SEO Enemy Don’ts List
Some SEO don’ts include:
- Using certain words or phrases more often than others to rank higher in search engine results.
- Creating a site that uses only keywords and related phrases in its content.
- Hide text under an unreadable font, image, or video.
Wrong SEO Methods
Abusing these tactics can quickly condemn you to the bottom of Google search results. Sir, for those who ask if there is a list of things to do for SEO instead. They should look at the indispensable SEO Techniques page, as well as the newly published SEO content What are LSI Keywords? I recommend you look at this topic as well.
1. Spam
Google’s whole point is to provide the opposite of spam, so generating spam won’t help you rank. You can check out our on-site SEO article on this subject.
Spam comes in many different forms. This may include, but is not limited to:
Modified/low-quality content.
- Doorway Pages
- Low-quality auto-generated content
- Scraped Content
- malware
2. Manipulative Links
Google hates unnatural links.
Honestly, unnatural links are a lot less important since Google released Penguin 4.0, which is very granular and often doesn’t allow them to ignore bad links.
That said, naughty linking practices continue to be the main cause of lower rankings, either through manual penalties or algorithmic actions. You will find the solution to this issue in the off-site SEO section.
3. Poor Content
If you have weak content, don’t expect to rank high on Google.
To rank higher on Google, you need to enrich the content on your website. The word count of your content must be at least 500 words.
4. Unique Content
While Google does not penalize duplicate content, non-unique content may be filtered from search results.
In addition to following the advice on duplicate content earlier in this guide, it’s best to have at least 2-3 sentences of up to a few hundred words on each page to have a chance of ranking well.
5. Cloaking
Cloaking is often defined as the practice of showing certain content to users while showing different content to search engines. Cloaking Sometimes it’s good if it’s done for the right reason.
6. Meta Noindex Errors
When utilized properly, the meta noindex directive is a potent technique that aids in crawling, indexing, and the resolution of duplicate content problems.
However, noindex can also be abused and cause unnecessary errors. For its intended purpose, using a meta noindex on a page will cause Google to de-index it and it will not rank.
In fact, meta noindex errors are one of the most common findings during SEO audits. You can find detailed information on this subject in the Technical SEO section.
7. Canonical Errors
Another common mistake. If URL 1 has a canonical tag pointing to URL 2, URL 1 will not be indexed or ranked (if Google respects the law). Among additional canonical errors, placing a canonical flag on a page marked “noindex” can cause both pages to be dropped by Google.
8. Blocking Robots.txt
Pages that are incorrectly or otherwise blocked by robots.txt probably won’t rank well in Google’s search results.
One important detail is that while the robots.txt file prevents crawling, it does not prevent the page from appearing in search results. The best way to check this is with the noindex directive.
robots.txt
9. Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is the art of stuffing keywords that shouldn’t be stuffed.
10. Hidden Text or Links
Hiding text and links is a form of obfuscation because it reveals something to search engines in the source code that users typically cannot see.
Although this was much more common in the early days of SEO, it still exists today. Hiding text, and especially links, often means a quick route to the Google penalty box.
11. Piracy / DMCA Notices
Whether you operate a pirate site or not, the number of valid DMCA copyright takedown notices your site receives can lower your search rankings.
Having a warning or two probably won’t hurt much, but many such removal requests probably will.
12. Enriched Snippet Spam
Rich Snippets are great when you want to make your search results stand out. That’s probably why so many people try to win them over with false information like fake reviews and fake event markups.
However, spammy structured data can penalize your site. Google even has a form where your competitors can report to you.
13. Block Important JS/CSS Files
Allowing Google to crawl your JavaScript and CSS files is part of the crawling and indexing process, but many people overlook it. When these files are blocked by robots.txt, Google has a hard time serving the page as a browser and your rankings may suffer.
Using Google’s Fetch and Render tool, you can quickly check blocked resources and fix any problems.
14. Overly Long/Complex URLs
In almost all SEO correlation studies, the total length of the URL correlates with lower rankings. This also applies to the number of numbers and special characters in the URL.
Correlation is not the cause, but it can be caused by:
Deep folder structures are often removed from high authority pages.
Unnecessary parameters
People are less likely to copy and share long, complex URLs.
Whatever the reason, keeping your URLs clean and tidy usually pays off.
15. Bad Brother Site Links
Just as Google’s system rewards sites that link to high-quality resources, the system is “less trustworthy when linking to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods.”
A Bad Neighborhoods is an area full of spam or penalized sites. Gambling, shady drug sites, and porn are often targets. Aggressively linking to these sites can put a serious dent in your search traffic.
16. Slow Speed
We’ve covered many of the big impacts of making your site fast, but the opposite is also true. Slow sites can also distort search results.
When Google first ramped up its algorithms, it was thought that only the slowest 1% of pages would slow down. Since then, SEOs have observed the speed effect as a smooth curve across all sites.
17. Excessive Advertising
Google is an advertising company, and they understand that ads fund the web. However, there are two different ways overly aggressive ads can hurt your rankings:
Advert
Google’s Heaviest algorithm penalizes sites with too many ads above the title or in the primary content area.
Intrusive Interstitial update penalizes mobile sites with aggressive pop-ups and interstitial ads.
Feel free to use ads, but don’t be pressured about it.
18. Over-Enhanced Anchor Text
Anchor text optimization is a very good thing.
Yes, it helps to include keywords in the anchor text of links pointing to your site. It even pins the exact match text.
But SEOs long ago observed that when your anchor text is optimized, rankings start to drop.
Google may tell you that your link profile doesn’t look natural, so they demote you in the search results.
The best advice is to have a wide variety of anchor text links pointing to your site and to avoid dictating anchor text when even asking for links.
19. High Amount of Crawl Errors
Crawl errors are completely normal, and most won’t harm you. Google specifically stated that 404s do not hurt your rankings.
However, many crawl errors can be a sign of a problem. In the case of the 404s, when they are the result of broken links, either internal or external, this can cause problems with link equity flow, create frustrating user experiences, and drag rankings down from their true potential.
Not every error needs to be fixed, but a high amount of crawl errors can cause trouble.
20. Misleading Offensive Content
To crack down on Fake News, Google recently updated its algorithm to take down content that promotes misleading information, unexpected disturbing results, hoaxes, and unsupported conspiracy theories.
Google uses Search Quality Rates to flag fake and misleading information and uses this data to improve machine learning algorithms to detect offensive content that is fake and misleading.
21. Pornography / Explicit Content
This is obvious, but if Google determines that your site contains porn or explicit adult content, it will be hidden from search results except for a very narrow set of search queries and will be completely hidden when Safe Search is on.
22. Chain Redirect
301 redirects are great! They search for robots that are supposed to find people and go, and they even beat PageRank.
Google is known to only follow five redirects before giving up. Long Redirect Chains also tend to break easily, leaking PageRank and rankings overall. For best results, shorten redirects for a shortened number of possible hops.
23. UGC Spam
Great if you produce great content, but not so much if you allow users to spam your website.
User-generated spam can include spam comments, forum posts, and accounts on free hosts. The general rule is if you host your site, you are responsible for it. If you let your users get off track, it can hurt your rankings.
24. Complex Redirect
Sneaky Redirects is the practice of sending users to a page they are not expecting (usually spam).
Google wouldn’t like this, so don’t do it.
25. Bad Domain History
If you have a long history of spam or penalties, you may still come across it in search results. Once everything is cleaned up, it may take time for Google to crawl your content and revalue the site.
SEOs often report that this process can take several months or more.
If your site has a bad domain history, it’s best to do a link audit and disavow, resolve penalties, create new content, submit sitemaps, fix technical issues, and create new links.
If any of these negative success factors affect you and make the cleaning job difficult, your rankings will hopefully bounce back sooner rather than later.
Other Important Notes
The most common mistakes SEOs make are not using keywords in the title, not using keywords in the URL, and neglecting to include a meta description.
Marketers should focus on these areas when trying to optimize their websites for search engine optimization.
Also, avoid:
– Using certain words or phrases more often than others to rank higher in search engine results
– Creating a site that uses only keywords and related phrases in its content
– Hide text under an unreadable font, image, or video
In this article, we have compiled the functions that should not be done in terms of SEO. Apart from these, you can look at Rank Math, an SEO plugin that may be useful to you.
