3 Things That Can Hurt Your Search Engine Rankings

Search engine optimization is very important for all websites. When done properly, it increases free traffic from search engines and brings highly targeted visitors. Unfortunately, well-intentioned webmasters could unknowingly be doing something which may hurt their search engine rankings. The list below outlines a few things that you shouldn’t do.

3 Things You Shouldn’t Do

1. Repeated Submissions. If you are waiting to show up in Google, be patient. By repeatedly submitting your website, you may actually negatively affect when you website does show up. Similarly, if you automatically ping search engines when you submit new content, be sure not to over-ping. Google is not a fan of automated services and can penalize you as a result. Some sites, for example, have found their pages completely dropped from search engine indexes.
2. Post Duplicate Content. Another easy way to get penalized is to serve duplicate content. Duplicate content is textual content that is on multiple pages of your website, or that is directly copied from some external website.
   And believe it or not, you could be serving duplicate content and not be aware of it. If you own a blog, for example, you might have duplicate content shown on permalink pages, archive pages, and the home page. You can also have a minor duplicate content issue by using inconsistent links. For example, our home page can be reached by (1)http://www.velvetblues.com, (2)http://www.velvetblues.com/, and (3)http://www.velvetblues.com/index.php. It is best to stick with only one of the three. We suggest the second option.
3. Participate In Questionable Link Exchanges. It is very tempting to do anything possible to increase traffic and get inbound links. However, not all links are created equal. And, whether or not you are aware of it, linking to questionable or spam websites can actually hurt your search engine ranking. So before you link to someone new, it is important to properly investigate their websites. (As a rule of thumb, don’t link to anyone with a pagerank of 0.)

For other items which may hurt your search engine rankings, see our articles: Black Hat SEO: 6 Ways To Get Your Website Banned and I’ve Been Banned! What Can I Do?.