While doing the SEO for your site, you should ensure that you steer clear of any unhanded tricks in your SEO strategy to avoid being penalized by Google. While there are many types of penalties imposed by Google, here are some SEO strategies that you should steer clear of altogether.

  1. Cloaking pages and sneaky redirects

This is what takes place when he content that you give Google differs from the actual content on the page. This is a sly way to get traffic that is not appreciated by Google.

  1. Hidden text and keyword stuffing

There used to so many of these underhanded SEO techniques to guide unsuspecting users to a page (for example, using white text on a white background so it was indexed by Google while the hapless user would be wondering how they got to the page). Another shifty method to capture more traffic is to keep repeating the primary keyword over and over to rank higher for that keyword. In simple terms, not allowed.

  1. User generated spam

Google might penalize you for user generated content. Very often, if you allow users to write reviews and comments on your website you are bound to get user generated spam. Though it could certainly get you unique content, but you need to actively moderate the content to ensure its quality.

  1. Pure spam

You will receive a message from Google in your Webmaster Tools if they believe that those frequent mailers and notifications that you are generating are often viewed as aggressive spamming.

  1. Spammy free hosting

If you are using a free host to host your website, it is bound to create ads and other spam content which will be attributed to your site. Ensure that you only use a reputable web host to stay ad-free and spam-free.

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