Avoid blackhat SEO practices

SEO tricks not only fail quickly, but will ultimately get your site removed from the indexes – maybe forever.

In the book’s introduction, we talked about SEO’s voodoo-like reputation. This is partly because there is more bad SEO advice out there than good, and this tip tries to deal with some of the problematic areas that will negatively affect your site’s performance in search engines. I wish SEO were easier and more obvious – but it’s not and the truth is that bad SEO practices can fatally affect your ability to create and maintain a presence on the web.

Is this so surprising? Web users are tired of spam and irrelevance – consequently, the search engines take the same zero-tolerance approach. What may seem an innocent way to leapfrog to the top of the search results will eventually lower your ranking at best and – at worst – have your site blacklisted. Once you’re on the blacklist, there’s no guarantee how long it will take to reinstate your position. Potentially, you may never appear on some search engines again.

In the book, we cover the most common blackhat SEO techniques, how to recognize and avoid them.

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