SEO techniques can sometimes take you to frustration - especially when not getting the expected results at the expected time.An amateur SEO can get into the wrong ways of doing this at these times - some of which will/can prove fatal, that you may get even banned by google out of their indexes.

Here are a few things which if you overdo can take you to low ranking or even banning by google.

1. Over emphasizing keywords in the text content.
   All of us would have come across such sites, that simply put in junk content (mostly copied/mashed up from other sites) in to their blogs. This is the easiest and the dangerous way of doing things.Here there is a high risk of content duplication and high spam rate.
   When you simply add fake content (irrelevant to the matter) just to add up the number of keywords, into your content, for a little while, google may serve you more targeted ads(due to keyword emphasis) but once when the bots find that keywords are repeated irrelevantly, then they treat it as spam. There have been incidents where even blogger accounts have been deleted/disabled by Google when they found that the blog is spam, and has irrelevant and over emphasized keywords.
   One simple way to check this is to find the number of repetitions of a particular keyword in the content and finding the ratio with the rest number of words. IF the ration is below 10% then it is OK. But a ratio of more than 10-15% will ring the bells!
2. Spamming the title tag.
   Many a times we find sites with awkward titles - titles with special characters and repetitive keywords. This is yet another dangerous practice. Google bots carefully scan the titles of your webpage.They are the faces/flags of your site. A title is supposed to let the viewers know what the site is about. Suppose they liked your site and want to bookmark them, they should be given with a reasonable title - Ex - “SEO blog by Mani - DD” is better than “SEO,SEO techniques,SEO stuff,CoolSEO,SEO India,SEO Free,SEO tips - Mani”.
   This type of headings with repeated keywords will be treated as spam.
   Special characters are OK in title but by standards they are not something that belong there.So try to avoid them unless its a fancy port folio of your’s and you don’t really care for SEO strategies on it.
3. Spamming the meta tag.
   The Meta tag is supposed to the name of your blog - It’s like the badge you wear on your shirt.Any first time visitor can make it out from your badge who you are and what you are
   A standard meta tag would have both keywords and description in it.
   A false practice in the meta tags are again - repeating the same keywords to over emphasize things. Repetition is OK but in a reasonable way.
   A keyword meta tag can be - “SEO India,SEO free tools” but not “SEO India,SEO Free tools,SEO meta tag creator,SEO Tools India” etc..
4. Spamming the ALT tag.
   ALT tags are used with images - according to w3g standards, any image on your site should have ALT tags. This is one thing i recommend most and think basic. ALT tags helps SEO very much because Google bots value them more than (sometimes) the keywords.They get easily indexed in google and an SEO can take advantage of it.
   For ex:- img src = “your url here” alt=”SEO India” will give your site mileage for the keyword SEO India.
   Visually if you don’t use the ALT tag, it doesn’t matter much but still i advocate it very much because there may be readers who have disabled image for speed surfing and if you don’t use ALT tags they’ll have no clue as to what image links/content stand for.This is because the ALT tags will alternatively show up when the image does not show up on any chance in the browser.
   Now, if you spam the ALT tag with reletitive keywords like “SEO tools,SEO Free,SEO skills” etc in the same image, sure it will give you more mileage for the keyword but only for a short while.

So these are all those silly things that you may ignore for better SEO results, but can prove fatal if not corrected earliest. Here are a few tips form me that will help you get better SE rankings and the same efficiency but without using such false methods.

1. Use STRONG code instead of B(bold) code when emphasizing keywords.
   According to w3g standards, using a bold (b) code only visually emphasizes the keyword. Though both STRONG and BOLD are visually helping the same functions - making the letters darker, a google bot values the STRONG code more, and even a screen reader will emphasize the STRONG code while ignores the BOLD code. So where ever possible, put your keywords in between <> commands.
2. Sprinkle your keywords evenly.
   When writing an article, don’t just stuff it with keywords, but sprinkle them evenly after regular intervals through out the post and keep the ration below 15% to the total number of words used.
3. Use different ALT tags on different images - related to their use and meaning.
   Instead of spamming same image with same keyword ALT tags, use them deliberately on different images(even small icons). And tag them based on their use i.e - a BACK buttom can have the ALT tag as “Go back to the main page of SEO tools” rather than “SEO tools - SEO skills” etc.

There are lot of free tools available on the net that will help you find your SEO quotient online like
SEO Chat tools
Keyword optimizer
Keyword density checker etc.

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