It is a dream for every website owner to bring their sites ranking on the first page of Google. Google’s developing algorithm can make it hard for those to navigate the sphere of SEO. Being a digital marketing agency we have come across numerous outdated SEO techniques that are still commonly used. Major objective of this article is to convey the message to the audience in order to eliminate the usage of “Black-Hat” or “Gray-Hat ” SEO practices. As these practices try to trick the algorithm of the search engines to procure a higher ranking. These methods usually end up ineffective or come up with risks.
That’s the reason for which we have created this list that assists you identify and step aside from the traditional practices that may hinder the growth for your website.
Here are some techniques that help you in the long run………
1. Cloaking
Cloaking is a practice of presenting the same website page or URL in two different styles, one for search engines and another for people to see. This technique is considered as the violation for Google’s guidelines as it provides users with different results. This used to be a great way to maneuver the web spam filter, but things have changed now since a great number of sites have been penalized for practicing cloaking and it has been banned by google.
2.Keyword Stuffing
It is one of the oldest black hat SEO practices that has declined to go away. It is a practice of loading a page with a set of different keywords and numbers in order to manipulate a site’s ranking. The objective of such a method is to trick the search engines bots towards rating a website higher. Stuffing keywords may damage the user’s experience and for such reasons it is highly discouraged.
3. Paid links
This used to be a great method to promote SEO, but it is no longer applicable since google has changed its algorithm. Google took such steps in order to prevent links that originated from websites of low quality. So if you have a website with low quality content that is linked to other websites just hope that google doesn’t find out or be prepared for the worst.
4. Misleading Headlines
You would have probably noticed a blog post with alluring titles, but the main content isn’t. People generally use catchy titles to attract clicks, yet the main content is outdated. This technique may seem right at present but in the long run it would result in lower clicks and higher bounce rate. So it is better to avoid such measures.
5. Content Duplication
This can also be described as the content that appears on the internet in more than one website. It is very common to hear cases of duplicating content and you’re left pondering how someone could be so lazy. But the reality is, this still exists today. People continue to copy different articles that exist online and post it on your website.
6. Negative SEO
Few businesses today are executing negative SEO. Negative SEO is the act of implementing immoral techniques to sabotage a rival’s ranking in the search engine results page (SERP). This may include:
- Generating hoax social profiles. This would lead to ruining your social reputation.
- Hacking your own profile.
- Generating many spam links to your site.
This may provide a great experience for the website owners until google finds out about this.