Among the many online marketing practices available to writers and bloggers, search engine optimisation (SEO) is one of the most preferred, and, in a lot of ways, effective. The trend spread like fire, and those who want their websites to shoot up in the rankings and generate income began learning everything about SEO.
The problem is, SEO specialists and consultants can be a little carried away at times with the knowledge they have acquired, which can lead to carelessness and more damage than when they weren’t applying the techniques.
So whether you’re the one who’s doing the SEO job for your site or you’re hiring the services of a professional, here are five bad “tactics” you need to check so you can prune them right away.
Bad Tactic #1: Content Duplication
One of the most common mistakes committed in the content creation department is duplication. This blunder usually occurs when the SEO specialists attempt to spin a well-written article into different versions without paying mind whether they already sound redundant.
Article spinning might have worked three or four years ago, but not these days. With Google becoming smarter and smarter each day, duplicated content have been subjected to virtual penalties, all of which are detrimental to the reputation of the website. The worst-case scenario, however, is when specialists copy the work of others verbatim—there’s no other word for it aside from plain plagiarism.
Tip: It’s likely you’ve heard somewhere that you need to write many articles about certain topics, as it can help boost your website’s authority. While this is true, it doesn’t mean that you have to write 10 articles on how good a marketing tool social media is, for instance. Instead, find a way to strengthen the topic by writing articles that are based on extensive research and of varying expertise levels. This way, you’ll be able to cover the proficiency hierarchy of your target audience, while not sounding like a broken record.
Bad Tactic #2: Keyword Stuffing
In SEO, keywords and phrases are important. However, peppering your articles with these can compromise not only the quality of your article but also the ranking of your website. The chances of Google detecting it are high; when it does, your website will be in trouble.
Tip: When creating content, the ideal scenario would be for you to come up with keywords that are logical and target-specific. You have to exercise caution during the selection process, and when you weave them into your paragraphs. Also, don’t overdo their inclusion into the whole piece—nowadays, the standard keyword density followed by the industry is 2% of the entire article.
Bad Tactic #3: Buying Links
Links are also important forms of content. Building and sharing them then is part of every SEO specialists’ job. However, there are those who rather take shortcuts by buying links and laying them all over the site without considering its consequences.
Aside from duplicate content and excessive use of keywords, suspicious link activity is another pet peeve of Google. The search engine’s bots are able to detect if the links on your site are being used to simply increase your website’s ranking as well as the pattern of how it’s done.
Tip: Amassing plenty of links that direct to your website is great but only when you do it fairly. And the way to go about this is old-school: exchange links by posting content on relevant sites and have them post on yours.
Bad Tactic #4: Ignoring Tags
Tags play an important role in optimising a website, because they are among the ones search engine bots crawl when indexing a page. Despite this, they tend to be overlooked by SEO specialists, which would rather let automation do the job.
Automatic tags are generated upon posting the content, and are usually hailed from the title of the post or the relevant words within the article. However, those who have yet to appreciate how crucial the role of tags tend to rely on automation more without realising that they can do a better job at it.
Tip: It’s not that automatic tags are not reliable; it’s just that you can make them more effective. For instance, if the title of your article is long, you can condense it into something shorter and much more direct, which you can use for the title tag. You can also use Google Adwords to check whether the tags for keywords you want to use are search engine-friendly, as these ones are ideal for optimising.
Bad Tactic #5: PageRank Fixation
With PageRank being one of the more commonly known means for Google to rate websites, optimising yours shouldn’t revolve around it alone. Sure, a high PageRank classification can land you on the first batch of the search engine results page (SERP), but Google has 199 more means of checking the different websites, so you might want to relax a bit on impressing PageRank alone.
Tip: Before you react in contempt, we’re not telling you to quit working on your PageRank altogether. However, it would be helpful if you devote time and effort on other ranking factors, such as return on investment (ROI), analytics, and relevancy.
Now that you’re aware of the pitfalls of applying the not-so-great SEO tactics to your website, it should be easier for you to evaluate and make the necessary improvements. If you wish to share the results you achieved or tips others may find useful, don’t hesitate to write us a comment in the box below.
Source: http://www.businesscomputingworld.co.uk/5-bad-seo-tactics-you-should-quit-now/?
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