Organic search engine optimisation (SEO) is a series of amendments and methodologies you can apply to your website which will improve your website's ranking in the search engine results pages. These techniques are ethical and will result in more focused leads.

The opposite is unethical SEO using techniques that risk getting you banned from Google. Here are ten techniques. Use them at your peril!

1. Copy another website's content

Google knows everything. You can't hide anything. If you copy another website's content, Google will know and ban your website. The solution is to never use duplicate content.

2. Stuff keywords into your website

If you use your keyword so many times that reading your text becomes awkward, you are using too many keywords. Google will penalise your website for this.

3. Hide keywords where you can

Some people add keywords to a website by using white text on a white background to that it can't be seen by visitors but can be seem by search engines. Others stuff keywords in image alt tags. Never use these techniques. Google will know spot them and will ban you.

4. Use cloaking techniques

Cloaking is where you show one page to your visitors and a completely different page to the search engines. Most search engines including Google will immediately blacklist your site if it is found to be using cloaking techniques.

5. Use hidden links on your website

Hidden links are links that are placed on your website that can be see by the search engine spiders but cannot be see by human visitors. Links can be hidden by using white text on a white background, placing text behind an image, using CSS to create tiny hyperlinks sometimes only one pixel in size and setting the font size to aero. Google does not trust sites with hidden links and will remove them.

6. Use link farms to create backlinks to your website

What is a link farm anyway? Well a link farm is a website that gathers website URLs and links them all together so it looks like any member website has hundreds of links. Google isn't fooled. It knows about link farms and will ban you if you use them.

7. Use scraper programs to create content

What is a scraper program? Well it's a program that looks for content on the internet and publishes it on your website, usually using RSS feeds and search engine results. None of this content will be unique and will eventually get you banned.

8. Distribute viruses

No, don't do this. Google will know and ban you.

9. Distribute spam from your website

If you send out mass emails from your server, Google will track the source of the spam back to you and as a reward, ban your website.

10. Link to bad neighbourhoods

Bad neighbourhoods are website that Google don't like very much. They can include free for all link farms, adult websites and gambling websites. Associating with these websites can negatively affect your ranking on Google.