SEO as a concept has been around for a long time. And over the years, we have seen several
SEO techniques come and go. Some Seo techniques, like keyword research and authoritative
content, are still in-demand, but several others, like keyword stuffing and cloaking, have gone
out of favour.
We’ll discuss 3 SEO techniques focusing on keywords, content, and backlinks, the three vital
blocks of a strong SEO strategy. However, these strategies have become outdated. And two of
the following three are considered black hat SEO tactics in some SEO circles.
- Avoid: Stuffing Content With Keywords:
In their earlier days, SEO heavily relied on keywords. And when a person looked up a certain
query on the search engine, the search engine algorithm listed results that had high keyword
density of those terms.
For example: Suppose a person looking for a red velvet cake recipe searched for the query:
red velvet cake recipe
Back then, the algorithm would have simply found the pages with the highest number of
mentions of the keyword red velvet cake recipe and ranked them from highest to lowest.
One of the top results might have had something similar to the following keyword-stuffed
content.
“Our red velvet cake recipe is one of a kind. Our red velvet cake recipe uses a secret
ingredient that will blow your mind. With our red velvet cake recipe, you’ll be able to
wow your guests, who’ll be begging for the recipe. Below, we have listed the ingredients
necessary to make our red velvet cake recipe.”
As you can see, the keyword red velvet cake recipe has been used 4 times in a very short
paragraph that doesn’t convey anything meaningful.
This is a simplified version of how search engine algorithms worked in the past.
So, when the webmasters realised how people were manipulating the search result by stuffing
keywords unnecessarily, they decided to penalise websites that practised this technique.
So, it would be prudent to avoid keyword stuffing unless you want to get penalised and lose
your progress. Google might deindex your website, and you’ll have to make considerable efforts
to get it indexed again.
- Avoid: Relying On Spun Content
Blogging is a powerful tool used to attract organic followers to a website. In order to stay ahead
of the game, the website owner has to constantly publish relevant content on their blog.
However, instead of investing in a well-planned content strategy, some might take the easy way
out and just spin content from the web.
What is spun content?
Spun content is content reworded from other resources on the internet. It is an imitation of what
already exists on the internet and adds no value.
Relying on spun content will diminish the quality of your website. Spun content is often difficult
to understand since it has been reworded with one goal: to be plagiarism free.
Due to poor quality of content, even if visitors come to your website, they will not stick around
for long. This will increase the bounce rate, informing search engines that the content on your
website does not offer anything of value. Your website ranking will drop. This is why spun
content should be avoided at all costs.
- Avoid: Purchasing Backlinks:
Even google’s experts have acknowledged that backlinks play a huge role in a website’s ranking
on the search engine. However, the ranking factors in high-quality backlinks. You have to take
into consideration that a single high-quality backlink has more value than a hundred low-quality
backlinks.
In order to get backlinks, many people try to purchase backlinks instead of earning them
organically.
So, what’s the difference between purchasing backlinks and earning them organically?
Suppose you started a new business selling hardware and created a website for it. Now, you
want to improve your website’s ranking by investing in backlinks. There are two ways you could
go about getting backlinks.
1st way: Purchasing Backlinks:
So, you may consider purchasing backlinks from link-sellers who’ll probably try to sell you on
other black hat SEO tactics such as Private Blog Networks (PBNs) or link farms. Those come
with consequences of their own.
2nd way: Earning Link Organically:
You can hire an expert SEO strategist who’ll diligently build a solid content and SEO strategy to
help you earn quality and authority backlinks. They’ll help you publish authoritative content that
other websites will want to link to.
These are reasons enough to avoid purchasing backlinks purely to increase your website’s
ranking.
Takeaway:
In order to plan a winning SEO campaign, you have to stay away from these three outdated
SEO techniques that would cause more harm than do good. There are several other SEO
techniques that could similarly hamper your SEO Progress. Prime amongst them are blog
networks, cloaking, over-prioritisation of exact-match keywords, and creating landing pages for
each keyword variation. So, you also have to avoid these four tactics, especially if you want to
create a solid SEO strategy.
Get in touch with us if you have any doubt about your SEO strategies, our experts will help you in your next plan!
