Understanding SEO is not simple. After a lot of hard work and different techniques, you will find a solution to ranking your articles on Google.
5 SEO Techniques You Should Stop Using Right Now to Boost Web Traffics
But all your hard work can go in vain anytime if you use the wrong strategy for easier rankings. Google keep finding new ways to bring up quality content to the users. In this hunt, it keeps launching new algorithms which might perhaps end up killing your site’s rankings.
Recently many people kept asking me what they need to do to outrank their competitors and drive traffic from Google. So here in this article, I am going to explain in detail about the SEO techniques or strategies which most of you think will work for long term blog but in contrary they ruin your site.
As per the algorithms present today, here are few techniques which WON’T WORK for Long Term sites.
#1: Depending on link backs instead of content.
Link backs are obviously important in SEO and they are one of the most important factors considered by Google too. But there is a misconception with many people, that backlinks are the only aspect to rank a site. This mindset doesn’t work, especially when it comes to long term sites.
The quote “Content is King” always stands in long term, the best example I would say is labnol.org. I know many people don’t bother this, but if you really want a genuine site forever then you need to follow this.
Concentrate on the content first, all the other things are secondary. Writing a copied or scrappy content doesn’t make any sense for visitors or even Google. You should not only write unique articles, a lot depends on the way you even make it readable to the visitors.
The thing is, you have to take care of how Google works and all the signals which Google considers, so concentrate on all the aspects like content marketing, social signals, on-page optimization and then link backs.
#2: Joining huge number of wrong link directories
Link Directories have many advantages and also disadvantages. Most of the people are not aware of both. They just submit their site in it to get a backlink. But there is some good reason behind it.
Previously, submitting your links in directories for a newly launched site would give a lot of boost in the rankings. But now, there are thousands of directories where you can submit your sites for free or even paid links. And all you can see is millions of website urls in the directory.
Google not only takes into account your own site, but also your neighbouring sites i.e. the sites where you get link back or the sites where you are featured. If you consistently get featured in high authority sites, you will be considered as a part of ”good neighbourhood”. Contrary to that, if you get links from various junky sites then you will obviously be a part of “bad neighbourhood”, which is perhaps not good to your site.
I am not saying to completely stop submitting your links in directory submission sites, but go for only highly authoritative and trusted directories where the links are accepted manually by actual human being.
#3: Avoiding keyword heavy content
Keywords are an essential part of On-page SEO, that’s the reason I suggest people to write “keyword rich” articles. But there is a lot of misconception in understanding the difference between keyword stuffing and keyword rich article. Google is completely against keyword stuffing or a keyword heavy article. This is how Google considers keyword stuffing.
Instead of trying to stuff all the keywords at one place in a short article, try to write a good article and a lengthy article where you can be able to distribute the keywords.
Repeating a long tail keyword too many times may lead to penalty, but you can repeat a part of the long tail keyword as many times as you like. For example, “Download Whatsapp for PC” is a long tail keyword, repeating “whatsapp” quite few times is not a problem.
Stop worrying about keyword stuffing and keyword density, and start worrying about writing good content.
You might observe improvement in the rankings because of this keyword heavy articles but it won’t last forever when it comes to long term sites.
#4: Spamming everywhere for guest blogging
One kind of most effective link building strategy for long term is Guest Blogging. Once people started knowing about the impact of guest blogging, they have started using it. But as the number of bloggers kept increasing, the number of guest post requests also kept increasing. So, once a good link building strategy turned out into a Black hat technique as mentioned by Neil in quicksprout.
I still recommend guest blogging but reduce the number of link backs you try to get from it. There is no specific algorithm launched against guest blogging, but it will definitely come into action sooner or later if the legitimateness of the current action continues.
Here are few tips to be followed for safe and effective guest blogging:
- Go for higher authority and better sites than yours’. Most important thing is to get link back from a related niche. For example, if you have an android niche site, then go for guest blogging on similar sites.
- Be careful while giving the anchor texts. Too much optimized anchor links can be easily identified by Google.
- Your personal authority as an author is very important when it comes to guest blogging. So keep an eye on the Author stats in webmaster tools.
- Stop writing low quality content even if it comes to guest blogging.
#5: Over Optimizing Anchor texts
As most of you know, building links for specific anchor texts will improve the ranking of that keyword. An optimized anchor refers to the link given to a particular keyword which you want to target and improve the rankings. And also, giving to many links to those anchor texts in one single post is considered as over optimization.
Here are few types of safe anchors that can be used:
- Avoid using short tail keywords.
- Avoid using too many keywords pointing to the same URL.
- Use naked URLs.
- Branded URLs. For example, go with the domain brand like Alltop9
- Long phrases with more than 3,4 words in it.
Conclusion:
While trying to build a solid long term site, try to avoid all these things. SEO strategies and techniques keep changing with time; you need to constantly changing along with it. For now, stop the above mentioned practices which might not work in long term.
