Many web publishers, both new and seasoned alike, are in the dark about getting their sites indexed in the search engines and keeping them there. While in the past webmasters were able to throw up sites with no real value and manipulate the system to get them ranked, today’s landscape is vastly different.
The same “tricks” that previously worked will now get you banned faster than you can say “banned”. But, now even trying to work within the misty guidelines set out by the search engines themselves can also leave you penalized and scratching your head. Over-optimization can cause your site to drop in the rankings and even disappear altogether. Look no further than Google’s “sandbox” for proof of a deliberate effort to punish publishers for trying to make an end run around them with SEO work.
Incoming links were long considered a measure of a site’s popularity, and the search engines regarded them as such as well. But, as publishers with dubious intentions began instituting links pages with the sole purpose of raising their site’s popularity and ranking, these same links can now have a negative impact....