SEO killers

I subscribe to SiteProNews that gives me excellent advice on a lot of things Internet related such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization - helps other people find your blog or website through search engines like Google), web design, blogs, social media and other stuff.

I found something today that made my heart sing! Jill Whalen has studied websites for more than a year to discover whether SEO is actually dead or on life support. What she found is very encouraging and that is this little tidbit from her article:

Have a Real Content / Social Media Marketing Strategy
Forget about old-fashioned link building. Google now really does consider it to be web spam. (Yay!) If you can add a link to your own site just by submitting it somewhere, you can assume that it won’t count for much (or anything) by Google. In other words, forget about useless directory submissions, article directories, link wheels, forum signatures and comment spam. That’s all done, kaput, a useless waste of time. Read more...

 Hooray! That means all you people who are posting SPAM as comments on my site can pretty much use that time for something more useful because spam comments, and footer links just don't work anymore to drive traffic to your site. Besides the fact that I weed out all those by hand anyway.

Here's some more things that dilute your web presence to the back of the search, and as Whalen says, they are in no particular order.

1. Duplicate content
2. Keyword stuffing
3. Doorways
4. Footer links
5. Auto anchor text
6. Spammy comments
7. Low-quality pages
8. Poor presentation
9. Content below fold
10. Technical problems
11. Poor writing
12. No content
13. Splitting link pop
14. Merry-go-rounds
15. Unnatural links
16. Semi-hidden text
17. Rich snippet abuse
18. Trustworthiness (I'm sure she means lack of, here)

This applies to all web content, not just professional, company sites, but blogs and personal journals, too.

Engraved in His palm,
Gina