10 SEO Techniques to Avoid

Search Engine Optimisation is constantly changing, Google regularly updates its techniques and algorithms making it essential that SEO teams do the same. It isn’t just about updating your practices, there are also methods that are outdated and could have a negative impact on your website if you continue to use them.

Read on for our list of techniques to avoid and what you should be doing instead:

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is one of the oldest SEO techniques that continues to rear its ugly head, it involves forcing keywords into content to trick search engines into ranking the content higher.

Using a high density of keywords in your content these days can cause a penalty from Google and a drop in rankings.

Hidden Text

At one point this was a great way to provide more keywords to rank, you might have used white text with a white background or use CSS to cover up the text.

This technique worked then when search engines were not sophisticated, but today Google will penalise any site that looks like it is trying to manipulate rankings.

Paid Links

Links are an important part of SEO, but Google warns against paid links as they tend to originate from low quality websites. Google targets websites that buy links and acts against them.

You may benefit from increased links initially, but you are far better off investing in quality content.

Cloaking

Cloaking is a strange technique, displaying one page to search engines and another to website visitors. Essentially, website owners use this to get around spam filters but the visitors to the website only get to see a very poor-quality page.

This became such an issue that Google has now banned this practice outright.

Flash Videos

Using Flash on your website used to ensure that people would see your site, but Google no longer allows flash sites.

If you are still using Flash, you are missing out!

301 Redirects

301 redirects can improve the speed of your website being crawled, which in turn can help search engine rankings.

However, if you use redirects too many times Google can flag your website and it will negatively impact your rankings. Try to use 301 redirects only when necessary.

Negative SEO

Negative SEO techniques are used to sabotage your competitors, one common method is creating fake profiles and leaving negative online reviews for services and products.

It may seem like your business may improve if your competitors ratings decline but you will be caught doing this and Google will heavily penalise for this action.

Fake reviews

Like above, this is falsified information by fake profiles. In this case, these are positive reviews on your own website.

There are ways to do this but let’s be honest, it’s a very sneaky way of lying to your potential customers. Focus on providing quality products and services and you will receive honest positive reviews!

Click Bait

Several of us have fallen for click bait! The articles are enticing and well targeted, I still must remind myself not to click on a link when I see some of the titles.

Occasionally I still fall for this trick, clicking through and being faced with a poorly written article that is barely related to the title I was interested in.

Initially you may get an increase in clicks, but this will decline in the long run, your bounce rate will increase, and you will face penalties when Google spots your behaviour.

Computer Generated Content

Creating a steady stream of new content isn’t easy, it takes time and at least some writing skill. There are many apps that can be used to generate content and it may seem like a great idea but is it really?

The content will have relevant keywords and full sentences, but the articles won’t be particularly reader friendly. You can find slang and colloquial terms being misused with misplaced grammar. The tone is often not quite suitable for your audience. If you are targeting real people, you need to speak to them as a real person!

Computer generated content is not yet advanced enough to be reliable and nothing beats the human touch.

As you can see many popular techniques that were once used are now outdated, you will face penalties from Google and your website will suffer in the long run. Invest your time in producing high-quality, user-friendly content that is relevant to your audience – this will benefit you and your users more than anything else.

If you would like help with your SEO and content, get in touch with SilverDisc.