You brewed splendid content, kept it visually appealing, practiced the best marketing strategies, and it has still not resulted in SERP? No good traffic to your website and business?
6 Low-Value SEO Techniques That You Should Avoid at All Costs
Oh! Then maybe, you’ve hit a roadblock with some outdated SEO tactics. What are they? Why is it essential to revisit your existing strategy?
Get going down!
Not all SEO tactics work in favor, said the famous search engines.
Many web pages suffer from search engine ranking failure. Why’s that?
Change is constant, and the same is true for SEO practices. So, should you be keeping an eye on the ever-evolving practices? Well, that’s a partial yes to that question.
Nevertheless, there are a few low-value or even terrible SEO tactics that you might be ignoring. Check them out.
1. Never write for search engines, please!
Always remember, search engines can’t be fooled. The majority of search engines clearly define the guidelines for optimization. Pleasing SEO for ranking is acceptable, but providing skillful content with valuable information takes priority anytime.
This principle also governs content posting frequency. Search engines often ignore low-quality content. The hack of frequent posting fails miserably if your content quality is not on similar expectations.
Produce consistently valuable content for your readers. It can be just a few times a month too. But what are you leaving for the audience that they would want to get back to you again? It’s like a subtle CTA. Try experimenting with different publication schedules to see what works best.
2. Backlinks are a serious thing!
Backlinks play a crucial role in getting discovered by search engines. They help to build content relevance and domain authority. But the craze of buying backlinks was a long back story. Now, search engines prefer websites that have more backlinks earned than bought.
Nevertheless, backlink slots are still sold frequently. A monthly guaranteed number of backlinks is a great way to ensure your SEO success. But in reality, quality and relevance rarely meet expectations through this approach.
What are you going to do to earn those many backlinks? Businesses can survive without physically acquiring links or buying them. Creating invariant and link-worthy content is the solution.
That simply means striving to bring authority content that makes the audience a part of the journey. It can become a source for them to discover, explore, like, share, trust, and connect with your content in resonance. But, it’s a long journey that requires consistency and commitment.
3. Playing the keyword game all wrong
Just read this sentence below –
Keyword stuffing is bad because keyword stuffing will reduce the user experience and might result in bad keyword practice.
Is something off in it? That’s precisely how search engines feel when content is stuffed with keywords. Sorry to say, but that practice has died out long.
Of course, keywords are the main ingredients in this SEO recipe. But it’s essential to know the SEO tactics to avoid – overstuffing or underusing keywords. So, by that, we also mean the over usage of anchor text.
Outdated and flawed SEO keyword techniques can adversely affect your web ranking and user experience. Search engines know the black hat methods and can penalize your website. Additionally, keyword-driven content is also outdated SEO. It might also miss the search intent.
Use descriptive keywords for anchor text when linking to a page or idea – if needed and only suitable. Relevant, natural, and long-tail keywords which are more organic can gain attention seamlessly. Besides, short keywords are no longer fetching anything since the usage of specific/targeted search intent has become more prevalent.
For example, Google voice search, Alexa, and Echo devices need specific search queries to draw the relevant information. Don’t forget to target each keyword only once. It is actually more detrimental to focus on the same phrase on multiple pages or posts.
Then it becomes keyword cannibalization. You are causing your own web pages to compete with each other and hurt their search engine rankings. So be wary of it and thoroughly check the exact keywords and search intents across the site.
4. Go beyond Google
The majority of people have traditionally focused their SEO efforts on Google. Due to its popularity, this approach may make sense. Nevertheless, shutting yourself off from other platforms can lead to significant traffic loss.
There are a variety of search engines other than Google. Such as Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, etc. Consider optimizing your content for search engines beyond Google. This way, you can diversify your presence across the search engines while attracting traffic.
5. Content Spinning & Plagiarism
Do you know that the most common SEO error is duplicate content? Also, the most outdated SEO practice is to have such content on your website.
Be it ideas, strategies, or simply rewording content can escape direct plagiarism but gives a clear picture in the litmus test by the search engine algorithms.
In today’s world, where we have both free and paid versions of AI content generators and paraphrasing tools, content spinning has become a business of its own, encouraging a legitimate theft of copyrighted content.
We understand that creating content needs ideas. But producing your original still depends on your creativity. Simply repurposing someone’s work can never make you rank higher on the SERPs.
Make sure your articles are unique by refining your brand voice. Make your posts more personal that offer a solution to the reader. Only then can you prevent your website from being downgraded.
6. Outdated Website Design
In simple terms, an outdated website design leads to obsolete SEO tactics. How’s that? Every time the SEO guidelines keep changing, a website needs an improvement on the same level to match the user experience.
A failure which leads to lengthy load times, unpleasant user experience, impacted online presence, faded credibility, low attraction rates, and trust issues. All this can directly influence the user experience and business as a whole.
Websites are the first person modern customers encounter from your business. An updated website design not only works as a facelift but when matched with up-to-date SEO practices, can help in faster page loads, seamless user experience, attractive site performance, and security.
What to do instead? – A quick recap
- Write captivating, valuable, and fresh content for the audience alone. The search engine rankings will automatically fall in place.
- Backlinks are invaluable only when earned. Although buying backlinks is a process followed in many instances, never forget their reputation, which compromises quality and relevance.
- One of the black hat SEO practices comes from keyword usage. Keyword stuffing and overuse of anchor texts result in bad taste, and search engines ignore those web pages. Go with search intent and long-tail keywords that naturally occur.
- Focus on alternative search engines to have an expanded brand presence and authority.
- Always curate and create fresh content free from spinning and plagiarism. Make your content a reliable partner for a customer/prospect who wants to vouch for it.
- A straightforward, attractive, accessible website design can amplify things further.
Finally, SEO is a multidimensional approach. It’s interconnected with many aspects, be it content, user experience, or technicalities. Google or other search engines mainly focus on organizing a content repository based on various parameters to deliver the best answers for any search query.
To do so, they focus on original, qualitative content that brings a new perspective to the reader. The rankings happen with many algorithms behind them. Sure, there’s enough weightage on employing SEO to get featured on the top list. But, there’s more harm in ignoring the unethical SEO practices you should not use anymore.
Now that’s just a confined list of some bad SEO practices to avoid. You need an expert who can guide you to the right ranking approaches. Wild Creek Studio stands as your best partner in all things digital marketing. Want to know more? Get in touch! Are you revisiting your SEO strategy today?
