Search Engine Optimization (SEO) SPAM - The Death of Your Online Business

Having a website is a great way to help promote and market your business. When you're in the process of writing text for your website it's extremely important that you practice proper search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, but it is equally as important to be sure that you're not committing SEO SPAM. SPAM in website terms is defined as manipulating web pages in order to give them an artificial boost in the search engine results pages (SERPs). This is usually done by using keywords too much within the text. You do need to have good solid keywords in order to help promote your business online and to ensure that the search engines pick up your website, so where do you draw the line?

There is a huge difference in using proper keyword density and using too much keyword density and usually just reading the text can clue you in as to whether or not your keywords are being used too much and could therefore be considered SEO SPAM. Keywords that are chosen should be used within the text in such a way that the text flows in a natural manner while a visitor is reading it.

For instance, if you own a dog food business and one of the keywords on the home page of your website is 'dog food' you would want your text to read in this manner, "The dog food that we sell is made up of all natural ingredients." Here you can see that the key word was simply used once in the sentence. An example of SEO SPAM would be, "The dog food we sell is dog food that is made from all natural ingredients making all natural dog food." See how that sentence doesn't read well? Creating your text in such a manner will almost certainly get it labeled as SEO SPAM.

Why is all this important to your business? If you get labeled as a SPAMMER online it will be the death of your online business. It doesn't matter how fancy your website is, if nobody knows it exists then it does you little good. While you do want to be sure that you are using all the latest in SEO, you have to be careful. Anytime that your website is associated with SPAM then you get penalized by the SERPs and your rankings will suffer.

Avoiding SEO SPAM is as easy as focusing on good keyword density, which as it turns out is a floating scale and depending where you look will depend on the answer you get of what the perfect percentage is. However, if you keep it to around four percent and under you should be good to go by most standards. Google even has resources in their 'Webmaster Central' that can help you determine if they will consider your content to be full of SEO SPAM or on the level. This is a great place to look as Google seems to set the precedence when it comes to the SERPs.

The whole point of creating a website is to compliment your offline business with an online business. If you want to see your online dreams stay alive and healthy, then you should avoid SEO SPAM. If you insist on using SEO SPAM then your website rankings and your online business will fall at the wayside and die.

Sources:
SEO Logic, What is search SPAM or SEO SPAM? - Search engine Marketing FAQ - SEO Logic, Seologic.com
Google, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Webmaster tools Help, Google.com