Being removed from Google is your worst online marketing nightmare.

“ignorance is not an excuse” since Google have publicly stated their guidelines for website SEO tactics. The article summarises the 8 Specific Quality Guidelines set by Google, however the message is clear. Google knows it will only remain the dominant search engine as long as the experience it gives its end users is the best. Tricks and ‘black-hat’ technical wizardry that work against this will always be in Google’s crosshairs. Abuse them, and expect to get shot down….

1.Avoid hidden text or hidden links

Hidden text can’t be seen by the site’s visitor. They are keywords or keyword phrases are added for the search engine only. The simplest form of hidden text is creating invisible text by making the font colour similar to the background colour. It is also the easiest to detect because simple highlighting can cause the hidden text to appear. Cascading Style Sheets(CSS) are also used to create hidden text using it’s built in features that can hide your text.

Instead of using hidden text, SEO practitioners should focus on adding relevant keyword phrases throughout the text but be careful to ensure the copy should be read as normal text.

2. Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.

Cloaking is delivering pages designed for the search engines while providing people with different results. It is a technique wherein the content presented to the search engine spider is different from content presented to the user. The legitimate use of cloaking is for the contents that cannot be seen by some early browser programs, like those pages made from Macromedia Flash. Today, cloaking is abused to trick search engine users. For example, a user makes a search about “web design company” but the page was redirected into another site. On the other hand an example of sneaky redirection, is when a user clicks on a search result and gets redirected to another page.

3. Don’t send automatic queries to Google.
Using unauthorized programs to check rankings, submit pages, etc violates Google’s terms of service, so if you really have to use such, use it with common sense or don’t use it at all.

4. Don’t load pages with irrelevant words.
Web pages should be made for the users, not for the search engines. SEO practitioners should focus on making sites rich in information and content. Loading your page with irrelevant words can attract traffic but doesn’t improve sales because you do not provide the vital information needed by the visitor.

5.Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
In addition to that, don’t make multiple domains that are only established to increase site traffic. Don’t use pages on other domains to redirect traffic to your site, don’t use mirror sites, those with exact content but different domains and many pages in search results that redirect to your site. These techniques can give short term results but expect to be banned when you get caught.

6. Don’t create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
Anything that can cause harm to the Internet community should be avoided.

7. Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
Doorway pages are pages designed for driving traffic to another page and usually focusing on specific keywords. Generally, doorway pages are designed for search engines only and this should be avoided because the visitors do not benefit from this practice.

8. If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value.
You should not participate on link schemes designed to merely increase your PageRank, don’t exchange links with sites that are run by spammers, link farms, free for all directories, adult sites and gambling sites. Avoid establishing partnership with sites with no or little content and exclusively made to boost rankings.

In the end, you should aim to provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit and return. The best thing to do is to avoid dirty tricks intended to gain instant engine rankings. Create a long term plan of success, using organic search engine optimisation that adds value to your visitors and Google will stay your friend!