There has been much discussion lately as to whether Google treats search engine professionals as criminals, which was sparked by a surprise announcement about NoFollow links by Google’s spam czar Matt Cutts at the SMX conference last month.
No matter if you believe Google profiles SEOs or not, you need to do your best not to be labeled as an SEO. There’s an interesting article at Winning the Web that details 7 Red Flags that Reveal to Google You’re an SEO Criminal – Avoid These!
If you are profiled as an SEO by Google, they will heavily scrutinize your site and hold you to a much higher standard. Avoid this by 
following these 7 steps:
- Don’t bloviate about your SEO tactics – Be careful what you tell others about all the cutting-edge SEO techniques you are using…it could come back to haunt you.
- Sites all tied together are an easy target – Separate your sites as much as possible (i.e. different IP addresses, no interlinking). Google can trace IP addresses and has a lot of information about you and your sites.
- Do not over optimize for certain keywords – It’s always been pretty simple to optimize content for SEO. But Google now automatically filters and penalizes sites it thinks are “over-optimized”. Focus a little less on things like keyword density and generate engaging content instead.
- Unnatural link profile – Google definitely penalizes sites when it thinks a site’s link profile is unnatural. Examples include too many links too fast, too many links from low quality, unrelated sites, etc.
- Avoid NoFollow to sculpt PageRank – Using NoFollow is a definite red flag since Google believes the only people that know about this are professional SEOs.
- Do not buy or sell obvious paid links – Google has been pretty harsh on paid links since late 2007, claiming any site buying or selling links will be penalized.
- Using SEO and links to get a spammy site to the top – Is a big no-no as well…following the previous six tips but missing this one can get you in trouble. Even if you did your SEO under the radar, some money making scheme site may get to the top, but it won’t stay there for long.
SEO is certainly tougher these days. The best advice, don’t do things that draw attention to yourself. Be sure sites you build or maintain provide some value to its readers.
Have you been profiled or seen SEO red flags like these? Leave us a comment below.
Learn more at the Search Engine Roundtable and this forum discussion at Sphinn.
Tags: link building, organic search, search engine optimization
