May 21st, 2010 by Susie

Anybody embarking on any form of search engine optimization strategy will be educating themselves on what SEO tools and techniques your company can use to increase your page ranking and online traffic to your website. Whilst it is extremely important to learn about search marketing and know what works, it is equally as important to understand what does not work. When it comes to search rankings, it is obviously to make search engines your best friend, so understanding their likes and dislikes is a good way to start.

There are a lot of different search engines available for people to use, however all work in pretty much the same way. Of course, some search engines are based on real time or claim to be more of a ‘decision engine’. However, for argument’s sake let’s focus on Google in terms of what does not work.

Google bases its search ranking on various factors and criteria and there are a few of these factors that it, or most other search engines, will class as a negative factor and could result in your page being penalised. It is difficult to understand completely what Google dislikes as there are a few elements which have been identified as a negative factor from Google’s perspective, so avoiding these methods is a good idea if you want to stay top in your rankings.

One of the biggest techniques which Google dislikes is cloaking. Cloaking is basically the term used for when a website intentionally deceives the search engine by including keywords or links which are either purposefully misleading or completely fake altogether. Companies use cloaking so that they achieve a higher search ranking and an increased click through rate (CTR), however with search engines such as Google becoming more sophisticated, cloaking techniques are being picked upon more and more.

We are also seeing a lot more link buying from companies and although it is not technically banned in the world of search marketing, search engines do not seem to favour it much. Their reason for this is that Google in particular, want to encourage more natural searches and avoid paid for or forced searching.

Google has a strong reputation amongst its users and one of the worst things for your reputation is spam. It is an unfortunate matter of affairs that spam links do sneak into our web pages whether we like it or not, however this is where sufficient management of your website and all links pays off. Always check your sites and your backlinks to ensure they do not send people to spam sites or pages, as this could result in your site getting banned.

Lastly, it is not just what happens in the search engine that matters, what happens when a consumer visits your website is also a consideration. Any websites which are constantly incurring loading errors or sending users to error pages will be deemed as not being user friendly by the search engine, and if you are not serving their customers well, then you will not be liked.

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