I think it is fair to say that Internet users love change, in fact I imagine that many of them embrace the concept wholeheartedly. After all, there are not many mediums guaranteed to keep you engaged and on the tip of your toes learning new things on a daily basis.

The changes that have occurred on the search engines since I began StepForth in 1997 have been remarkable and very characteristic of the ever-changing environment that the Internet embodies. In keeping with such change, it stands to reason that the techniques required to achieve top search engine placements will change as well. The prerogative of search engines has been and always will be to advance their technology in an effort to provide better and more effective search results for their users. Such effective search results require the identification and ultimately the complete eradication of manipulative SEO tactics often equivalent to Spam. This quest for the Holy Grail of search results necessarily requires that search engine marketing tactics change and grow with the new technology. Unfortunately there are many SEO strategies still being used by webmasters that were put to bed a long time ago. In many cases, these SEO strategies are not only ineffective but are now considered Spam which often has dire consequences for rankings. The following is a listing of what I consider to be the Top10 worst search engine optimization tactics:

1: Doorway Pages (aka Gateway Pages, Leader Pages, etc.)
Definition: Create multiple web pages that are devoid of useful content but heavily optimized for search engine rankings. Each page is optimized for a variation of a keyword phrase or for completely different keyword targets. The essence of this concept was to fool the search engines into thinking that these pages were highly relevant and provide top rankings for them under their targeted phrase. When a surfer stumbled on the page they were often shown a “Click Here to Visit Joe’s Pizza” link that the surfer had to click on to actually arrive at the legitimate website.

Once among the most popular methods of attaining multiple search engine placements, doorway pages were widely used until 2000 by many webmasters. Since then, Doorway pages have become the most obvious form of Spam that a search engine can find and the repercussions are dire if such a tactic is employed. Unfortunately, I have seen many sites still employing this tactic and occasionally we even get calls from potential customers wondering why they have dropped off the search engines for using this technique. We also continue to receive requests to perform this tactic on a daily basis.

2: Invisible Text
Definition: Invisible text is implemented in a variety of ways in an effort to increase the frequency of keywords in the body text of a web page. Some of the implementation methods are: making text the same color as the background of the web page, hiding text behind layers, placing text at the very bottom of over-sized pages, etc.

This tactic is perilously old and obvious to search engine spiders. It constantly amazes me when a web site utilizes these methods for placement. Invariably, placements are the last thing that a webmaster will get when using this tactic. Invisible text had its heyday from 1995 to 1999. This not to say that invisible text didn’t work after 1999 but the majority of web sites were not using it by this time as the search engines began implementing automated methods of detection and penalization.

3: Content Misrepresentation
Definition: Misleading search engines into believing your webpage is about topic ‘A’ when it is in fact about ‘B’. This tactic was used primarily for the promotion of adult, gambling, and other extremely competitive search markets.

Unfortunately this tactic is still in use; you likely find one or two every time you search! The fact is that this tactic is the simplest for a search engine to identify and the result will be swift and complete; banishment from the search engine index indefinitely. The worst offense in the realm of the search engines is to try to fool them.

4: Redirects
Definition: Redirects have some innocent uses (practical, legal, etc.) but they are also used nefariously to mislead search engines by making them believe that the page they have indexed is about ‘A’. When a surfer visits the page, however, they are redirected to an entirely different site about ‘B’.

In most cases search engines have advanced enough to see this technique a mile away. In fact they usually ignore any page with a redirect (assuming correctly that the content is useless) while spidering the redirect destination. Redirects, unless blatantly Spam-related do not directly result in intentional ranking penalties, however, they have no positive effect either.

5: Heading Tag Duplication
Definition: Heading Tags, by definition, were created to highlight page headings in order of importance. Thus the Heading Tags that are available: H1, H2, H3, etc. This duplication technique involves implementing more than one H1 tag into a webpage in order to enhance a particular keyword or phrase.

This tactic is still very prevalent and likely still works on some search engines; however, none of the major search engines will respond well to this technique as it has been identified as a common manipulation.