Scary Tactic #1:
Keyword Stuffing Webpages
In the very early days
of SEO, Google focused heavily on the frequency and quantity of keywords
on your site. A webpage that mentioned a certain keyword more
frequently than other webpages would tend to rank higher in the search
results. This led to the practice of “keyword stuffing,” forcing
keywords unnaturally into your copy in hopes of ranking higher.
For a while, stuffing
worked, though at the expense of degrading UX and subjecting readers to
awkwardly written copy. Then, as Google became more adept at detecting
natural language they began to penalize keyword stuffing and the
practice quickly died out. Today you still need to ensure your webpage
is relevant for your target keywords, but it’s important to write
naturally.
Scary Tactic #2:
Multiple Webpages for Similar Keywords
The next scary tactic is
something we still see quite often when auditing websites. Again, this
tactic was used to take advantage of how Google used to work.
As you can imagine,
users search for the same thing using many different keyword
variations. For example, I may search for “infant car seat” while you
might search for “newborn car seat.” You and I know we’re looking for
the same thing but for Google’s algorithm, it's not that simple.
That’s why in the past
it was a smart idea to create separate pages for different keyword variations.
The result is that many businesses now have websites with dozens or
even hundreds of very similar webpages optimized for minute keyword
variations.
Today, Google is much
more adept at recognizing the relationship between synonyms and similar
phrases. Furthermore, Google penalizes duplicate content like similar
webpages once built around all slight keyword variations. The current
best strategy is to make sure to group similar keyword phrases together
and optimize just one “master” webpage for each core keyword
opportunity.
Scary Tactic #3:
Unnatural Backlinks
The third scary tactic
is unnatural backlinks. This tactic got a lot of attention when Google
released the infamous Penguin update back in 2012. Many
businesses lost their Google rankings after this update and old
unnatural links have been haunting them ever since.
What’s an unnatural
link? Any backlink pointing to your website that Google determines was
not naturally created. For example, if you, your team, or someone you
hired created links on websites that were built for the sole purpose of
linking to other websites (aka, link networks), then you have unnatural
backlinks pointing to your website.
Another example of
unnatural links is over-optimized anchor text. Anchor text is simply
the words that are hyperlinked (ex. “click here” is the anchor text in
this link: click here). If
most of your website’s backlinks are using the same keyword-focused
anchor text, then that’s a red flag that tells Google you’re likely
creating unnatural links in an attempt to boost your rankings.
To review your
website’s links, go to Moz’s Link Explorer tool
and search for your domain name. (If you're not a Moz user, you'll need
to create a free account, which will give you 10 queries per month.)
This tool will show you the other websites linking to your website,
along with the anchor text so you can see if unnatural links are likely
haunting your SEO efforts. A sign of natural anchor text is that the
majority of it is your brand name, and a sign of unnatural anchor text
is having a high percentage of keyword-based anchor text.
Scary Tactic #4:
Using Farmed Content
Content farming is the
practice of creating and selling very cheap and poorly produced SEO
optimized content. These are companies or individuals who pay freelance
writers to quickly create blog posts, articles, videos, and other media
around a given set of keywords. Then, companies looking to improve
their rankings via content marketing buy this content at rock-bottom
prices.
It's never worth it.
Cheap farmed content is often loaded with errors, written in a generic
or unnatural style, frequently duplicated, and only serves to undermine
the trust of both Google and your potential customers. Furthermore, as
Google becomes more effective at recognizing natural language this
style of content can lead to SEO penalties.
Conclusion
Every company that
engages in SEO should keep a close eye on the tactics used by your team
or your agency. SEO techniques which take advantage of Google’s
shortcomings are often short-lived and quickly penalized. Furthermore,
penalized domains take a very long time to earn back Google’s trust.
Don’t be haunted by past SEO mistakes!
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