Which SEO Techniques Should be Avoided – Fix Techniques Sabotaging Your Rankings
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. But not all SEO techniques are equal 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.
7 Outdated SEO Techniques to Avoid
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As practices evolve, some techniques that may have worked in the past, even as recently as in 2022, are now considered outdated and can potentially harm your website’s rankings.
Here are the outdated SEO techniques you must avoid:
1. Keyword Stuffing
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.
Why does keyword stuffing not work?
- Search engines are smarter in 2023. They have evolved and now use sophisticated algorithms that can detect keyword stuffing.
- Sub-par user experience! Keyword-stuffed content reads unnaturally and is often repetitive, which can impact the user experience. Visitors may find the content spammy and irrelevant, harming your website’s reputation and credibility.
What to do instead?
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.
2. Exact-Match Anchor Text
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.
Why do exact anchor texts not work?
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. And exact match anchors seem unnatural and don’t fit in that context.
What are the potential consequences of it?
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.
What to do instead?
- Keep a diverse mix of anchor texts
- Pay attention to the content surrounding the anchor text (Focus on contextual relevance)
- Don’t over-optimize
It’s all about achieving the right balance. You can read more about it here – What Do You Need To Balance When Doing SEO.
3. Content Spinning
Content spinning is the practice of creating multiple versions of the same content by rewording and rearranging it.
Why does content spinning not work?
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.
What are the potential consequences of spinning content?
Here’s why you must avoid content spinning –
- Get penalized by search engines – Websites with duplicate content can get penalized by search engines. When flagged, it can topple your rankings on SERPs. Even if you are using duplicate content unknowingly, please use a duplicate content checker to catch plagiarized and copied content.
- May reduce credibility and user trust – Spun content is often of low quality and lacks originality, which can result in reduced credibility and trust among users. Visitors to your website may perceive spun content as unprofessional and spammy. This will negatively impact your brand’s reputation and user engagement.
What to do instead?
Invest time and effort in creating high-quality content that’s actually adding value and can earn natural backlinks.
4. Adding Targeted Keywords in the Meta Description
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.
Why should you not fuss about inserting keywords in the meta description?
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.
What are the potential consequences of this activity?
There are no direct consequences of using keywords in the meta description.
What to do instead?
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.
5. Buying Links
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.
Why does buying links not work?
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.
What are the potential consequences of buying links?
Buying links can erode the trust and credibility of your website in the eyes of both search engines and users.
- Long-term damage to SEO efforts: Buying links is a risky and unsustainable SEO strategy that may result in long-term damage to your website’s SEO efforts. Even if you see short-term gains in rankings, these gains may be short-lived, and search engine algorithms are getting better at figuring out which websites have used unscrupulous means to game the system.
- Penalties from search engines: Not just a drop in rankings, search engines may even penalize websites.
- Wasted time and resources: Buying links may provide short-term gains in terms of improved rankings, but it can be costly and time-consuming. If search engines decide to penalize your website, recovering from it isn’t going to be easy, whether it is an algorithmic penalty or a manual one. You’ll have to invest additional time and resources to fix the errors.
What to do instead?
Follow SEO best practices and engage in legitimate link-building strategies, such as creating valuable content, building relationships with authoritative websites, and earning natural links.
6. Low-Quality Guest Posting
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.
Why should you not do random guest posting?
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.
What are the potential consequences of low-quality guest posting?
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.
- You can damage your reputation
- Your rankings on search results can get affected
- Your audiences may lose trust
- You can face legal issues
What to do instead?
- Be strategic, authentic, and showcase your expertise.
- Choose reputable websites that are relevant to your niche/industry and audience,
- Create high-quality, unique, and valuable content that provides value to readers.
- Don’t forget to add a rel-sponsored / rel-nofollow tag to the links you’re adding
7. Trying to Use Exact-match Domains
Exact-match Domains or EMDs, are domain names that include the exact keywords you are trying to rank.
Why should you stay away from exact-match domains?
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.
What are the potential consequences of following the exact match?
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.
What to do instead?
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 to Avoid
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:
1. Cloaking
Cloaking is the practice of showing different versions of the same web page to search engine bots and humans.
Why should it be avoided?
- Search engines aim to provide users with relevant information that resolves their queries. Content cloaking contradicts that and, therefore, goes against their guidelines.
- User experience gets impacted as visitors are presented with unhelpful content. If users aren’t finding the content relevant, they will leave, which will also increase the bounce rate.
2. Thin Content
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.
Why should it be avoided?
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.
3. Hidden Text and Links
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.
Why should it be avoided?
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.
4. Doorway Pages
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.
Why should it be avoided?
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 to Avoid
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:
1. Private Blog Networks (PBNs)
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.
2. Paid Link Building
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.
3. AI Content
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.
4. Avoid Excessive Automation
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.
Bonus Section: How to Fix Techniques Sabotaging Your Rankings?
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 Ubersuggest 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 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.
If you want to unlock the potential of your website through SEO, contact us for SEO services.