There are a lot of articles and people promoting “quick SEO fixes” on the internet.
A quick Google search for “SEO tactics” yielded about 14.1 million results in less than a second.
But if there’s one thing the last few decades have taught us, it’s that you can not believe everything you read online.
Some of the SEO advice you find will be outdated, inaccurate – or even just stupid.
These recommendations and tactics may have been based on the author’s misunderstanding of how search works.
They may be the result of lack of experience or industry knowledge.
Wherever they came from, here is a list of seven of the stupid SEO tactics you should avoid so that they do not seriously harm your long-term SEO performance.
1. Assembly Line SEO Strategy
I define “assembly line SEO” as when a person or agency uses the same exact tactics for each client without any customization.
Many of the major SEO agencies use this strategy for their SMB department because it is effective to manage.
Typically, after the site has undergone its first round of on-page optimizations, routine tactics include blogging and paying for links.
But just because it’s easy does not mean it’s always the best.
This type of strategy can be fruitful in a short period of time, but unless there is zero competition, the website will definitely experience a growth plateau.
What To Do Instead
Instead of sticking to this routine “task-based” strategy, focus on figuring out unique ways to deliver value to your site’s audience.
Examine what your competitor’s top-ranked content is and how they approach their content strategy.
Make a list of all your competitor’s strategies and look for content gap opportunities.
Take advantage of these opportunities and make sure your content is built to serve your audience at every step of their buying funnel.
Ongoing research and content production may be more time consuming, but it will inevitably be more fruitful.
Another added bonus is that this will show your stakeholders that you really care about their performance.
2. Blaming Performance Drops On Algorithm Updates (Without Evidence)
Performance drops can happen just as suddenly and frequently as algorithm updates, depending on the website.
These days, algorithm updates happen so often that it could be easy to point fingers at Google and say they caused your rankings and organic traffic to drop.
But more often than not, performance declines can occur for a variety of reasons.
Some common causes of organic performance declines include:
With these options in mind, it’s important that we do not take the easy way out and blame an algorithm update.
If your website has recently gotten a hit, do not panic!
Something just happens and your traffic returns by itself.
What you do not want to do is start making significant changes to your site. This can lead to even more complications with your organic performance.
What To Do Instead
There are several SEO recovery guides out there that you can refer to for more in-depth steps on how to recover from organic performance declines.
Here are some quick tips on how to check if your site was really affected by an algorithm.
Did Google discover new technical issues?
A technical issue is one of the more common reasons why a site’s performance may decline.
This usually happens when a site administrator unknowingly updates different parts of the site and creates significant technical issues.
Investigate this issue by checking the following locations:
This is another common cause of significant ranking fluctuations. Some sites, such as e-commerce, frequently change content.
If your site rarely updates content and experiences a drop in organic traffic or rankings, it may be a good idea to check to see if your client or other site administrator has made any unexpected changes.
Some ways you can investigate site changes include:
It is rare to find sites that are unaffected by some kind of seasonality.
When a stakeholder comes to you who freaks out about declining site performance, be sure to check your benchmarks from year to year.
Compare quarterly trend lines on top of each other so you can show your stakeholders that these declines may not be unusual.
Additionally, you should anticipate in advance to tell them about any future expected declines based on the previous year’s trends.
The key here is that you are still improving year by year.
Some traffic changes may occur due to a competitor improving its organic strategy.
Typically, this will be indicated by a constant decrease in organic performance, and it is unusual for this to occur with sharp decreases in performance.
If you think your competitors are starting to steal your rankings from you, do not panic!
I have a Python script that allows you to spy on your organic competitors. It will show who is constantly ranking for your topic keywords.
Manual actions are not as frequent as they used to be, but they still happen.
If your site has experienced a steep drop in traffic, you can take a look at the Google Search Console to see any manual actions.
3. Copying Location Page Copy
When developing location pages for large websites with many locations, it can be tedious and time consuming to create unique copy for each location.
It may seem like the easy way out just to use the same copy for each location page, but I strongly advise against it.
You can get a much better local placement performance by focusing on a unique copy for each location page.
Check out my Placement Page checklist to learn how to create the ultimate placement page.
4. Using Automated Auditing Tools To Drive Strategy
Relying on automated tools may not be the best way to drive your organic strategy.
Many new SEO professionals tend to perform their initial SEO reviews with automated tools and let it guide their global SEO strategy.
These SEO ranking tools “do not ask questions”.
The key to any good SEO strategy is to ask questions, including, but certainly not limited to:
What To Do Instead
Invest in a tool like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb and learn how to look holistically on a website.
Use visualization tools to analyze the structure of a website.
Look for content gap opportunities and make sure your technical structure is sound.
Once your technical foundation is clean, search engines can easily discover, crawl and reproduce your web pages.
5. Paying For Links
Now I know this article is meant to be focused on white hat tactics, but there is a gray hat method of link building where you can pay link building companies for guaranteed links.
This is a great way to guarantee that you get a certain number of backlinks to your customers every month.
However, quality and relevance are almost never on level.
What To Do Instead
Linkbuilding tends to have a snowball effect.
If you get links in well-known publications, it is possible that another author will discover you and link to you in their own articles.
However, this is a less common event with smaller DA backlinks.
I recommend investing in some PR partners to help you create content and get features in notable publications.
These larger publications tend to have a greater rate of organic growth of your backlink profile through the snowball effect.
6. Being Too Scared To Ask Questions
It’s too easy to just search for the answers to your questions, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
But when it comes to strategy or tackling specific issues, Google may not always give you the right answer.
It is OK to contact your peers for help. Even the best of us often run polls and ask for help on Twitter. There is absolutely no shame in that.
In fact, it is strongly encouraged!
No respectable SEO will make fun of you because you know nothing.
If you’re still a little too nervous, contact Search Engine Journals Ask an SEO column to have your anonymous questions answered publicly. In this way, others can benefit from the shared knowledge.
7. Ignoring Other Pillars Of SEO
Most SEOs consider that there are three pillars in SEO: content, link building and technical.
However, I like to add “local” as a fourth pillar because it really uses elements from all three in a unique way.
Ignoring any of these bars for too long can either delay your rankings from getting better or hamper them all.
For example, if your first revisions show that there are a large number of technical issues, you can be eager to get them out of the way and spend all your time cleaning them up.
If possible, try to allocate your resources to work on each pillar of SEO at the same time.
If you spend all your time solving technical issues or performing link search, but you forget to improve your content, then your rankings may not improve as you intended.
Final Thoughts
Now I know that some of these SEO tactics might work for some sites for a period of time.
The point here is that the bigger picture of SEO is much more complicated than that captured by these simple techniques.
Do not be distracted by them and stay focused on creating sustainable, lasting results.
Featured image: Montri Thipsorn / Shutterstock
What is the type of SEO?
The three types of SEO are: On-page SEO – Everything on your web pages – Blogs, product copy, web copy. Off-page SEO – Anything that happens away from your site that helps with your SEO strategy backlinks. Technical SEO – Everything technically done to improve search rankings – page indexing to help crawl bot.
Why has my website dropped in rankings?
Drops in the rankings are often due to major changes to a website. Once you have migrated a lot of pages, rolled out a (responsive) redesign or reworked a lot of content, you will see large fluctuations in your rankings. This is natural and should only worry you as your placements will not return to their previous state.
How can I improve my site ranking? Follow these suggestions to improve your search engine optimization (SEO) and watch your website rise to the top among search engine results.
- Publish relevant, authoritative content. …
- Update your content regularly. …
- Meta data. …
- Have a link-worthy site. …
- Use alt tags.
Why is my website ranking so low?
This can consist of anything from building lots of spam backlinks to your site, to using over optimized anchor text or thin / duplicate content. Receiving a fine will result in loss of organic traffic and rankings, making your site difficult to find in search results.
Why is my website ranking low?
Your site does not have a proper internal link structure Having a clear site structure leads to a better understanding of your site by Google. If your internal link structure is poor, the chances of ranking high are lower – even when your content is well-optimized and great.
How long does it take for a site to rank?
A survey conducted by ahrefs showed that it took an average of 3 years for a page to rank as number 1 on Google, and only 5.7% of pages rank as number 1 within a year.
Which of the following negatively affect the search result of a Web page?
Page speed not only affects your ranking, but it is important for the user experience. Pages with longer loading times tend to have higher bounce rates, a lower average page time, and a negative impact on conversions. Slow page speed also means that search engines can not crawl as many pages using their assigned crawl budget.
What is the role of the Google PageRank algorithm in Google Search? Definition PageRank. PageRank is an algorithm used by Google that makes it possible to measure the popularity of a website or a web page. It’s a system that was invented by Larry Page, who’s just another Google co-founder.
Qu’est ce que l’on appelle le PageRank ?
In summary, PageRank measures the quality and quantity of links received by a site on an Internet site, in order to refine its ranking. The PageRank is the son of Larry Page, co-founder of Google, who’m wrong at the point – so see you with a web page.
Comment fonctionne le PageRank ?
Le PageRank: comment ça marche. The PageRank algorithm calculates an index of popularity associated with each Web page. This is the clue that was used to sort the result of a keyword search.
Comment calculer PageRank ?
The rank of a page is equal to the sum of the pagerank of the pages made of links divided by the number of outgoing links, with also a damping factor, it is to say the probability that the internet does not follow all the links present on the page.
What is SEO friendly article?
SEO-friendly content is the type of content that is created in a way that helps the search engines rank it high. While some marketers believe that this means that it should be filled with keywords, it really is meant to help them with search engines find, understand and connect your content with the topic you are trying to cover.
Want to write SEO articles? Editing an article on the blog SEO allows the animated site to enhance your reference. It’s also a way to create content to disseminate on your different acquisition channels through a newsletter or social networks and they can be integrated into your digital communication strategy.
Comment ça marche SEO ?
It has its credibility. What is the SEO comment? It’s very simple finally: Google analyzes the quality of your page and the behavior of the internet on it to decide the position to which it will refer.
Qu’est-ce qu’un bon SEO ?
A good SEO content will make your site visible in search engine results if they are Google. It will allow you to increase the organic traffic of your site and boost your visibility.
What are the two techniques of SEO?
SEO techniques are classified into two broad categories which are White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO.