Webmasters are still at the stage where they are unaware of the potential dangers that lurk in internet marketing. For years now they have been developing sites without really knowing that one day it could harm your status in the search engines. To help web designers and developers, and even those doing home internet marketing, Google released its webmaster guidelines that go through the areas webmasters need clarity on so that they can avoid taking part in black hat (unethical) seo techniques.

One of the classic errors that webmasters make is producing hidden text or embedding hidden links on pages. This sort of content can give Google the impression that your site is untrustworthy because the content seen by users is different to that of the search engines. Hidden text can be done setting same colour text on same colour background, putting text behind an image, using CSS to hide text and setting the font size to 0.

Cloaking is also seen as bad,as is redirecting. Again, this is the process of dishonesty because the content seen by users is different to that of the search engines. Presenting results that are different can cause a site to be deemed as misleading and may see pages removed from the index. An example of cloaking is presenting different content to search engines than to users.

Using software such as Web Position Gold,which sends automated queries to Google, takes up valuable resources, so it’s best to avoid this at all costs.

It’s very easy to assume that you know how search engine optimisation marketing works, but at the end of the day, if you’re not equipped with the right tools you won’t get the full impact that you could receive for your efforts. Packing pages full of keywords will not get you to the top of Google, in fact the opposite. It will declass you and earn you a penalty, if not, exclusion from the search engine index altogether.

The key to a successful campaign involves avoiding the above, but using fresh, original, and relevant content. This will not only benefit the user, but will add points to a website and gain better positions in the SERPS.