Important Alert:
There are more than a few unscrupulous SEO techniques that people use to game the system and attempt to rank their website high on search results.
And in the age of AI, understanding SEO is getting trickier. Search engine algorithms leverage a range of factors, such as NLP and ML-based methodologies, to rank websites. Even AI-generated content has become standard.
Today’s day and age requires you to have a thorough understanding of the important ranking factors and execute thoughtful strategies. Effective on page SEO techniques can improve your site’s visibility, but not all SEO methods are beneficial, and some can even harm your website’s rankings.
This blog covers a step-by-step guide of “which SEO techniques should be avoided”. We’ll also share a few bonus SEO strategies that’ll help boost your online visibility.
SEO is dynamic. As practices evolve, some techniques that may have worked in the past, even as recently as in 2022, are now considered outdated and can potentially harm your website’s rankings.
Here are the outdated SEO techniques you must avoid:
Get insights on evolving customer behaviour, high volume keywords, search trends, and more.
Keyword stuffing means excessively and unnaturally using keywords in your content, meta tags, and URLs. In the past, this technique was used to manipulate SERPs rankings, but it no longer works.
Simply put, say no to keyword stuffing. Avoid over-optimization and prioritize user experience and content quality.
Focus on creating high-quality and user-friendly content that provides value to your audience. And use keywords naturally and strategically in your content, meta tags, and the URL.
In the past, using exact-match anchor text, which is the anchor text that matches the target keyword, was considered an effective SEO technique. However, search engines now consider this a spammy practice.
Using exact match anchors reflects that you’re over-optimizing in an attempt to trick search engines. Also, search engine algorithms prioritize user intent, content relevance, and the overall quality of a website. Conducting an anchor text analysis can reveal whether your anchors are too repetitive or over-optimized, helping you maintain a natural link profile that aligns with search engine guidelines. Exact match anchors often seem unnatural and don’t fit within that context.
An exact match anchor text may signal to search engines you’re participating in unscrupulous activities. Apart from seeing a drop in rankings, you can also lose potential customers, as the content may look unnatural and compromise the user experience.
It’s all about achieving the right balance. You can read more about it here – What Do You Need To Balance When Doing SEO.
Content spinning is the practice of creating multiple versions of the same content by rewording and rearranging it.
Content spinning doesn’t work as it creates a version of something that already exists on the internet. It’s unethical and perceived as plagiarized. Still, that does not dissuade a few website owners and SEOs to do this. You must note that search engines aren’t very kind to websites copying content from other sources.
Here’s why you must avoid content spinning –
Invest time and effort in creating high-quality content that’s actually adding value and can earn natural backlinks.
When SEO was gaining popularity, it was common to use targeted keywords in meta descriptions. This practice prevailed to signal to search engines about the main content of a webpage.
Search engines no longer rely on meta descriptions to determine what content is on a webpage all about. Instead, they use ML-based methodologies, natural language processing (NLP), and semantic analysis to discern the context of the content.
There are no direct consequences of using keywords in the meta description.
Search engines like Google pick the meta descriptions automatically to display content that best matches the search query. But, at times, it does not. For those instances, ensure that it is compelling enough to enable a user to click on the result appearing on SERP.
In the past, buying links was a common practice to quickly increase the number of backlinks to a website. But it does not work anymore.
Search engines now consider buying links a violation of their guidelines. Link Spam Update and the Penguin Update from Google enforce that to a great effect.
Buying links can erode the trust and credibility of your website in the eyes of both search engines and users.
Follow proven SEO practices and engage in legitimate link-building strategies, such as creating valuable content, building relationships with authoritative websites, and earning natural links.
Guest post exchange for a link back to your website was once a popular SEO technique. However, low-quality guest posting, which involves submitting low-quality or spun content to multiple websites in bulk, is now considered an outdated SEO practice.
The objective of guest posting is to position yourself as a thought leader by publishing content on authoritative websites, getting exposure from other sources, and, if everything goes well, earning a backlink. Random guest posting by picking untrustworthy websites and using practices like content spinning and keyword stuffing contradict that.
To give you an analogy, do not consider guest posting as a get-rich-quick scheme. If you are just picking random, untrustworthy websites, creating content for the sake of getting a backlink and proving unhelpful content, there can be negative consequences.
Exact-match Domains or EMDs, are domain names that include the exact keywords you are trying to rank.
Although exact match domains were once successful in helping websites rank higher, Google found people were misusing them, so Google launched the EMD update in 2012 to catch such websites.
Google is not unjust in its approach with websites having an exact match domain. If it were, websites like cars.com would have been removed. Only websites like seoagencynearme.com or bestrestaurantsindelhi.com have something to worry about.
Simply put, having the keyword in your domain name is no longer a ranking factor. In no way it impacts your site’s ability to rank higher on search results. Instead of focusing on exact-match domains, choose branded domains that represent your brand’s identity. Branded domains are memorable and unique.
Now that you know all the outdated SEO techniques you must avoid, here are some common Black Hat SEO techniques you should be mindful of.
Black hat SEO techniques are unethical practices that attempt to manipulate search engines to achieve higher rankings. These techniques are against search engine guidelines and can result in penalties.
Many of the outdated SEO techniques we have discussed above like keyword stuffing, duplicate content, etc., loosely fall into the now black hat techniques.
But here are some additional black hat SEO techniques that you must avoid:
Cloaking is the practice of showing different versions of the same web page to search engine bots and humans.
Thin content refers to low-quality, insignificant content that doesn’t provide any value to users. Though thin content is not a direct Black Hat SEO practice, it is associated with other ones, like content spinning, keyword stuffing, or doorway pages.
Search engines prioritize websites that offer valuable content. Since thin content has minimal value, it does not rank higher on search engines. And if this thin content is associated with any Black Hat SEO tactic, the impact could be worse.
This technique involves hiding text or links on a web page by using unscrupulous methods like setting the font color to match the page’s background, reducing the font size, or placing text behind images.
It’s a manipulative technique to deceive users and search engines. And it can lead to severe penalties from search engines and negatively impact the visitors’ perception of the website.
Doorway pages are low-quality pages specifically created to rank highly on search results and redirect users to another page. These pages are often stuffed with keywords and provide little to no value to users.
Doorway pages are against the guidelines of search engines and can result in penalties or even a complete ban from SERPs.
It’s not always going to be easy to flag black hat practices. There are more subtle practices in SEO that go against the guidelines of search engines, i.e., Gray Hat SEO techniques.
Gray hat SEO techniques are considered to be somewhere in between white hat (ethical) and black hat (unethical) SEO techniques. They may not be explicitly prohibited by search engines, but they still carry some risks and can potentially result in negative consequences for a website’s rankings and overall SEO strategy.
Here are the Gray Hat SEO techniques you must avoid:
Simply put, PBNs are a bunch of websites created and owned by a single owner aimed at trying to create backlinks for the main website, often referred to as the “money site”.
To be safe: PBNs fall under a gray area, as these don’t explicitly violate the guidelines of search engines. But it’s a risky technique because search engines can flag such websites. So to be on the safe side, please focus on building backlinks through ethical practices of SEO.
Paid link building is buying or renting links from other websites to improve a website’s backlink profile and rankings. While some form of paid link building like purchasing a sponsored post may be acceptable, but buying links just for SEO purposes is a gray hat technique.
To be safe: If you plan to purchase paid links, ensure you follow the guidelines of search engines. For sponsored posts, take a no-follow link or add a sponsored tag.
Nowadays, with things like CHAT GPT becoming popular, folks have been leveraging AI tools for multiple tasks, including SEO content. AI content is a tricky thing and falls under a gray area. It can even lead to duplicate or spun content. It’s pertinent to use tools to check duplicate content and prevent plagiarism.
To be safe: You must focus on content helpfulness. The objective should be to provide good-quality content and resolve the query of the reader. So focus on that even if you use tools like CHAT GPT.
While many automation tools smoothen the process, it’s useful to remember that SEO is complex. So you must avoid automating crucial aspects of SEO.
To be safe: Please do not use automation as a substitute for tasks requiring human intelligence.
Read more: Get detailed insights on White, Black, and Gray Hat SEO Techniques.
Now that you have a better idea of the outdated SEO techniques you must avoid, here are a few actionable tips to make your website’s SEO game stronger –
💡 Identify the problematic SEO techniques: Identify outdated, black hat, or gray hat SEO techniques on your website.
💡 Remove or disavow bad backlinks: Analyze your backlink profile through a tool like Semrush, Ahrefs, and Mozpro to identify low-quality and spammy backlinks. Remove them if possible, and if not, disavow them using Google’s Disavow Tool in Google Search Console.
💡 Optimize your content: If you have duplicate or thin content on your website, fix it. Then strategically create an SEO content strategy to start building the quality of the content on your website.
💡 Fix technical SEO issues: User experience is important! Use a site audit tool like Screaming Frog to identify technical seo issues such as broken links, slow page speed, incorrect meta tags, etc. And ask developers to fix it.
💡 Monitor your progress: After implementing these changes, monitor your rankings and organic traffic to see if there are any improvements and track the right success metrics.
This blog has covered “Which SEO Techniques Should be Avoided“. If you are planning to start doing SEO or have been doing so for your website, please ensure that you avoid these outdated techniques.
Remember, SEO is a long-term game, and success lies in building a solid foundation based on ethical and sustainable strategies. So, be diligent and implement White Hat SEO techniques.
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