25 Ways to Decrease Your Rankings

Sure, any old chump can follow SEO best practices and achieve the high SERPs rankings that lead to sustained business growth and profits.  But do you have what it takes to trash years of hard work by flagrantly abusing Google’s policies?

Here’s what you need to do:

Tip #1 – Cloak your site

If you want the Googlebot to swear off your site for good, use cloaking technology that allows you to display an entirely different site from what your readers are seeing.

Tip #2 – Make use of doorway pages

Same deal – if you’re using techniques that pass visitors through one landing page and on to another, you’re violating the Google Terms of Services and guaranteeing that your site will lose rank (if not be removed from the index altogether).

Tip #3 – Scrape articles from other websites

If writing your own original content sounds boring, why not just pull some text off of another website you like and paste it into your own?   Copy too much of the same content from other sites, and you risk running into Google’s duplicate content filters, which will ensure other sites featuring the copied articles rank above yours in the SERPs.

Tip #4 – Use unrevised PLR content

You know those “10,000 PLR article packs” you have sitting on your hard drive?  If you want to decrease your rankings in the search engines, copy and paste them directly to your site without any revisions.  Providing little to no original content (and little to no value to your readers) is a sure-fire way to get your site tanked in the SERPs.

Tip #5 – Keyword stuff your content

Nothing says “effective optimization” like cramming your target keywords into your website as many times as you can.  Consider the following example of good keyword stuffing:

“Take a moment to read my Review of the 2013 Chevrolet Tahoe.  Are You Gonna Buy a 2013 Chevrolet Tahoe?  Watch the Video Reviews of the 2013 Chevrolet Tahoe below to see this vehicle in action!”

If your current website text is more readable than this, you aren’t fitting nearly enough keywords into your content in order to decrease your rankings!

Tip #6 – Keyword stuff your meta tags

Your meta tags represent a valuable opportunity to tell the search engine spiders what your site is about – so why not use this space to stuff in every single keyword you’re targeting?!  Bombing your title, keyword and description meta tags with as many keywords as possible is a surefire way to trigger SERPs ranking penalties.

Tip #7 – Pack your page with SEO copy

Nothing screams, “I’m good at SEO” like a paragraph or two of keyword stuffed text crammed at the bottom of your page where you think no one will see it (I’m looking at you, Red Envelope!).  Since the search engines have definitely caught on to this tactic, it’s another great way to decrease your rankings in the search results.

Tip #8 – Present text in graphics or scripts

So you hired yourself a fancy graphic designer who’s built your entire site out of graphics and scripts?  That’s great!  Since the textual content of your site won’t be able to be indexed by the search engine spiders (unless your designer happened to build an alternative indexable version), you’ll definitely see a drop in the SERPs.

Tip #9 – Over-optimize your images

Want to tip off the search engines to your blatant manipulation of their rankings in order to increase the odds of incurring penalties?  Over-optimize your images by stuffing your file names and ALT tags with every single keyword you’re targeting on your site.

Tip #10 – Ignore keyword research data

The web runs on keywords, so if you really don’t want to get ranked for the terms that readers would be using to find your site, ignore them entirely!

Tip #11 – Hide text on your site

Filling your site with text that’s displayed in the same color as your background has long been acknowledged as a spam technique designed to artificially manipulate rankings.  As such, hiding text on your own site in this way is a great way to incur SERPs penalties!

Tip #12 – “Stack” your title tags

If you really want to irritate the Googlebot, add multiple title tags to each page you create.  After all, if one title tag provides an important SEO benefit, two or more will be even better – right?!

Tip #13 – Use frames in your site’s construction

Using frames in your site’s construction doesn’t just say, “Look at me, I’m stuck in 1996!” – it’s also a good way to make your site difficult to navigate for the search engine spiders.

Tip #14 – Build sites around brand names

Building your entire website around established brand names (or even targeting your competitor’s branded keywords in your meta tags or site content) opens you up to copyright claims.  Depending on how far your competitors decide to take these claims, the more likely you are to have your site dropped from the search engine indexes entirely.

Tip #15 – Generate a low clickthrough rate from the SERPs

Your clickthrough rate within the SERPs matters, so if you want to drop your rankings, totally ignore the content that makes up your SERPs snippets.  (Alternatively, if you want to undo the damage done by low value snippets, consider incorporating your PPC or social media data into your meta tags.)

Tip #16 – Buy links

If major retailers like JCPenney are doing it, buying links should work for your site, right?!

Tip #17 – Exchange links

Link exchanges are another great way to get the search engines on your case about artificially inflating your rankings.  Look into both two-way and three-way link exchanges in order to create the obvious link paths that can lead to rankings penalties.

Tip #18 – Build only low quality links

Want to decrease your rankings for sure?  Low quality backlinks are your new best friends, so get out there and start building profile links, links from spam directories, links from FFA sites and other low value pages.

Tip #19 – Build links in bad neighborhoods

If your site’s incoming links are originating entirely from foreign language sites, adult-oriented websites and other “bad neighborhood” sites, you’ve got a great chance of seeing your rankings drop substantially!

Tip #20 – Build only one type of link

Good SEO is built on a natural backlink profile that resembles one that would occur if people found your site and shared it on their own.  To go in the totally opposite direction and drop your rankings, find one type of backlink that you like and focus on building that type of link only.

Tip #21 – Overload your site with plugins

WordPress plugins and other scripted program can add a tremendous amount of functionality to your site, but adding too many can slow your site down significantly.  And since the search engines prioritize site speed as a ranking factor, add as many plugins as you can if you want your SERPs rankings to crash.

Tip #22 – Ignore your site’s speed

Since site speed now matters more than ever, ignoring this important metric is a good way to drop your rankings.  Don’t bother to run a site speed optimization check and definitely don’t bother to act on the results of this test – doing so could speed up your site and actually *improve* your rankings!

Tip #23 – Ignore errors in your site’s code

Code errors disrupt the indexing process, making them a great way to confuse the search engine spiders and ensure your site isn’t displayed in the right SERPs.  For best results, ignore webmaster best practices that involve checking your code and allow existing errors to remain in place, disrupting your site’s performance and indexing.

Tip #24 – Ignore site uptime

Hey, every site goes down from time to time – right?!  Since site uptime plays a role in the search engine algorithms, you should definitely avoid monitoring your uptime and worrying about whether your pages are live at all times.

Tip #25 – Fail to stay on top of SEO news

SEO is a constantly changing field.  If you ignore major updates, you could take your search results listings by incurring penalties or missing opportunities to excel over your competitors.  Remember, if your goal is to decrease your rankings, ignorance is bliss!

Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/25-ways-to-decrease-your-rankings/42430/