When SEO Gets Annoying – Knowing Where To Step Back
There is a difference between Black Hat SEO and over-enthusiastic SEO, but that difference may not be noticed immediately by search engine spiders, or at all by visitors to your site. It is therefore important to ensure that you put together a website which, while being aware of the importance of SEO, is not so in thrall to the idea that it pushes its SEO credentials in people’s faces. This will annoy people more than anything, and you don’t get far in business by being annoying.
One way in which SEO gets annoying is in its overuse of keywords. This is not something which can be blamed on SEO per se. Of course keywords are important, but in the same way that water is. You need to drink a few glasses of water a day to feel really sharp and awake and to flush out your system – but if there is nothing but water around, everyone drowns.
People also assume that back linking on sites and blogs is a matter of reciprocal favor. If you put a link to someone else’s blog on your own site, they are not obligated to place one to yours on their site. That is not how it works, and if your site is filled with links to other people’s then it is less likely to be picked up by Google. If your site includes contextual links to relevant sites, you will likely get linked back to – and that is what Google really likes. Don’t e-mail another sitemaster requesting (respectfully or otherwise) that they return the favor. You may, however, e-mail them and tell them how much you enjoy their site and either asking to place a link or telling them you have done so.