SEO Techniques That You Should Consigned to the Bin

August 1^st 2013 Sally Ormond bad seo techniques, black hat seo, seo to avoid

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is constantly changing. You must keep an eye on what’s happening with the likes of Google if you want your strategy to continue to be effective. SEO technicques that should be consigned to the bin

Yes, it’s annoying that Google keeps moving the goal posts, but they have to if they want to stay one step ahead of the small minority of ‘less than white SEO experts’ out there who will try anything to get quick results, hence the launch of Penguin and Panda.

With regards to your SEO strategy, you have 2 choices: either keep doing the same old thing and watch your rankings suffer, or move with the times and adopt the new techniques.

SEO techniques you should ignore

Despite the slating the following techniques had received (and quite rightly so), some people are still clinging on to them.

But if you cherish your rankings and want your website to continue to perform well, it’s time to ditch them.

1. Keyword density

There is only one thing this particular techniques leads to - incomprehensible gibberish that adds to value whatsoever to the reader.

Think about it, if ranking well came down to the frequency at which you repeated your keywords, every website would be crammed to the rafters with them - pointless.

By writing your content naturally, your keywords will appear without the reader stumbling over them. So next time you write some web copy, don’t fixate on how often you are using your keywords, just write.

2. Press releases

Online press releases have a tendency to get companies over excited.

Just think of all those links that can be generated. The problem is that often leads to a shed load of press releases being blasted out that have no substance to them - it will hardly put your business in a good light.

A press release should only be written when you have genuine news to shout about.

3. Content spinning

In the bad old days, content marketers would write one article and then spin it (using software) to produce several versions of it. These would then be posted on various websites purely to get links. The problem is the original article was normally fairly poor, so the spun ones were even worse. They didn’t provide any value to the reader and certainly did little to enhance the company’s reputation.

If you do want to do content marketing, make sure everything you produce is of high quality, useful and informative.

4. Meta tags

At one time, SEO was linked to Meta tags because they helped the search engines determine the relevance of your website. But, guess what? Yup, the black-hatters began stuffing their meta tags with keywords.

These days, the search engines are far more sophisticated and use your title tags and alt tags to work out what your website is about.

These changes to the way SEO works will continue. No matter what Google come up with, there’ll be someone out there playing the system to create short cuts. Once Google gets wind of them, it will be all change again.

Our advice is to keep an eye on what’s going on in the world of SEO make sure you are always playing by the rules.

Comments (2)

Darryl King 6 years ago.

Thanks for this really informative article. I'm just completing a course in copywriting and am looking to make a living by putting pen to paper. Articles like this are a great way to learn more about the trade from the coal face. Your comments on SEO are upto date and pertinent. If more websites were created this way, then I think that the WWW would be a better tool for all. Once again, thanks.

6 years ago.

Hi Darryl, thanks for your kind words and good luck with the copywriting.

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