9 SEO Tactics To Avoid in 2018

Why SEO or Search Engine Optimization has become so much important today is the way it helps to increase the sales and promotes small businesses.

Most online business websites use many SEO tricks to make their company visible in search.

But not all of them succeed, the reason could be a wrong SEO tactic.

Anyway who cares what happens, they just adopt whatever comes their way to make themselves stand on top of the search results.

The actual reason for developing SEO is for creating a user feel home when s/he is out there looking for some content or some other detail online.

But the trend is webmasters are taking the technology for granted by trying to deceive search engines as well as users for their profit.

This is why Google has refined its search by many Algorithm updates to check the content that appears in its search results.

It’s not as easy as it seems to adopt SEO, it takes really good time and dedication.

The competition is on everywhere, and businesses, small or big, online or offline are no exceptions.

Everyone wants to place themselves among the top 10 of the search results.

So what gives more effect in short time is prefered, and this is how ‘black-hat’ techniques have found their way.

By ‘black-hat’ techniques it means the ways or tricks that companies adapt to boost traffic to their site, but are not encouraged by search engines like, Google.

The result could be an outright ban, or the search engine could even de-index your pages.

So what we learn from this is, these tactics could give you a popularity which is short lived.

Some tactics need not be black-hat ones, but they could be outdated and lost glam so they won’t serve you any purpose.

Here are 9 SEO Tactics to Avoid in 2018

1. Duplicate Content

2. Spun Content

3. Keyword Stuffing

4. Spam Comments

5. Unnatural or Exact Anchor Text

6. Irrelevant Links/Words

7. Unnatural Back-linking

8. Intrusive Interstitial Ads

9. Poor website Layout/ Poor UX

So let’s see them in Detail.

1.Duplicate Content

Content is King, now and always.

Creating unique, attractive and engaging content takes time and thinking, so you may think, why turn mountains over it?

Let’s borrow some content from somewhere and paste onto our site.

This seriously is a copyright issue, but no one cares.

This tactic is known by various names, for example, scraping, plagiarism, etc. And it was followed by many websites for a long time.

After the Panda Algorithm update of Google in 2011, sites should produce original and decent content for the users. If your site is identified to be scraping content from somewhere else, then it could lower the rankings.

Here is an image from MOZ showing how duplicate content looks

2.Spun Content

Spinning content happens to be a sister concern for Duplicating content.

What happens in spinning is, suppose you identify a handful of popular keywords, then naturally you tend to create a content stuffed with them.

The necessity, relevance or importance, not even meaning of presenting any particular keyword is ignored.

Though it takes ages to create such type of content, some websites still practice spinning to boost their traffic.

The most surprising part is, there are several spinning software that produces such content for your sites.

Though they create nonsense and unreadable content with a lot of mismatching keywords and phrases, they are in high demand.

It even started to be like the content need not be good or should make any sense, but brim with keywords is necessary.

You have a false notion that with content that contains only keywords your website could make a breakthrough in the search.

But it is a commonly known ‘black-hat’ tactic, and Google’s Hummingbird Algorithm update filters these types of content efficiently.

3.Keyword Stuffing

You should be familiar with this SEO tactic, yes, it is the most common type.

It has been practised since SEO came into being.

Though it gives your content great traffic, at times it can be tiring.

It may sound similar to spinning.

But here what you do is you have your keywords, and you put it all over your site, even if they aren’t necessary.

What happens, in the end, is if get caught the site will be manually reviewed by google and chances of penality is high. So the best option is to use keywords to a limited extent.

Here’s a perfect keyword stuffing example

4.Spam Comments

Comments are necessary, and they form the backbone for your site.

You should be happy if your content gets a lot of comments since it could boost your traffic.

But at times to optimise the content websites include spam comments.

It involves commenting on all blog posts with a link back to the site, maybe not once.

This is annoying and also ruin all the fun that the content generates.

The most irritating part is when these spam comments come as guests without an invitation.

Yes, you may think why is it bad since people are not only viewing your things but they are leaving comments which are even better.

You are deceived then, and they aren’t right for you, they contain links which would fill the owner’s pockets if someone clicks on it.

And they are sure to bring down your reputation in the search.

5.Unnatural or Exact Anchor Texts

Anchor Texts are those highlighted words in sentences which contain links to related blog posts or maybe the same website.

They take you to another page, but there will be some connection with what the page is about and the anchor text.

The user can understand what the blog post is about, and the word is a hint.

But the anchor texts can be annoying when they are loaded with keywords or backlinks, and that too completely Non Relevant.

So stay away from adding inappropriate anchor texts instead guide the user to what he came for.

Managing SEO can be challenging at scale and crucial for your online rank. Read this awesome blog post on how to do anchor texts and other SEO techniques

6.Irrelevant Links/Words

To optimise the content in the search, most websites add irrelevant or hidden links between the content.

The links could be stuffed with keywords so it will automatically pop up in the top search, though it may not have any direct connection with what the user searched for.

Even the site footer links are against the Google quality guidelines.

Some sites try Cloaking, that is hiding words and matching its colour with the site background.

This, of course, is an outdated tactic and search engines aren’t that easy to deceive these days.

With the Panda Algorithm update of Google, it has become even more complicated to hide keywords through links on pages. Not just links, even hiding words is not a good option.

7. Unnatural Back-linking

What this means is linking many websites to your own, some are loaned or borrowed, some can even be paid, but all these are against the rules of Google rules.

This can bring more harm than good.

The exchanged links need not be authentic and, if they are pirated then the site which has imported those links could fall into trouble.

It can, of course, tot up the number of backlinks but the chances of getting de-indexed would be more.

Another way of Spam backlinks is by creating a lot of futile websites(PBN’s) of your own and scam that you have a big backlink count.

Just because linking is a way of ranking up the website in Google, doesn’t mean you can count on worthless backlinks.

8. Intrusive interstitial ads

The name sounds too messy, so is it.

The ads that pop-up when we open a website without us asking for it.

They fill the whole screen, be it your PC or your android barring your view.

They could be auto-play videos or feedback checkboxes. And they appear at the most inappropriate times.

They are not always an issue, but if the visitors feel an issue, then it will be a sign of trouble.

These days Google isn’t all smiles for these intruders, so it could be avoided it would be the best choice.

Google started penalising if they are not used in a right way

9.Poor website layout / Poor UX

This might seem crazy but does Google just look for links and keywords to rank your site?

That doesn’t sound quite right. It takes in everything, even your usage data.

When the usage data of your site is too high, people just run away from it without even waiting to see the content.

Then it’s high time you check your website layout/UX.

As Mobile First Index is rolling out, responsive websites are crucial for SEO.

If you have a website with poor UX, this will hurt your conversions and also the efforts you did for SEO.

Conclusion

What makes an SEO strategy successful is its validity.

It should be applicable now and always.

But in most cases, they just die down with time and become ineffective.

Doing it too much can affect your SEO and all your efforts.

SEO is about creating fresh, relevant and user-friendly content online.

This makes a website move up in its ranking.

There lies stringent effort behind every pleasing content online which creates the best possible experience for its users.

Always remember that we create content for users, not the other way round.

So stay away from these old-school SEO tactics and provide what’s necessary.

If you are hit by penalty by Google, Contact Us to get to get it removed