24 August 2012

Can Bad SEO Hurt Your Business

By Brent Peterson


Are you tempted to use shortcuts when it comes to SEO? Are all of the new methods that promise quick and easy search engine rankings making you think that all the hard work formerly associated with getting good rankings have gone out the window and are now obsolete? Is there really any bad SEO methods and what's the difference anyhow? What matters is getting those high rankings and making the money that can be had by getting good rankings for profitable keywords.

Even thought it might be mighty tempting to try some of the new methods that are being introduced every year or every month, it seems, there is no substitute for solid SEO practices. What might get you quick results today might actually come back to bite you tomorrow. What will you do when a method that was working great two months ago become saturated or falls out of favor? While some methods might stick, it's old school SEO methods that should be your bread and butter when it comes to websites that you care about or your client's websites. It might be hard work but sticking to the rules when it's important is the only way to go.

Hard work always pays off and this line of thought holds true when it comes to search engine optimization also. Writing informative content in the form of pages, posts and articles on your website and then offering this content to owners of authority websites in return for a backlink can be tedious and tiresome but it works. Long hours spent writing and researching the market in hopes of gaining a few high PR backlinks might seem like fools work when someone is offering you a push button solution to your SEO woes but think about it. Links gained from such methods could easily be gone tomorrow after a big change in the rules as those sites are deindexed and the links from those sites are gone as well.

These days we have seen manual website reviews that have taken sites that were ranking supremely well and thrust them into the part of the rankings that are almost equal to deindexing. Shady SEO practices rarely last long and they can often hurt a website that was formerly ranking very well, if you're not careful. Sure, that new piece of SEO software that guarantees you easy rankings might get you there in a couple of days but what's the sense in that if the site is gone just as quickly? Often, when a site is gone, it's gone for good.

Just like anything in life, there is no shortcut to success when it comes to search engine optimization. It can be thankless and very difficult work at times and you may think that you're getting nowhere fast but hard work does pay off. Providing good content that helps people in your chosen niche and offering that content to authority websites and blogs can help you when there is a change in the rules. I have seen such changes happen and my websites drop from the rankings yet traffic didn't skip a beat. Visitors still found my websites because of the high quality content that was everywhere on the internet to be found by people looking for helpful information. Once the shuffling of websites settles down I have even found that my websites were stronger than ever and ranking even more solidly.

Giving your readers good quality content that they can use will always pay off. It doesn't matter if it's just for the search engine optimization benefits or the good will that you want to give to your clients. Hard work will always pay off. Stick to solid SEO practices and work hard and you will achieve high search engine rankings. Stay away from methods that appear too good to be true and you will win out in the end.




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