Tips to sabotage your online presence
Speaking like devil’s advocate, there are countless ways to ensure that your website gets lost in the depths of Google’s index. If your goal is to take your online presence into obscurity, then we have all the cutting edge methods to do it. We have nifty little hacks that most people spend several hours and thousands of dollars trying to reverse, but we’ve listed them here for you to implement at will. Enjoy.
Give your website design to a color-blind dyslexic with no technical or creative skills, and give them just a mouse and monitor, no keyboard. Oh, and use a Microsoft product. Make sure that the site is not intuitive in any way and that it shares absolutely no similarities in design with any other website. Try not to use your company brand or colors.
Do not study search terms that may apply to your business. Knowing what keywords potential customers are using to search for your type of business is completely useless and a waste of time. Who cares? If you’re just eager to find out the popular keywords to make sure you unlink your website from them, do some Google searching yourself. Then remove the most popular words from each page of your site. Don’t forget those META tags! Remove them completely just to make sure there are no residual bumps left.
Make your home page sterile. When Google searches for search terms, it reads the home pages first, which is why most successful web presences prefer their site to be loaded with keywords. For your sabotage purposes, the less there is on your home page for search engines to index, the more likely they are to ignore it. Aside from completely removing the home page; consider posting a photo of a smiley face and nothing else. Google bots will not be impressed at all.
Do not discriminate. Make sure all images on your website are completely free of ALT IMG tags intended to provide descriptive dialog for the visually impaired. If you want to make sure no one sees your site, make sure it’s also completely blank for the blind.
No directories. Many companies hire outsiders to submit their URLs to topic related directories to help with ranking. If your purpose is to decrease rank, then do not submit your site to search engine registries, directories or registrations. They are also searched, so it is important to keep your URL off the lists. That also applies to Google Places. If it’s anonymity you’re after, then avoid Google altogether.
Stay away from the latest technology in web hosting; things that could really ‘save’ your website. For example, a host that uses progressive security or intrusion detection technology is not for you. Some web hosts offer online video platforms, please do not participate in these offers as they will only serve to improve the page rank. Look for a web host that operates in a third world nation, preferably where English is not the first language.
If your online presence is not for business, but for you personally, then there are many more things you can do to sabotage yourself. First choose a method of sabotage: darkness or scandal followed by darkness. For the first option, delete all social media profiles and blogs. Stop tweeting, facebooking, blogging, pinning and blinking. End everything. Combined with the tips listed above, deleting social media profiles should do the trick. If your desire is to get involved in a scandal first, then there are a few options. Express some politically unpopular views in very popular venues, engage in a war of words with an A-list celebrity, or commit some kind of criminal act. When the hype is at its highest, abruptly delete all social media profiles.
By now you must be wondering why anyone would want to undertake these tasks, other than in an experimental capacity. There may be a good reason for someone, somewhere; but our point here is to inform exactly what not to do and what to look for in order to foster a successful online presence. Hopefully your website doesn’t experience any of these issues, but at least now you know what to look for. If you haven’t already, do robust keyword testing and make sure they match those META tags. Optimize your home page for maximum crawling and work with your web host on security. It’s just the tip of the iceberg, but it all helps your site move up the Google rankings.