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What is wrong with Search Engine Optimization?

Posted on 13. Oct, 2009 by BennettLott in SEO

Look under the hood of any SEO plan and you’ll find advice like this: make sure to use key­words in the head­line, use proper for­mat­ting, pro­vide sum­maries of the con­tent, include links to rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion. All of this is a good idea, and none of it is a secret. It’s so obvi­ous, any­one who pays for it is a fool. 

Occa­sion­ally a dark­side SEO mas­ter may find some loop­hole in the Google algo­rithm to exploit, which might actu­ally lead to an increase in traf­fic. But that ill-gotten traf­fic gain won’t last long. Google changes the way it ranks its index monthly (if not more), so even if some SEO tech­nique worked, and usu­ally they don’t, it’ll last for a cou­ple weeks, tops. 

And when they do rein­dex, if they deter­mine that you’ve been act­ing in bad faith (like hid­ing links or key­words or other decep­tive prac­tices) they’ll drop you like a hot rock. So a tem­po­rary gain may result in a life­time ban. 

In the end, you’re sac­ri­fic­ing your brand integrity in a Faus­t­ian bar­gain for an increase in traf­fic that won’t last the month. And how valu­able was that increase, any­way? If you’re trick­ing peo­ple into vis­it­ing your site, those vis­its are going to be bad experiences. 

Related Posts:

• What is right with Search Engine Optimization?
• Search Engine Opti­miza­tion Techniques
• Ten Sim­ple SEO Tips
• Choos­ing A Good SEO Com­pany Is Key To A Suc­cess­ful SEO Campaign
• What is Inter­net Mar­ket­ing and Search Engine Marketing?

Tags: break-the-web, derek, derek-powazek, obvious-advice, scorching-indictment, search-engine, SEO