Search engines are regularly updating and improving their search algorithms in order to provide the best results for users. As a result, some techniques that were effective in the past, are no longer effective today. In fact, the realms of the SEO world is often subject to change, and it’s important for website owners to stay savvy. In fact, using any inconsistent or outmoded SEO techniques will compromise the performance and ranking of your site. Therefore, implementing regular updates to your SEO regime and knowledge base has its inherent benefits, You site can be classified among the top ranking sites, and you can also achieve a competitive edge as well.

Here are a few SEO techniques you can begin throwing away:

 

Using Directories and Paid Links

There are various ways through which directories and paid links can compromise the performance of your site. For instance, if you use a backlinking campaign which mainly comprises of generic and redundant sites, then this might have negative impacts. The same can be said about techniques such as paid link networks, comment links and any type of spammy content.

Any achievements made using this type of SEO approach are not worthwhile and could compromise the legitimacy of your site. Each of these link-building techniques has been used and penalized by Google. The algorithm by Google evaluates these links for legitimacy and quality. They include paid link directories, comment links, inconsistent article links, reciprocal links and more.

Just recently, Google unveiled the first Penguin algorithm update that was used to target sites that featured unnatural links. This procedure has become sophisticated over the years, and webmasters need to ensure that they acquire several high-quality links and not only spam links which are bad for SEO. A better option would be to focus on niche related directories, which have exceptional standards and a good social proof.

Heavy Use of Anchor Text in Your Internal Links

Packing your internal links was also another top SEO technique. That said, search engines are increasingly becoming oblivious to this for quality. In fact, there are punitive actions for sites that have used spammy internal links with manipulative purposes.

A good recommendation is to place the internal links on sidebars, footers and in the content. You also need to ensure that it flows naturally and that’s it’s highly usable. It’s important to note that search engines provide a quality score for each site. This is based on links from third party sites which are often referred to as link equity.

The link equity is usually concerned with the home page of a site since this is where most links are found. Link equity is distributed based on the navigation on the site. This procedure is similar to developing a cascading fountain, where link equity is essential.

Keyword stuffing

There are several schools of thought when it comes to the frequency of keywords for the ideal article. This is mainly due to the influence of tools such as Moz and Yoast. However, it might become a complication when you fail to calibrate the keywords to suit the search algorithms. The main point here is that search engine is too complex for these tools and they are only meaningful to a certain extent.

Following their recommendations and approaches to these tools might compromise your SEO regime in many ways. In the past, it used to be an imperative to develop content that incorporate large amounts of keywords. However, google nowadays uses a unique latent semantic indexing feature. The technique has become popular over the years and its important for SEO activities. This type of indexing involves special crawlers that index the content of the site and search engine.

Prioritizing Keywords over Clicks

SEO is a technique that requires experiences and informed decision-making. However, many site owners have the belief that placing several keywords in content is good for SEO. Without the appropriate structure or approach, this seems somewhat spammy, and it may compromise the performance of your site.

Instead of using this approach, consider focusing on naturally drawing traffic and using legitimate links. This will help in reducing the bounce rate, which improves conversion. Additionally, this will help to improve your search rankings, and the performance of your site will improve as a result.

Developing pages for every keyword

This is an approach for SEO that several site owners implement today. However, it’s ineffective, and it requires more energy as when compared to other options. It makes more sense to focus on producing superior content and trying to use keywords with a strategic approach. For instance, a better practice would be to use the keywords in the meta-description, title, and the headline.

Ranking high means more traffic

There is a big misconception among most site owners that higher rankings mean more traffic. While this statement might be true, there are some few factors that should be considered. Your site might rank high up, but the performance of your site might still be dismal. For instance, high search rankings mean nothing if you don’t have a good website and quality content.

Also, this might mean that you don’t have coherent meta-descriptions that can capture and lead the attention of users. A good recommendation is to consider using the various SEO tools that are available out there. Also, you might even have to re-design the entire site and re-consider your content development regimen. Once you have these handled, only then can high rankings have reasonable benefits for your website.

Finally

All things considered, there is no space for poor decision making especially when it comes to website management. It’s imperative to make informed decisions, and this involves avoiding the conventional forms of SEO. Google is continually updating its terms of use and algorithms, especially in relation to SEO. Therefore, it is crucial for any savvy website owner to keep track of these changes and practices as well.