site and leave immediately and never come back again, and so what if those people don’t like me, at least I’m the bots best friend they don’t talk so much as the human visitors.
2) Engage in Link Spamming
Is there something more enjoyable that blasting your links everywhere you can, on forum that will ban you or blog comments that will never be published, or on webpages that are never going to be indexed?
Honestly why would I bother building one quality inbound link from an authority site when I can have thousands with no linking power whatsoever on pages that nobody will ever see?
3) Ignore your Anchor Text
Who needs to know what my site is all about? It’s my site, my privacy. I won’t tell you, just guess. What are you talking about? Linking power? Oh la la… sounds complicated, I’m better off with my unknown site.
4) Don’t Monitor your Progress
Why should I bother monitoring my progress? Hell, if nothing happens why should I care, and if something happens, since I don’t know about it, I don’t need to worry about it either, cool.
5) Use the Wrong Keywords
I see so many people spending countless hours on finding keyword with high search volume and low competition, and most of them don’t make it to the first page of results. If I want different results I must do things differently. That’s right; I want to be on the first page so I’m going to use keywords that nobody searches with millions of competitors, duh.
6) Don’t bother with an SEO Strategy
Plan for what? Where’s the thrill of SEO discovery? Isn’t it cool to have to change the page title on 3,000 pages because I didn’t think about that before…
7) Learn but don’t Implement
I spend so much time learning all that stuff, why should I spend even more time to implement it. Knowledge is power, and I know everything. It doesn’t matter if my site gets into trouble, as least I can tell people: “Yeah… that’s sad, but no big deal, I’m smart, I know why everything went wrong. Right, knowledge is power, I’m so powerful duh.”
A Quick Note
All those 7 things are not officially “black hat” techniques, and this is why it is all the more important to be fully aware of their negative effect, unless of course you are seeking a bad search engine ranking position or are one of those people telling themselves:
“Why bother with a lot of traffic when you can enjoy a peaceful quiet site at the bottom of the search results?”
If you have any question, don’t hesitate to ask, I’m here to help.
Photo by Danard Vincente
28 Discussions
Great post, very enjoyable read… very different from the conventional blog post
Must admit, I did find it a bit confusing on the first read, but on the second/third time I started to understand the points you were trying to make (I think
), and it does highlight some good points.
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..Five Reasons Why Wordpress Rocks
Thank you Simon. Honestly, I got a good laugh when writing it too.
I thought some people may be a bit confused at first, considering that this post explains how to do things wrong, rather than than telling you what is wrong, but still, I thought that it will be more original this way.
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..Understanding Google New Algorithm
Yeah, it’s actually quite a cool way of looking things, I think you executed it well, too
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..Tips For Commenting On People’s Blogs
Thank you Simon, I appreciate the comment.
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..Understanding Google New Algorithm
Not monitoring your progress is like not keeping track of sales in a business. Some people don’t care about keywords. They use titles like “welcome to my site!”, and wonder why they are not getting traffic.
Kai Lo’s last blog post..Make Your Blog More Personal
Absolutely correct Kai Lo. Considering how important the page title is, it saddens me a lot when I see title like “Welcome to my site!” or worst “Untitled”.
This is why I put the emphasis that those are not “black hat” techniques and won’t get you banned, but those practice are certainly not helping you.
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..Understanding Google New Algorithm
Would not setting up pretty permalinks also be a bad move? On one of my first blogs I received a huge increase in search engine traffic when I set up my permalinks to ‘/category/post-name/’
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..Five Reasons Why Wordpress Rocks
Indeed it is, though it’s for blogs only. I guess we can’t really compile all the “bad moves” in an article, it would have to be a “bible” or so…
Let’s just say that I tried to highlight some of the most common mistakes made when developing or attempting to promote a site as a beginner.
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..Understanding Google New Algorithm
True, but I think that (for blogs) permalinks are one of the most important points. Not only does it help with SEO, but if you have ?p=123 or whatever then it looks really ugly!
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..Tips For Commenting On People’s Blogs
As for #1, even Google themselves say, write for the reader, not for us!
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Seeking April Comment Contest Sponsors!
Absolutely Dennis! And anyway we are heading towards an era of Human Visitor Optimization way more than Search Engine Optimization.
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..Understanding Google New Algorithm
I’ve always written that way and will continue to do so until the search bots start buying things. lol
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Seeking April Comment Contest Sponsors!
Dennis, I certainly agree with you there. For me, I’ve never really been very good at SEO, but I’ve always been a decent writer and for me that’s enough to rank highly in search engines. I have a nice comment average considering my blog’s age, and I’m gradually climbing up the SE ranks as I add more and more content.
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..Tips For Commenting On People’s Blogs
Cool article, Very well written.. Awesome expressions really, and very true !
Enk.’s last blog post..How to Create Custom Page Template in Wordpress?
Thank you for the comment Enk,
I guess in some way we all recognize a bit of ourselves (at least at some point of our internet experience) in those profiles, this is why it makes us smile.
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..Understanding Google New Algorithm
Awesome choice of post style Nicolas.
I’m not much of an SEO expert, but I can say that I only have one bad habit that I can think of right now…and that’s checking my progress.
What tips do you have for monitoring progress? Do you just check rankings in search engines, or is there more to it than that?
Hi Alex, that problem is not just yours believe me!
There are just so many things you can do to monitor your progress (I think I will have to write an article about that…). Monitoring your progress is not just about knowing where you are, but it can help you knowing how other people perceive you and how you can fine tune your site accordingly based on your target audience.
I would advice you to look more in detail at your stats from scripts like Webalizer or so. It tells you where your traffic is coming from, for what keywords your site has been found and how many times, etc…
Knowing all those information helps you give a better direction to your site and what you should focus on.
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..Understanding Google New Algorithm
Feel free to place that article at my place. lol
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Seeking April Comment Contest Sponsors!
Hi Kat, implementing what you learn is the difference between the people who enjoy success and the people who dream about success.
Some people ask me why I detail on my site how to promote and do SEO and how I manage my newly published blog, am I not afraid that people are all going to take over my site and my keywords?
The truth is that no matter how effective the tips and tricks you give to people, even if they are aware of the simplicity and potential, very few will actually take action in the first place, and among the few who do, even less will apply with consistency.
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..Understanding Google New Algorithm
I especially like your tip about not implementing what you learn. i think it is pretty clear that most people are willing to read the blogs and buy the ebooks, but few are willing to actually do the work.
I really liked the style of this post! By writing what you should not do it seemed to make a bigger impact.
Kat | Money, Debt and Taxes’s last blog post..How To Get Out of Debt – Debt Free Forever
Good Post Nicholas, I mean implementing SEO is much more difficult than learning it . I am working on website with not so competitive keywords but instead of going up its going down DUH .Now I am feeling SEO Sucks and I should search an alternate carrier now . whether such situation happened to you waiting for your reply
Gagan
Actually SEO is a very misleading word now. The best way to do good in SEO is not actually to do “Search Engine” Optimization, but rather “Human Visitor” Optimization. Based on that fact, most of what is popular knowledge is actually obsolete
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..The 5 Best Friends of the full time Internet Marketer
i agree that we should do “Human Visitor” Optimization. But what would we answer the client . I mean most of the clients are only interested in rankings . All they want to get at top in google even if they are selling product at 10 times high prices and their Customer Service Sucks . I feel SEO ( I don’t feel I am an expert .learning SEO) are just their to manipulate search engines because if you ahev good quality product you don’t need any SEO .your customer would find you itself
Actually it’s not really a problem now. Doing a good Human Visitor Optimization will actually draw better results in the SERP too. The approach is just different especially if you come from the old Search Engine way.
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..SEO Training Walkthrough: Week 7
A very good point you’ve raised there, Miami web design.
Personally I think that every product needs a boost. My friend once made a plugin for wordpress that was AMAZING (not available anymore), did pretty much everything you could want. He spent ages on it, set up a website and submitted it to a few places, but he never ranked highly in search engines and ended up giving up with it due to hardly any downloads.
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..Tips For Commenting On People’s Blogs
Hi Nicholas… once again, great post
Just read it again and it’s really good now I understand it a bit better.
Just as a quick question… do you know of any tools that show you where you actually rank in search engines for different keywords. Would save a lot of time going through to the eight page and things like that
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..Tips For Commenting On People’s Blogs
Hi Simon, I’m glad everything is clear for you now!
Unfortunately no, I don’t have any tool like that to refer to you, one of the reason is that if you are not in the first 3 pages, you basically don’t exist as a general rule so I don’t bother further.
In addition if your page is really well optimized for your visitors, you’ll find yourself ranking very well for some obscure long tail keyword you’d never think about anyway. This is where it is useful to check your traffic stats in details.
If you look at the post in my CommentLuv below, I actually happened to list some of those keywords I was really surprise to draw traffic from and rank very well.
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..SEO Training Walkthrough: Week 7
my site went from #1 to #8 when i installed blogussion? WTF? Anyway I uninstalled it and put my seopress formula theme back in…doesn’t look as pretty, but it gets looked at
..
I need to experiment with blogussion to work out some stuff..It wasn’t really a crucial site, but never the less, to be outranked by a hotfrog site is a wake up call..I am finding G isn’t really digging my blogussion sites…weird..
2 trackbacks