I got some e-mail thanking me for telling them what they should do but also asking me what things they shouldn’t do.

Google Statistics on Malicious and Spam Sites

So I decided to accede to their wishes and look at the top 10 “must avoid” things when it comes to search engine optimization; both on-page and off-page search engine optimization.

From “cesspool links” to “bait and switch”, some of these may be familiar to you and some may not but, in either case it’s always good to periodically remind oneself of these things.

So go though the list below and avoid them completely, unless, of course, you want to be invisible in Google

1. Using “Cesspool Links”

I call a variety of bad links “cesspool links” because if you use them then you’ll fall into the cesspool of the search engines.

Google and the other search engines have “good links” and “bad links”.

These are considered bad back links:

• Links from Web sites that have been banned by the search engines.
• Reciprocal links, particularly from Web sites that have lots of reciprocal links like directory pages at link farms.
• Links from Web sites that have virus, malware, spyware, spam or other bad things on them.
• Links from link exchanges — they aren’t 100% bad, some are and some aren’t but, in general, the links are of little or no value and not worth the danger of harming your search engine rankings.
• Links that you’ve purchased — not advertising links (that are usually nofollow links) — then Google and the other search engines will penalize you because they are considered bad links.

Don’t get any of those types of links so you won’t be penalized.

2. “Same Ol’, Same Ol’”

It’s important to use keywords for the anchor text for back links to your Web pages but if you use the same anchor text for all (or a high percentage) of the back links to the same page.

This lessens their value and means they won’t provide any help in improving your search engine ranking.

What you need to do is mix it up a bit:

1. Most links should use the keyword phrase as your anchor text, like you already do.
2. For most of the rest of the links use the keyword phrase plus some additional words; for example, if your keyword phrase is inexpensive wedding ideas then use add words like “find more inexpensive wedding ideas” or “these inexpensive wedding ideas” or “inexpensive wedding ideas for you”.
3. For a few links, use completely different words, words that are specifically about your topic; you can even use your own name.

3. The Old Bait and Switch

Don't Try to Trick Google by Page Cloaking

A practice that some people used to use, and some expert recommended, was to feed the search engine “bots” content when they came to index a Web page that was different than the actual content that people saw when they came to the page.

The thinking was that you give the search engine content they will like and that will rank you highly but give the Web site visitors content that you wanted them to see; this way the search engines were happy and you were happy (although the Web site visitors weren’t so happy).

It was always short-term thinking and the search engine companies have so many Ph.Ds that they quickly caught on and started penalizing Web sites that did it.

Not many people do it anymore but some “experts” still recommend it.

Do not do it or you will be penalized at best and possibly banned.

4. Invisible Man Text

Don't Hide Text on Your Web Pages

Another old technique that some “experts” still recommend and that you should avoid like the plague is putting invisible/hidden text on your Web pages.

How this worked was that people would out text on their Web pages that was meant specifically to get ranked highly in the search engines but that they didn’t want Web site visitors to see.

It’s a simple technique of making the color of the text you don’t want visitors to see the same color as the background.

Since the search engines didn’t see color, just read the text, this worked… for a short while.

Those same Ph.Ds quickly caught on and penalize or ban people who use invisible text.

5. Too Much of a Good Thing

Don't over Optimize Your Web Pages

I mentioned this one in a previous post but it bears repeating.

If you have too much of any of the optimization techniques this will send signals that you are trying to create content for the search engines instead of for site visitors and they will downgrade your site.

So don’t put keywords in too many headings, have too high a keyword density, have too many internal links, too many links from the same Web sites, or any of the other suggested SEO techniques.

Always remember that you need to be balanced and appear natural; the easiest way to do that is to be natural

What About Duplicate Content?

There is a lot of talk about duplicate content and the so called “duplicate content penalty”.

Google themself has said, in their Webmaster Tools area, that there is no actual penalty for duplicate content.

That they will index the page and will include it in their database BUT they won’t always show it in the search results; note the phrase “won’t always”, sometimes it will appear and sometimes not and sometimes for one keyword phrase but not another.

Google also says they like original, unique content, so what’s what?

Then there are all the news and aggregator sites which all have the same content yet show up in the search engine results.

Well, some people consider having their Web pages shown only sometimes or only for some of their keywords is a “penalty” and that’s a reasonable argument.

So that leads to some questions, things like:

• Should you worry about duplicate content?
• Can you safely use the automated content generation tools?
• Is it okay to spin content?
• Is it safe and useful to distribute to or use content from content sharing sites?

Basically, you should be creating original unique content, particularly for your main Web sites which you can supplement with some borrowed content (curated content is best).

You can distribute duplicate content but it’s best to do it after the original content on your main sites have been indexed because usually it’s the first site indexed by the search engines that gets priority.

You probably don’t need to spin the content but it depends upon how and why you are going to use it. Going into that is well beyond the scope of this blog post.

Conclusion

There are some specific things you should not do at any cost, these include:

1. Not getting back links from (or linking to) bad Web sites, including those that’ve been banned, have lots of reciprocal links (like link farms), sites with bad things on them (viruses, malware, etc.), those with lots of paid links.
2. Not using the same anchor text every time you create the same link
3. Give the search engines one Web page and the site visitors a different one
4. Hide text on your Web page
5. Overdo your on-page search engine optimization.

Oh yeah, you don’t need to worry much about duplicate content but it’s really best to provide original, unique content instead.

If you want to discover how to set up your Web pages properly check out my SEO series; On-Page SEO Part 1, On-Page SEO Part 2, and On-Page SEO Part 3.

I excerpted the cool graphics above from this infographic…

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

Top 5 Things That Will Destroy Your Google Rankings

This time we’re going to expand on that and look at how to take it to the next level and see how to use powerful content sharing sites to build the main structure of an Ultimate Free Traffic Network.

The number of very high quality back links and how quickly you can improve your search engine results positioning is amazing and this is the real secret to the strength of the traffic network.

There are a large number of content sharing sites, including the article directories we looked at last time, but there are some that are head and shoulders above the others, ones that you must include in your Free Traffic Network.

There is only one place to start is when adding your first content sharing site after you’ve established your article marketing process.

Squidoo

While Squidoo is one of the many innovative Web 2.0 sites you can use to get some extra traffic to your Web properties, it stands above most others by its quality and by the authority that the search engines give it.

If you don’t know what Squidoo is, it’s a site that lets you easily create special Web pages called a lens; while similar to blogs, usually these focus on a specific subject, and a great thing is you don’t need any expertise to create a “lens” on Squidoo.

As a content-sharing site Squidoo was created as a way for people to share their knowledge, opinions and expertise.

The key is understanding how creating Squidoo lenses can help you.

Benefits to Creating Squidoo Lenses

Creating lenses has a number of benefits particularly in regards to building traffic.

1. Market to Niche Audiences

A primary benefit of creating Squidoo lenses is it is a great way to promote yourself and your products and services to your niche marketplace.

This generates traffic directly to your lenses and indirectly to your other Web properties.

2. Focusing on Your Niche

Creating a proper marketing Squidoo lens really forces you narrow down your focus when creating content.

A common problem people have is that they try to be broad in their writing or they have keywords but don’t focus the article on them.

The entire process of creating a lens can help organize your thoughts and keep you focused on the single topic being written about.

This focus improves your traffic results for your niche and keywords.

3. Get Google’s Love

Squidoo has “juice”, that is, their pages will rank high more easily than pages on regular sites; of course, that is only true if you have words on your lens.

When you do searches you’ll see that Squidoo lenses usually appear ahead of other social bookmarking and content sharing sites.

So , when creating a lens you would target specific keywords that are related to your niches and products. When you make your lenses you add your keywords (tags) throughout to help the search engines and to bring in more traffic.

4. Testing Keywords

By choosing and putting keywords into your Squidoo lenses you can actually test your keyword phrases to see how popular they are and how music web traffic you can get.

Just create your lenses and then look at your statistics to see how it does.

With Squidoo you can see which of your lenses is the most popular. This can be eye-opening when it comes to discovering searchable and popular topics.

Analyzing your results and making modifications as necessary will show you which keywords the ones that are bringing you the most traffic.

5. Ideas for More Lenses

The sheer process of creating a Squidoo lens will cause you to come up with new ideas for additional lenses; I usually get at least one new idea and frequently several.

Of course, those additional lenses bring more traffic and bring more ideas!

6. Creating Quality Back Links

Because of the keyword focus on specific topics and the authority of Squidoo when you link your lenses to your other Web properties they get very high quality back links which gives them more power and more traffic.

As a nice side benefit , Squidoo gives you greater exposure and helps establish you as an expert.

How to Create Squidoo Lenses

To create a new lens you log into your account and click the link to make a new lens.

Then, to make the lens, you put together the various Squidoo modules onto one complete whole.

Each section of your article is put in a text module, with an appropriate heading, then add any other modules, that are appropriate, to your lens and publish it.

There a number of module types you can use, some you particularly want to consider are:

• Amazon: allows adding related Amazon products
• Del.icio.us: this module will automatically display your Delicious’ed links on your lens.
• eBay: this lists your auctions based on your tags or list specific eBay items you want to show on your lens.
• Featured Lenses: this module allows you to display the introduction modules of up to five lenses per module, creating a sort of a “lensography” of your (or other) lenses.
• Introduction: this is where you introduce your article/lens (required)
• Link Lists: this allows you to easily add lists of links
• YouTube: this allows you to add related YouTube videos to your lenses
• Poll: this allows you to add a poll to your lens
• RSS: this allows you to add your RSS feeds to your lenses (highly recommended)
• Text: this is where you place the text of your article (required)
• Text List: this lets you easily add lists to your lenses
• Plexos: this is available for various other modules like a Amazon, Flickr, text links and YouTube and  allows your readers to vote on your which items in the module they like best

Squidoo Terminilogy

Squidoo has some of its own language and terms you should know:

• Dashboard: this is the place where you can adjust your settings and check your statistics
• Lens: a Web page created on Squidoo (by a Lensmaster)
• Lensmaster: a person who creates lenses is a lensmaster.
• Lensrank: the numerical position your lens has when compared to all other published lenses.  Similar to a popularity rating, your Lensrank can change on a daily basis and it based on a wide variety of factors.
• Module: components that you can add to your lenses to give them unique features and content.
• Publish: when you’ve finished a lens you need to publish it so Squidoo will index it and make it available on the Internet
• Squid: a member of Squidoo
• Squidcast: a message that you can be send to your fans
• WiP: stands for Work in Progress, and means a lens that is still being worked on but has not been published or indexed by Squidoo.

Google’s “Squidoo Slap

There has been some concern about the importance of Squidoo because of the “Squidoo Slap” Google did to Squidoo Lenses.

Basically Google sent a message to Squidoo by “punishing” them and their lenses with bad (or no) rankings, even for many lenses that had high ones.

Like all “slaps” this was Google’s way of saying “we want good and relevant content and since some of your lenses are spam and porn and just sales pitches we’re penalizing you until you clean your act up.”

Seth Godin, the creator of Squidoo, is one of the world’s best marketers and Squidoo quickly and effectively made some rule changes that are very positive changes for themselves and for you as a marketer; and it made Google happy.

These changes benefit you because now you aren’t competing with the more unethical or unsavory people and your lenses will get the power of Squidoo while those people don’t get that advantage.

Also, Google may give even more power to this new and improved Squidoo giving you even better rankings for your lenses.

You can find out more about the changes, like the limited to the number of links and topics that you can’t create lenses about, by reading the messages on Squidoo or doing a Google search.

Conclusion

If you’re an Internet Marketer or have an online business and you aren’t using Squidoo, you need to start because you don’t realize what you’re traffic missing out on.

Squidoo is the number one Web 2.0 content sharing site in many ways including number one in driving traffic to your Web properties.

There are lots of benefits to creating Squidoo lenses to drive traffic, they include:

• Market to Niche Audiences
• Focusing on Your Niche
• Get Google’s Love
• Testing Keywords
• Ideas for More Lenses
• Creating Quality Back Links

Next time we’ll look at other content sharing sites and how to use them properly.

How has your ultimate traffic network coming?

Just remember, it’s all in the doing!

Please leave me a comment about what you’ve been doing or what you think about this series.

Talk soon,

David

The Shameless (Ethical) Marketer
http://www.Twitter.com/DavidHusnian
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com
http://www.MadMondaySale.com
http://www.2ForTuesdaySale.com

O.Y. Don’t forget to retweet this! Use the button on the page or just Tweet this:
Content Sharing Sites, Squidoo: Ultimate Free Traffic Network, Part 8 at http://dahsu.com/6qeO8Pd (via @DavidHusnian)

.

This post from: Street Guide to Web Traffic. To read more post like this, head over to Street Guide to Web Traffic

Content Sharing Sites, Squidoo: Ultimate Free Traffic Network, Part 8