Why you should keep your SEO tactics clean

Search Engine Optimisation is all about getting your website to the top of the pile and beating your competitors at any cost, right? Not necessarily. We were recently asked by one of our clients to carry out Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) on their website so that they would be found at the top of the list in key search engines like Google and MSN. This is something we’re good at and we know a lot about so we confidently told our client all about the sort of strategies we would be implementing, mainly focussing on ensuring that there was plenty of keyword-rich textual content on the page. Now by keyword-rich, I don’t mean just writing big lists of keywords like: “… search engine optimisation, SEO, search engine optimization, search engine friendly, search promotion …” or whatever, I mean writing informative and useful content for your website visitors and ensuring that it has plenty of relevant keywords in it in a way that does not make the site difficult to read.

We duly warned our client that we would not use any “black hat” tactics (this involves doing anything which goes against the Google webmaster guidelines or appears in any way sneaky), since the penalties for getting caught breaking the rules can be severe. We also pointed out that you really can’t fool Google much these days and if you do somehow trick your way to the top, your success will be very short-lived. It’s only a matter of time before you’re found out.

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