SEO Techniques That Will Hurt Your Google Rankings

[mandy]

SEO strategies to avois: buying links, cloaking, duplicate content, hidden text, link exchanges, keyword stuffing, and link farms.

Link Exchanges

This was a popular technique in the early days of the web, and it’s not really effective today. The whole “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” thing doesn’t go over very well. It looks contrived, and it’s not natural. Link building should appear as natural as possible. Two-way link exchanges won’t get you banned, but it won’t help you any either. If you’re going to trade links, at least try to make sure it’s a three way thing. Never link to the same site that just linked to you. Instead, link to them from another site you own if you wish to return the favor.

Link Farms

Just say no to link farms. Link farms are sites whose only purpose is to artificially inflate link popularity through link exchanges. Google knows who they are, and if they’re not on their list yet, you can bet they will be soon. They’re considered “bad neighborhoods”, and will hurt your rankings. You may likely be penalized, and your site can even get banned for participating in these schemes. Avoid the problems, and don’t give into the temptation. An endorsement from a bad site is much more harmful than no endorsement at all.

full article: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/bad-s...ings/7065/

[FiberGuy]

Never link to the same site that just linked to you. Instead, link to them from another site you own if you wish to return the favor.

One of the dumbest pieces of linking advice I've heard.  Three-way linking is a sure fire way to make loads of enemies on the web, gaining scores of webmasters who will NEVER link to your site again...

... at least once they figure out that the link they get is worthless.