SEO Mistakes to Avoid | 3 Black Hat Techniques That WILL Get You Banned from Google

Today I'm going to share with you all of my war stories about getting banned by Google. ►►Subscribe here to learn more of my secret SEO tips:
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These are the top SEO mistakes to avoid, and if you don't, you're going to get banned.

Tip #1: Avoid building links through WordPress themes.

Some people are still doing them, and they think it works.

Back in the day, I had a web hosting website. I never provided web hosting, but, I ranked number one on Google for the term web hosting.

That's one of the most competitive terms.

Everyone's going after it because they want affiliate commissions for HostGator, Bluehost, GoDaddy.

You name it.

Instead of creating my own themes I bought domains that had hosting in it or the term web hosting and then bought a ton of WordPress themes.

I bought all the popular WordPress themes that were already out there and got them for little to no money.

Within six months I shot off to the page of Google for the term web hosting.

Within another three months, I shot up to the first spot.

And you know what happened?

Google eventually banned the website.

When I was ranking number one, I was generating over a $100,000 a month in affiliate income.

That was great.

I didn't even spend more than $50,000 buying a ton of these sites, and I did that over a period of six months.

So the income that I was generating was massive compared to my investment.

But I got banned.

I learned, don't do shady link affiliate tactics.

Tip #2: Avoid expired domain names.

There was a domain named after a park, and I bought it because it was about the civil war in America and it had a bunch of EDU links.

All I did was to a take ancient domain name that had a ton of authority and change it to casino-related stuff, and, boom, I popped up in the top three spots for the key term "online casino" and "casino."

That's crazy, right?

Eventually, Google figured it out, got banned, lost all my money.

I stopped using those tactics because it's not good in the long run.

If you're not sure if you're SEO strategy that you're using is going to get you banned or not, leave a comment, and I'll tell you if you should be doing more of it or less of it.

The last thing you want to do is put all this time and energy like I did and then get banned.

Think long term.

Tip #3: Avoid writing the same content over and over again.
After a while, you run out of topics to produce. So you just regurgitate the same stuff over and over again.

Instead, what you should be doing is updating your old content and changing it to 2017 to 2018 and making the tools more thorough.
Delete the old ones that no one uses anymore.

In your blog, you probably already have regurgitated content, so go into your Google Analytics, look at the one that gets the least amount of search topic, and redirect to more popular topics.

Combine the content, make it more thorough, you have less duplicate content and take all your old material that's bad and no one's reading anymore, and delete it.

When you do that, you're going to get way more traffic, you're not going to get penalized, and it's going to grow quarter over quarter continually.

Avoid these three SEO mistakes and in the long run when you measure your growth, year over year, you should be going up.

Think long-term, and stay away from short-term tricks and tactics like I was doing.

It's about longevity. Follow these tips, and you will have longevity.

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22 Responses to SEO Mistakes to Avoid | 3 Black Hat Techniques That WILL Get You Banned from Google

  1. Charles Floate February 20, 2018 at 4:22 pm #

    That WILL get you banned.. If you’re Neil Patel and Google want to make an example out of you* – Because none of these examples he was actually banned by Google’s algorithm.. Just people manually reviewing the site. So yeah, they did work, and no, Google isn’t that clever.

  2. Gaming Gajju February 20, 2018 at 4:53 pm #

    Great Video My Coach Neil

  3. Ask YouTube February 20, 2018 at 5:19 pm #

    Neil,
    does web2.0 linkcycle & directory summision is still working …

    • Neil John Dan Fedillaga October 10, 2018 at 1:21 am #

      I’m not Neil Patel but we just did a case study for this one it doesn’t work anymore – quality referring domains overpowers tons of backlinks even if the backlinks are coming from related websites.

      thats our result, want also to know what are others peoples opinion. coz, to be honest, based on personal experience last 2 months, the web 2.0 links you can buy are completely useless

  4. BUSINESS KING February 20, 2018 at 5:34 pm #

    sir plz make a tutorial guide on how to get traffic and rank higher for a new blog.

  5. jatt saab February 20, 2018 at 7:14 pm #

    hey niel which one is good Shopify or Amazon FBA to start in 2018

  6. TrickzMan February 20, 2018 at 11:42 pm #

    Is it good to choose expire domain for event blogging. Because its run only 5-10 days . please help me sir.

    Thank you

  7. Bibhu Prasad February 21, 2018 at 1:35 am #

    Hi Neil is it mandatory to write 1500-2000 word article to rank on page 1 in google search. Is it applicable for low compitation keywords also.

  8. Saurabh Darade February 21, 2018 at 2:25 am #

    *I am waiting for your Shopify video*

  9. Website Gang February 21, 2018 at 3:45 am #

    great ! but my english is so poor. Do you have any content in texts?

  10. Roxanette Audio Label February 21, 2018 at 10:31 am #

    Hey Neil! What happened to your throat? Haha xd

  11. Techy Gears February 22, 2018 at 3:55 pm #

    Neil Sir ,

    Please tell How to Rank Article??

    • Ali Khavari August 19, 2018 at 7:35 pm #

      Techy Gears do link building on premium social networks on fresh and unique articles over n over

  12. Marcilene Souza February 22, 2018 at 9:17 pm #

    thanks NEIL. you are great.!!!!

  13. Csaba Szabo February 23, 2018 at 7:50 pm #

    I’m looking forward to hearing about your resounding bankruptcy.

  14. Tamil One Scan February 24, 2018 at 1:22 pm #

    I loved this video. One of the best video of this channel.

  15. Kilian Schulz February 25, 2018 at 12:24 pm #

    boy you motivated me to do black-hat techniquees 🙂 six-figures???

    • Neil Patel February 27, 2018 at 12:27 am #

      Just be careful! 🙂

    • catch fish May 10, 2019 at 8:33 pm #

      @Neil Patel most people wont see 6 figures in their life

  16. harshal lonare June 5, 2018 at 6:26 pm #

    Hi neal

    what about 301 redirects
    does that still works?

    • Neil Patel June 5, 2018 at 7:33 pm #

      Of course

  17. Manny Velez December 7, 2018 at 1:59 pm #

    Neil spittin’ that truth…. Keep it up!

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