In today’s competitive world, SEO is more important than ever. Billions of searches are conducted over the search engines like Google every single day. If you have an online presence, SEO can help you to beat the competition and gain your business goals.
Most of the business owners try to be up to date with Google updates so that their SEO strategies remain effective and productive. However, in order to be up to date, they largely depend on SEO blogs. Unfortunately, not all SEO blogs are meant to provide value to the readers. Some websites do blogging only to enhance their overall SEO efforts. As a result, many webmasters rewrite the existing content on the Internet and post it in their blog
Therefore, it is common to find old SEO strategies in the latest blog posts. Business owners read these blog posts and follow outdated SEO strategies. Consequently, their website visibility is negatively affected. Here are the top eight outdated SEO strategies to stay away from.
1. Creating a webpage for every target keyword.
Yes, this is one of the outdated SEO tactics that people still use. The problem with creating a separate web page is that it will create a “bundle” of single pages targeting similar keywords. This SEO tactic has delivered some result in the past. The problem with a bundle of single pages is that it creates confusion and spoils user experience. However, things have changed now. Google has become smarter.
It has brought some important upgrades to tackle this issue. The top two major search engine updates are RankBrain and Hummingbird. RankBrain is a machine learning algorithm that helps to process and understand search queries to display relevant search results. On the other hand, Hummingbird helps Google to understand the intent behind the searcher.
So, how to optimize the content? Add the main keyword across your content along with its variation across the single page including meta description and headline.
2. Using exact anchor text
Anchor text is a visible and clickable text in a hyperlink. In modern browsers like Google Chrome, these links are displayed in color. Anchor text is “exact match” if it includes the keyword that mirrors the page that is being linked to.
Let us understand this with the help of an example. “SEO agency” linking to the homepage of an SEO agency. In the past, this used to help the webmasters to gain higher search engine ranking. However, things have changed now, it is now considered as one of the bad SEO strategies. That is because people had started to overuse this SEO strategy.
To counter this activity, Google has started to penalize the websites. So how to use anchor text? Refrain from all bad SEO strategies. Try to use natural words in anchor text. It is even better to use longer text. However, make sure the anchor text matches the content. Forcing the anchor text will give rise to other SEO issues.
3. Using exact match domain
An EMD or exact match domain is a domain that exactly matches the keywords used by Internet users to search for a product or service. For example, if you search for “diapers,” then the website diapers.com would be the exact match domain name.
This is another popular outdated SEO strategies. Using an exact match domain was one of the rarest shortcuts in search engine optimization. In other words, it was easy to buy a domain which had main keywords and rank it far easier than a traditional or branded domain.
Even today exact match domain gives you some SEO benefit, but here is the catch. You have to have high-quality original content. You can not simply rely on the keywords present in the domain. An EMD website poses a higher risk of getting an algorithmic or manual penalty. So, if you are using an exact match domain, make sure you work on SEO as much as you would have for a traditional site.
4. Old link building strategies
Link building is one of the most important parts of search engine optimization (SEO). If you know what is link building, there is a pretty good chance that you already know the quality of links is more important than its quantity.
However, many business owners still focus on quantity rather than quality. Some of the old link building strategies are Link purchasing, Link exchanges, Forum links, and many others. Some of these link building methods were considered as the best practices by the SEO agencies. Take link exchanges for example. It used to be a white hat link building strategy. However, people started to abuse this activity. Therefore, Google started to penalize this link building strategy aggressively.
So, focus on natural link building strategies. Create quality content and follow all the link building best practices. Getting good results usually takes time, so it makes sense to be patient. Also, say no to any SEO agency or strategy that claims to provide results in a couple of days.
5. Using low-quality content
Now, why would anyone use low-quality content for their website? Many business owners want to keep the digital marketing expense to the minimum. So, they do not take the help of content writers. They themselves try to write content for their website. The truth is that writing content takes time. And for an unprofessional, it takes a much longer time.
So, rushing up will definitely reduce the quality of the content. Even if you give sufficient time, you may not get satisfactory results. If you are writing content on your own or taking help of online freelancers at a cheap price, you are putting your online visibility at risk.
Hire a good content writer. A major part of digital marketing and search engine optimization largely rely on fresh content. So, if you are able to create some awesome content on a regular basis, your more than half work is done.
6. Using automated link building
We have already discussed how people still focus on the number of links instead of quality. If you focus more on numbers you may tend to use automated link building software programs. These automated programs are built to blast your links into guestbooks, blog comments, link directories, forums, poorly written articles, etc. Such acts are considered as spam.
Automation is actually a good thing, but not in link building. Link building has to be done manually. If you do not have time or experience for this, it is always best to seek link building services of a good digital marketing company.
7. Flat URL architecture
A flat URL is a path segment of a URL being not more than one level deep. In simple words, a flat URL structure is the one in which all URLs are at the top level. Here there is no hierarchy. Technically, this is not an SEO tactic.
It is just a default way in which WordPress is set up. Most people have no idea about this, so they do not realize that they need to change it.
The fact is that the flat URL structure makes it more difficult for Google to grasp the hierarchy of a website. That’s because, in flat URL architecture, all web pages are treated with equal importance. However, the nested URL structure clearly communicates the importance of each page in relation to other web pages of a website.
8. Creating websites only for the purpose of interlinking them
Today, most of us know that spam private blog networks are something that you need to avoid. However, that was not the case always. Believe it or not, in the past, SEO experts would create their own private blog network and utilize it to interlink between the websites. The good thing was that it used to increase the authority of each site in the network.
You can still go for this method, but you have to be careful. Yes, you need to be careful about everything such as site layout, backlinks and even hosting. Google has become strict now. If it finds anything unnatural it is going to penalize your website. So, focus on building high authority backlinks, and void shortcuts.
