SEO Techniques You Should Avoid

Earlier there was a time when marketers used to exploit Google’s ranking factor using black – hat Seo techniques

But in recent times Google has become very intelligent about this practices and after several algorithm updates it has become smart enough to capture this types of practices and penalize those users but still there are people out there who are using this techniques and it is only matter of time they will get caught and get penalized by Google.

The outcomes could be as bad as getting their site removed from Google or never getting ranked on Google.

But there are also users out there who do this mistakes unknowingly and they are mainly new users who are not aware about it and they make this mistakes unknowingly but don’t worry we have listed the bad SEO techniques you should absolutely avoid:    

Purchasing Large number of back links:

In earlier days of starting a new website it is very hard to get backlinks from other websites, especially from high authority sites as your website has very low authority score and number of visitors. So, other site owners are not willing to link their site with your content and due to this frustration the idea of getting large number of backlinks with a small amount of money with no hard work and efforts, could tempt you but trust me this could be one of the worst decision you could make for your website.

It’s all about quality and relevant sites not quantity in backlinks that matters and when you buy backlinks you don’t even know from what kind of site you are getting this backlinks and this could do more harm to your site than good.

So, always avoid purchasing backlinks rather focus on creating rich form of content and eventually people will start to link to your site.

Using of keywords just to rank for it:

This was the strategy that used to work in the earlier times of Google and people used to stuff their content with the specific keyword they wanted to rank for as many times as possible and in the process even compromised user experience but now Google has become smart enough and it penalizes keyword stuffing in their content as it effects users experiences.

Once a user finds that your content is not that useful, it is very much possible that if ever he finds any of your other articles he would just ignore it and read other article, as his earlier experience was not good.

So, always try to provide the best form of content to your users, as every blog/article counts.  

So, you could try to focus on using relevant- short, synonym and long tail keywords and always write your content by keeping in mind that in the end it’s the user who is going to read your content and share your content if they find it useful and helpful not the bot.

Not optimizing your website speed:

A normal user takes only 3-5 seconds to decide if he wants to stay at that particular site or not and if your website takes more than 8-15 seconds to load than you are already losing large number of website visitors daily and it is even negatively effecting your website ranking as it also increased your bounce back rate and bounce back rate is one of the top key factors Google decides when raking a website.

The higher the bounce back rate lower your website ranks for your specific keywords as, Google thinks that your content is not relevant to the users for that specific keyword so, the user has left your site.  

So, you should always try to make your website load fast and there are several techniques you could use to do so.

• You could use website caching- It is a technique in which every time a new user visits your website, a cache file of your site is stored in the browser of your user and the next time the same user visits your site it load much faster than previous time as the browser has the cache file of our website.
• You could optimize sizes of your website images and videos and try to make it as small in size as possible as larger size images takes time to load.
• You could implement lazy loading on your website, in this your website loads in small portion reducing the time it would take if the whole website would to be load due to this the user could see some portion of your page and start reading the shown portion.
• You could use cloud hosing- This type of hosting is generally faster, and provides faster loading time for your website.

You could even use Google’s PageSpeed Insight to check your current website speed.

Not optimizing your website for mobile:

Mobile visitors has always been one of the most important traffic source for various websites for decades and today also almost 65-70% of users for various websites comes from mobile devices and after the new age of technology mobile phones has become so, much capable that all the task you could do on your desktop could easily be done on your mobile devices without any problem.

This new change has also made Google to announce that they were going to consider mobile website loading and user experience higher than other devices loading speed.

Still there are people who don’t focus on this point and it hampers their Google ranking.

There are some tips you could use to increase your mobile responsiveness and speed:

• Creating an AMP version of your website- In this all the CSS and java script that you have implemented on your website don’t load in the mobile version of your site and making your website load much faster in mobile devices.
• Avoid using too much popup forms, as it hampers user experience and due to it users could bounce back from your website and increase your website bounce back rate.

Spamming popular blog sites with your website link in their comment section:

This method also used to work in the earlier days like other techniques but now Google doesn’t accept links on the comment section of other website as a backlink. So, if you are still doing this stop doing it as it has not effect on your website ranking. Instead you could list your website on popular local directories, it will actually help your users to find you and will also provide a backlink for your site.

So, these are some of the SEO techniques you should avoid as a new beginner. 

Originally published 05 April 2022 / 5:19 PM, updated 05 April 2022