Don’t Get Banned

Like most website owners, you’re probably quite obsessed with getting high rankings in search engines. Perhaps you’ve read countless newsletters and have employed all of the recommended tricks and tactics. But before you go into a full-fledged search-engine-optimization frenzy, beware! Your actions may actually be hurting your placement in search engines and could potentially lead to your site being dropped from indexes or banned indefinitely.

If It Sounds Too Good To Be True, It Probably Is

We’ve all seen those sites which promise to give you hundreds of high-quality inbound links all for one low monthly price. And while I can’t discredit all of these sites, the bulk of them use questionable techniques. Sure, they may  actually deliver on giving you hundreds of inbound links. However, the low quality of these links and the questionable sites from which they come can cause your site to be penalized by search engines.

Keep Search Engine Submission To A Minimum

It may take a few days to a few weeks to get listed in a search engine. So keep this in mind and resist the urge to resubmit daily. Similarly, if you have a blog, only ping search engines when you’ve written new content. Additionally, if you are interested in having your entire site indexes by search engines, create an XML site map and submit that instead.

Write Unique Content

The quickest way to get into a search engine is to have unique content. Conversely, one of the quickest ways to be dropped from a search engine or lose page rank is to have duplicate or old content. To avoid this, regularly write new content and keep your pages fresh.

Be Stingy With Your Outbound Links

Yes, that’s right, your pages are also judged by the websites to which you link. So be very careful when selecting sites to link to. One rule of thumb is to link to sites which are of equal or greater importance than your website.

So, there you have it! Of course, there are so many additional elements of search engine optimization. However the recommendations above should keep you in the good graces of all search engines you meet.