Search engine optimization has changed how online marketing is done to promote businesses over the internet. SEO simply involves getting your website ranked for search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo! While there are several ways to rank your website organically, not all methods are considered legal. For instance, using some orthodox ways to rank high on Google can get your website penalized. Google considers some ways illegal and strategies such as black hat techniques can get your site banned from Google, Bing, and even Yahoo! So, what are some of the techniques you should be aware of or avoid at all cost when implementing your SEO strategies? You can talk with a search engine optimization company for more information on illegal SEO techniques you want to avoid. Without further ado, here are some things that can be considered illegal when implementing SEO strategies.

• Pagejacking

Ever heard about carjacking? Well, the concept is pretty much the same here. Pagejacking is hijacking someone’s webpage and using it as your own. It means copying someone else’s webpage word-for-word and submitting it to Google and other search engines as your own, hoping to get higher rankings as well. This SEO technique is considered illegal and you can be banned if found. Pagejacking is stealing copyrighted content over the internet. Some people never learn and still employ this technique in hopes of getting favorable rankings. You should avoid this technique because you’ll be found sooner or later.

An SEO content audit may help you avoid this issue. It involves checking for content discrepancies across your website and the rest of the web, allowing you to identify points of sabotage. 

Verify the ownership of your content by assessing the presence of unique identifiers such as meta tags, copyright notices, or authorship information. Moreover, analyze the backlinks pointing to your website to weed out those coming from suspicious or low-quality websites.

• Trademarked keywords in domain names and META tags

You have a business idea you’re excited about and are thinking of registering a domain name to get your business up and running in no time. However, the problem is that you’ve realized your idea of a domain name is a trademarked keyword. So, what do you do in that case? You just go ahead and register it anyway. Think again! Note that using some else’s trademark is illegal, especially if you use it as bait to attract customers to your business. This is a violation of the federal trademark law prohibiting the use of another person’s trademark with the aim of confusing customers and hopefully driving them to your business.

While it is not necessarily illegal to utilize trademarked keywords in your web page’s META tags, it is highly discouraged. People use these keywords in a seemingly deceptive manner; as if they are trying to deceive the customer that they are affiliated with the company that trademarked the given META tags. Using Meta tags in this manner can work against you when the company that trademarked the given keywords catches up with you. You’re likely to lose the case if you can’t prove to the judge that you had a legitimate and non-malicious reason to utilize the given keyword.

• Spun websites

These have been common in the past but have since reduced. This is quite similar to pagejacking except the culprits use article spinners or spinning software to rewrite web pages and publish them as their own. They’ll often scrape a website they like from the Internet and quickly run it through article spinning software and using the results as the final article to be published on their website. The page, however, tends to come out as gibberish. This was the whole idea behind article spinning. The concept was to have a website that still ranks high for keywords in a given niche despite not making any sense. In the long run, the site is filled with ads for the niche so when the web visitor gets tired of reading the gibberish, they’ll just click on the ads on the website. However, note that this is illegal and you can have your site banned.

Instead of spinning, focus on creating high-quality, original content that provides value to your audience.

Indicate your website copyright ownership by including copyright notices, terms of use, or a Creative Commons license. Also, consider watermarking or adding subtle branding elements to your visual content, such as images, infographics, or videos.

You can use online tools and services to monitor the web for duplicate content and get notifications when they’re found. This way, you can quickly identify spun websites using your content and take appropriate action.

• Deep linking

This involves providing a link directly to some content on a given webpage, rather than linking to its own home page. Deep linking to articles on some websites is considered illegal and can land you into trouble. Bypassing another website’s home pages deprives them of advertising revenue. This is even worse if the perpetrator is in direct competition with the website that feels its rights have been violated.

From a search engine’s perspective, deep linking helps bots understand the relevance and structure of individual pages within a website, improving indexing and organic search visibility.

But it’s important to differentiate between ethical deep linking and practices such as ‘inline linking’ or ‘hotlinking.’ It refers to when one website displays images or files hosted on another without permission. Such actions infringe on copyright and intellectual property rights. 

These are some of the SEO techniques you should be aware of and possibly avoid if you want to rank high on Google or other popular search engines. Attempting to deceive search engines and potential customers into thinking you are another company, business or person is illegal and can cause your website to be banned or even attract a lawsuit. Always adopt good SEO techniques and practices to avoid legal issues and SEO-related problems.