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How Outdated SEO Tactics Hurt Your Website’s SEO

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SEO is one of the most important components of any online success. If you have a website then you know that SEO tactics have changed quickly over time with very large leaps and bounds. Things which might be useful one day are suddenly outdated the next. Understanding a complete guideline to SEO is challenging because the rules are constantly changing. New features ware being added and old features are being removed.

No longer can you simply build a website and get top rankings through metatags and keywords. There are many tactics now which are outdated and will ruin your website’s SEO. The first is keyword stuffing. Stuffing tons of keywords into your keyword metatag is useless. Using keyword metatags at all is an outdated SEO tactic. The algorithms used by search engines have become more complex which means that they search for content rather than just keywords. The keywords need to be tactfully integrated into the header, body, title tags, footer, and sub headings.

The second outdated SEO tactic is blog comment spamming. Webmasters might leave comments in online forums which link to their website but this is now considered spam. Google will see which links are posted in online communities or forums and will not give you credit for that link popularity. It is better to post well written comments and blogs with the links instead of spamming.

The third outdated SEO tactic is search engine submission. Many people used to provide services for submitting things to search engines. Today that service is dead. Create unique content and get links instead. Use social media accounts to link to your website. Search engines are recognizing the usefulness and authority offered by social networks.

The fourth outdated SEO tactic is meta tag optimization. Meta tags once played a large role in determining your page rank but not anymore. Search engines no longer notice them. Google has stated on record that they do not pay attention to meta keywords tag. Therefore, stuffing your content should no longer happen. Instead you can use tag and category systems to label and organize the content on your website. If you actively tag your pages and posts in an effective manner you can enjoy better usability, functionality, and search-ability.

The fifth outdated SEO tactic is link exchange. Exchanging links was once a popular method of building your websites’ links but no longer. Reciprocal link exchange was fine in moderation, but interlinking in order to increase your popularity is. When website owners actively engage in schemes to increase their link exchange and influence their rankings, Google will take notice and the website owner will be punished. Instead of this tactic, try to get active testimonials and reviews from vendors with whom you work. This is a favorable method of getting links to your website. Along the same lines, link buying is another outdated tactic. Link buying is when you buy links from websites in order to improve your search engine rank. This includes paying for reviews and using a link brokering service. Both are now frowned upon and can severely hurt your SEO.

How Duplicate Content Can Kill Your Website’s SEO

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Many people and businesses type websites think that they can increase their search engine rankings or obtain multiple listings by providing multiple copies of the same page or similar copies of the same page because the presence of keywords is higher. Therefore, it’s important to keep in mind that duplicate content can be a silent killer and be detrimental to your website. Search engines, as Google, want and need fresh, new, unique relevant content on every page. Many websites, blogs and companies do not realize that having duplicate content means they could face a loss in traffic and SEO will ultimately suffer, especially new website marketers.

Duplicate Content = The Silent Website Killer

Google seeks to bring results that are based on relevant keywords. When you see multiple pages which have the same content, it means that content was taken(or stolen) from someone else’s site. This results in search engines being unable to differentiate between which site holds the authority to the copy. This is a large problem if many people start to link many versions of the same copy. Google Webmaster Tools will help you to diagnose whether or not your site has duplicate content, as well as Copyscape.com.

It is common to see two forms of duplicate content on sites today:

  1. Identically written pages which are listed on different websites. In simplistic terms, this means that the same article or blog post is listed on two different websites. This is considered to be duplicate and therefore considered unacceptable in Google’s eyes. This is a problem for associated sites which have the same or similar look and feel to them. With identical content, they are at a high risk for being marked as spam.
  2. Scraping (also called Web harvesting or Web data extraction) is a technique of extracting information(or text) from websites. It simply means that you are using a program to remove the text from one website and place it on yours. The biggest problems associated with duplicate content are that search engines are unable to identify which version or versions should be ranked for query results. Search engines also do not know which of the version or versions should be included or excluded from their indexes. Another major issue with duplicate, scraped content is that the search engines do not know whether they should direct the link metrics to a single page or keep the link metrics separated between the multiple versions.

When search engine robots crawl through a website, they will read, store and sort the information found in their database. After this, the robots will compare the findings on one with information already contained in the database. Using multiple factors, including the overall relevancy score related to the particular website, the search bot will determine which content is duplicate content. It will then filter out the pages which qualify as spam or the websites which qualify as spam. If your pages are not spam but they still contain enough similar content to be considered as such, they still run of the risk of being regarded as spam.

Many popular sites have been caught scraping content from other websites for the purpose of increasing their SEO, which happens at the expense of the other sites which already contain the information. Larger websites, which scrape content and post duplicate content for the purpose of SEO rankings, will outrank smaller websites and blogs, which leaves the smaller sites marked as spam. Google works very hard to ensure that duplicate content does not exist.

10 SEO Mistakes That Will Kill Your Site’s SEO

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There are many mistakes which people can make that result in killing your website. These are often simple and avoidable mistakes which can cripple your chances of optimizing your site. The first mistake is coding. Coding can hurt your SEO if you choose to use difficult coding such as Javascript. Simpler code can offer the same results with less spider issues.

The second mistake often made is the choice of keywords. When people decide upon the keyword phrases they should pick a select few which will then be integrated throughout their site. By focusing on a small group of important keywords you can increase your SEO. If you try to incorporate every keyword which relates to your niche then you will waste all of your time trying to incorporate each word in all of your web content and will lose out on many search engine results.

The third mistake people make is having long and confusing URL’s which cannot be navigated with ease. The best URL will have relevant keywords and only use dynamic characters or a few slashes. The pages and names should be in line with your specific content so that the spiders and visitors can appreciate it.

The fourth mistake made is thinking that title tags do not matter. You cannot get away with only using a single title tag throughout your website. You need to create a unique title tag for each page which will explain what the page is about. These title tags will show up in all search engine results and as such can better convince visitors to click on your website.

The fifth mistake is not watching out for splash pages. It is important not to leave your home page bare. You need to keep it focused. If you do use a splash page you want to ensure that the content contained therein is relevant and has lots of navigation in it so that the search engines will go through your entire site.

The sixth mistake is thinking that all of the search engines are the same. Each search engine has a unique plan and your business might rank better with one search engine than another. The top search engines are Yahoo, MSN, and Google because they can attract local attention to your niche through vertical and visual search engines. The seventh mistake made which can kill your company’s SEO is just trading backlinks instead of getting good backlinks. It is important that you get links from related sites which are of good quality. If you trade backlinks with other webmasters you might not help your SEO rank as much as you think, especially if they are unrelated to your niche.

The eighth mistake is not balancing graphics and text. It can be very detrimental to have underutilized graphics or excess graphics. With a lot of flash or too many images your rank will go down instead of increasing. You need to always have text to back up the images.

The ninth biggest mistake which can adversely affect your SEO is not delivering your promises. Your site should offer everything that you say it offers so that visitors find what they want and expect on your site.

The tenth and final mistake made is thinking that only SEO matters and not paying attention to the other facets of your balanced marketing plan.

3MultiMedia – Tony Eden

A digital agency on a mission to help small and medium businesses with their online presence. I work from my California Office to take your ideas and turn them into a digital online design for you.
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