Pittsburgh SEO is an industry that is rife with rumors, misinformation and outright propaganda distributed by individuals who have an interest in duping the public. This can make optimizing your website a daunting task that requires the expertise of a professional Pittsburgh SEO services company. However, even professionals sometimes use questionable tactics, so before you sign up for services you should ensure that the firm you partner with has the following search engine optimization philosophies:
Do Not Use Paid Links
Paid links that do not feature a No-Follow tag are perhaps one of the surest ways to earn a penalty among major search engines like Google. While your site might receive a temporary boost from such a tactic, it could eventually lead to being banned and even dropped from your hosting company. Google especially has been very vocal about its stance on paid links, and if you're a webmaster who's been buying them on behalf of a client, you're doing both yourself and your customers a disservice by violating Google's TOS (Terms of Service).
Furthermore, paid links are generally found on websites that sell links – also against Google's TOS – and these pages often have hundreds of OBL or Outbound Links. This means that the site is spammed and probably worthless despite a high PR, which means that your link on it is worthless as well.
Do Not Use Spun Articles
Spun articles shouldn't be used for 3 primary reasons:
1.) They're unreadable. They might make sense during some lucky parts, but overall spun articles were never meant to be read by humans.
2.) Spun articles are against the TOS of most article and other directories, as well as most major search engines.
3.) Spun articles actually work against the entire industry by causing the failure of directories and other websites that become inundated with thousands of submissions consisting of nothing more than spun article spam.
Ultimately, if the content you're offering to the world doesn't have anything to offer, then it's spam.
Do Not Forum Spam
Forum spamming is one of the newest SEO tactics consisting of placing comments on forums in order to get a link published as part of the signature in the forum post. There are companies that you can pay to do this for you, or there are software programs that can be purchased that also do this. However, this is spam of the highest order and is grounds for a ban from the forums and from the search engines is your site is reported repeatedly or if a report triggers a manual review.
Like directories, forums cannot continue to survive if they are continuously spammed.
Do Not Abuse Automated Tools
Automated tools are often frowned upon because so many people use them for spam. However, when used correctly some automated tools are an essential part of a legitimate professional SEO outfit. In fact, building the quantity and velocity of links necessary to rank a site for a competitive keyword requires either an enormous monthly SEO budget, or a professional that knows how to use automated tools properly.
Misuse of automated tools is perhaps the most significant source of spam content on the internet today. However, when abused the links these tools provide are generally worthless, which means that in the end they are more costly than the amount of time (and money) they supposedly save.
In order to avoid the risks of being associated with any of these tactics, contact our professional Pittsburgh SEO firm for a free consultation now. We optimize with your user in mind first, and the search engines second. If you're passionate about putting your clients first, then it's likely that we're a perfect match. Call us now to find out for yourself.
