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ACTIONS
THAT COULD GET YOUR WEB SITE BLACKLISTED Mirror Websites
Mirror websites are sites with identical
content but different URL's. This was once a method used to gain high
rankings in the search engines, but since search engines are smarter
now, this will only get you penalized or blacklisted. For more details
please research webmasterworld.com.
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Doorway Pages
Doorways are pages with little real content for your visitors that are optimized to rank highly within the search engines. These pages are designed so that visitors will be transferred deeper into the website where the actual content lies. Navigation to the doorway pages are usually only seen by robots. For more details please research webmasterworld.com.
Invisible Text and Graphics
Using invisible text (text the same or a very similar color to the background) was once used to spam a homepage and some inside pages with non-stop keywords and key-phrases. Also links to doorway pages and hidden site maps can be done with invisible text (or invisible graphics). Some designers will create a graphic link with a 1 pixel by 1 pixel raster image and link this to a hidden inner page such as a hidden site map. For more details please research webmasterworld.com.
Crosslinking Web Sites
Cross-linking is exchanging links with sited that are not reciprocal interlinked. For example if you have an outboud link to another Web site, the spider will find it and spider this domain for a counterlink. You better make sure it is found. Link exchanging with a domain that does not counterlink back to your site from that specific domain your outbound link refers to is simply dangerous. The illusion of obtaining a better ranking by providing inbound-only links can and most likely will backfire, it is an old, cheap and futile attempt to trick out a Search Engine, and it has been around since the Search Engine's criteria's for ranking and placement included counting inbound links. For these methods large Search Engines like Yahoo, Google etc. could get your domain names black listed, excluded from search, filtered or even banned. People have had very bad experiences with PR0 though cross-linking and many have never recovered. For more details please research webmasterworld.com.
Submitting Pages Too Often
Submitting the same pages to the search engines within a 24 hour period can get you penalized and may delay your website from being listed in the rankings. Some search engines believe that pages submitted sooner than every 30 days is too much. The 30 day rule is a good rule to follow when submitting to multiple search engines. For more details please research webmasterworld.com.
Using Irrelevant Keywords
Using irrelevant keywords in a website's meta-tags and / or body copy in order to achieve high rankings will most certainly backfire. Search engines now want to see parity between these two areas and if your site is thought to be spamming with irrelevant keywords, you site will be penalized or blacklisted. For more details please research webmasterworld.com.
Automated Submissions to the Major Search Engines
Using an automated service or software to submit your website to the search engines can be extremely counterproductive. Most of the major search engines and directories accept manual submissions but do not like to be spammed with the automated ones. For more details please research webmasterworld.com.
Cloaking
Cloaking is the practice of deceiving both the search engine and the visitor by serving up different pages for each. The visitor sees a nicely designed and formatted page and the search engine robot scans a page of highly optimized text. Any practice that is deceptive should be avoided and the downfall of cloaking is that, if caught, the website can be banned permanently. For more details please research webmasterworld.com.
Using a Cheap or Free Web Host
Using a cheap or free web host can hurt in the search engine rankings. Frequent downtime, pages taken down for exceeding the bandwidth deter robots from indexing your site. If a robot cannot access your site often enough, your site will be dropped from the search engines. Hosting is cheap, so if you are serious about your website get your own domain name and host not one like geocities.com/yourname/yoursite. For more details please research webmasterworld.com.
Sharing an IP Address
Sharing an IP Address even from a legitimate web host can get your site in trouble. If you have cleaned up your website from all of the techniques mentioned above and your website still does not get re-listed by the search engines in a couple of months, check with your host to see if you are sharing an IP address with other sites. If so, you may consider moving your website to a new host who will give you your own IP address or at least one that is not shared with another company who has had their IP address (an yours) banned by the search engines. For more details please research webmasterworld.com.
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