1. White text on a white background
You used to be able to use this “trick,” but it no longer works. How did it work? Google always tried to display the most relevant websites based on your search term. If, for example, you had that search term on your website five hundred times, Google would consider your site very “relevant.” However, this wouldn’t look good to website visitors, so the text was displayed in white on a white background. This made it appear as though the words weren’t there.
Fortunately, Google caught on to this quickly and fixed it in the next update. To be clear: this doesn’t work. It was one of the biggest “don’ts” in the history of SEO.
2. Links on the home page
Surprisingly enough, this trick is still being used today. The goal here is to create so-called “backlinks.” A backlink occurs when another website places a link to your site. The more “authority” the website hosting the backlink to your site has, the better it is for your own website and its search engine rankings (generally speaking).
Of course, Google’s intention is not for you to place links to your own site on these kinds of “spammy” websites. If you’re lucky, it might help a little temporarily. But Google will soon “catch on,” and you’ll be back to square one—or you’ll have dropped even further in the search results.
If you already have a link to your website on such sites, try to remove it as soon as possible. You can do this, for example, by removing the mandatory backlink that you’re required to place on the relevant homepage. If that doesn’t help, Google has another solution: through Google Search Console, you can “disavow” these types of links so that Google no longer takes them into account.
3. Buying backlinks
There are also many offers online to buy backlinks through websites like Fiverr or through ads on spammy websites. However, you shouldn’t try to acquire backlinks this way. Google recognizes these types of links and will penalize your website for them. We recommend that you acquire backlinks in an ethical manner, for example by publishing guest posts on other blogs. Or, for instance, by asking for one when someone mentions your company on their website.
4. Stuffing too many keywords onto a page
Are you trying to reach potential customers with a dedicated landing page? Great—there’s nothing wrong with that. However, the content on that landing page must be unique and not “spammed” with the keyword you want to be found for. And don’t get me wrong—if you can naturally incorporate the desired keyword into the page, that’s fine. But if it gets too spammy, it can have a negative impact, and Google may penalize you for it.
Example: Would you like to have custom shoes made? Shoemaker Justin can help you get custom shoes made. Would you also like to have custom shoes made? Then get in touch with us, the custom shoe specialists!
And now you can guess which keyword was supposed to rank ;).
5. Duplicate content
Are you trying to create special landing pages, or does your business operate under multiple trade names? That’s fine, but just make sure all the content is unique. Google quickly detects duplicate content, and you’ll be penalized for it.
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