Avoid These 5 Outdated SEO Practices

Rules are everywhere and all around us. We all have to abide by certain rules in our life, especially when we are young. In our professional life, there are certain aspects that we need to go through and must obey an order to work in an office or a workplace. Similarly, when it comes to doing business online, we need to abide by the rules and regulations of the country from which we are conducting our business or where we want to launch a product.

Before moving forward, a comprehensive and extensively made web portal is the requirement. And if we want to rank it high on Google, we need to abide by their rules and regulations. It is not just about Google, use any other search engine, and you need to go along the same route. If you think that you can somehow bypass their rules and make things perfect for you, this won’t happen for so long. Google is smart enough to detect that you are trying to bypass its rules and will heavily penalize you.

What Businessowners Need to Know About Outdated SEO Practices?

I will start with the last aspect mentioned. My guess is some of my readers may not be fully aware of what penalization is for a website. There are several websites that don’t consider the guidelines of Google and hence, are penalized. In layman’s terms, their ranking on Google takes a hit, and in worst cases, they no longer can regain their top position as their domain blacklisted for life or several months.

Also known: 5 Reasons Why You Need To Optimize Your Website

As a business owner or an entrepreneur, you need to think about what you can do to abide by the guidelines or rules of Google in this concern. Don’t be amateurish in thinking that you can somehow, getaway after indulging in activities and practices liked by Google.

The following are the top 5 aspects in this concern with brief descriptions so that you can have an idea about how severely it can affect your business.

1. Article Marketing

It was regarded as one of the best ways by many companies around the world to get a backlink through articles. One article was used in this technique, which was re-written or spun several times so that it can be sent to several websites and get backlinks from each of the websites. Now Google’s AI feature is smart enough so that it can detect whether an article was originally written or a rehash of some other article.

2. Buying Backlinks

One of the biggest drawbacks of buying backlinks is that they are bought from disreputable networks and individuals. Look to get genuine backlinks, the process may be slow, but it won’t get you penalized by Google. Buying fake backlinks, on the other hand, is tolerated as a scam by Google as it is akin to bad practice.

3. Fake Anchor Text

If you think that the above aspects could con Google easily, they were not that smart a ploy as this one. Fake anchor texts put many keywords in a file that is used by Google to search for keywords. This was used by Google to determine what a page will rank for, like a website offering gardening services to users or a gaming portal. The number of keywords used here is much for trying to fool Google just for getting listed for several services, even if they are not providing it.

It is just like keyword stuffing or has the looks of it, which will now be discussed here.

4. Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing in the early days of the Internet was amongst the worst kind of black hat practices that was quite evident at first glance. It’s pretty outdated SEO practice, of course, they devised a strategy to counter it. Bit, it was too late in the early days so that many businesses violated this rule. Keyword stuffing is all about writing content that is not content in actuality, but rather it is stuffed with keywords to get the attention of the Google bot.

People doing SEO used keyword stuffing to rank high on Google searches. A web page stuffed with all the bets and top-ranked keywords get good rank by Google, and thus this black hat practice was once a booming one. But Google tracked down those pages, and now, they are not worth much. Even if you try to make keyword stuffing work for you, Google will track it down within hours and will severely penalize that website.

Read more: On-Page SEO: Unlocking Website Success Through Optimization

5. Broken Links

While this is not a deliberate mistake by a person or a website, unfortunately, this is an error that can cost a website dearly. So, what is a broken link? It is simply a particular page or pages of a website that is not functioning. The reason can be plenty, but the point I want to make here is that it can make a website look amateurish and poor in maintenance. While a visitor will leave the page, Google is not so friendly. It severely penalizes a website with broken links, if that is the case after several have passed.

Google’s stance in this concern is that the concerned website is offering a below-par user experience or is not serious enough in its bid to attract visitors and offer them any valuable information. Hence, Google has no option but to penalize that website until that one is back on. It is the job of the webmaster of the website to keep a close eye on broken links.

The intimation, of a page not working, for the visitor, is one of the aspects that is necessary. A small, one-line, message can make visitors think that the page is currently not working, and something is being done to rectify the error. On the other hand, if there is no message at all, a 404 error message gives the impression that the website owner doesn’t know that there is a broken link on his website and gives an amateurish look.

Read more: Instagram For Business: 15 Leading Practices Must Follow In 2021

Over to you

Please offer your feedback for the above-mentioned outdated SEO practices or ask any questions you have in mind by using the comments section below.