Old school SEO methods drive struggling content marketers and bloggers crazy. They think that they have implemented the right techniques, but with no positive results. These strugglers create the exclusive content strategy backed with stats and data, but still fail in grabbing that top spot attention.
They hardly know in depth about this evolutionary tried and tested strategies, and believe that what worked a few years back, might allure the users even today. Since Google’s algorithm changes every moment (literally), some SEO practices get outdated, which needs to be ditched by the user. They need to upgrade themselves with modern and effective SEO practices, which can help them grab their share of traffic.
Also check: Digital Marketing: All You Need to Know
A novice SEO practitioner might use the zombie techniques, but with time, they need to scrutinize the conventional methods and start getting magic results with the new and effective ones. Here is the list of SEO practices that are outdated and should be stopped right away by digital marketers.
Table of Contents
Practise 1: Designing more web pages to grab traffic:
Marketers still believe that Google’s Panda algorithm is effective in the old school type and constantly juggle to produce more web pages on the website. However, it should be clear to them at least now that the tactics that worked in 2011 have revolutionized, and the algorithm has improved effectively. It keeps a check on the quality content and rates the web page accordingly. They are now focusing more on the quality, and hence, the SEO company Toronto should know that they need to deliver the quality content over quantity.
Practice 2: Good rankings on the search engine results don’t surely ensure more traffic:
Digital marketers have flooded themselves with white label techniques that ensure them a good rank. Additionally, they keep on boasting about the “good ranking position,” thinking that they will drive maximum traffic on the site. However, this isn’t true always. There are a number of factors playing a role in ensuring good rankings.
- The keywords: Some keywords can grab a good deal of impressions, while some might fail. Some of them use targeted keywords that use high-quality traffic while some fail in considering the research of high-quality keywords. This leads to low-quality traffic on the web page.
- Metadata doesn’t appeal: Your good ranking on the SERPs is because of multiple reasons and not just one. You might get a good rank because of keywords, but the metadata is not attracting users to compel them for visiting the site. Even the metadata needs to engage viewers, which will further boost the click-through rates.
- The target for featured snippets: Little do marketers know about the benefits of featured snippets, they usually don’t target for the “Zero-rank.” These featured snippets have the maximum coverage and click if done properly. Hence the digital marketers need to work upon targeting the same.
Practice 3: Filling in more keywords in the title and Meta tags:
A convention that has been followed for years is that it is advisable to stuff the main keywords in the meta and title tags. The misconception further followed is that it acknowledges the search engine bots about your target keywords, which further helps in higher ranking.
Also check: How has COVID 19 affected the Digital Marketing Industry?
However, this misconception got cleared with Google’s Panda algorithm, which constantly focuses on quality content and many times penalize content with overstuffed keywords. Even Google’s Webmaster Guidelines no more extend its support for keyword stuffing.
Practice 4: A higher number of backlinks leads to better SEO:
Link building is the top most activity that helps in grabbing the top spot. However, the release of Penguin 2.0 in 2013, however, changed the marketing campaign. The backlinks you post on the web pages define the credibility of the web pages, and additionally, the page will get the ranking based on these links built.
On the other side, these backlinks help in building up the authority of the website, which shall help in boosting the ranking. Definitely, a good number of backlinks over the site drives more traffic, but the quality of the backlinks also matters a lot. The sites that have better domain authority and traffic drive more business, and one with less makes no difference, and the activity is considered non-productive.
Practice 5: Unnatural writing for robots:
With the advancement in technology and algorithms, an unnatural form of writing is dying. Even if you write unnatural, search engines will know that it is not for humans but for machines.
However, crawlers lookout for relevant information that will add value to the viewers.
The repetition of subjects, repeated keywords, and mistakes in the plural and non-plural versions will not help in ranking; instead, it will bring the high rankings down. The crawlers don’t feel happy about seeing the repetition of keywords and thereby create an unfavorable experience considering the content as a bad one. Hence, it is advisable for a social media management company to use the only natural style of writing. Additionally, Google’s BERT update also processes the content in a natural way.
Also check: What Are The Different Parts Of Digital Marketing Service?
Practice 6: Creating a landing page for each targeted keyword:
The practice of creating a landing page for each keyword is quite outdated and should no longer be followed. Say, for example, you have 5 keywords: stationary pens, creative stationery pen, writing desk stationery pen, personalized stationery pen, and new stationery pen. Erstwhile, it was believed that each search term should be followed by a landing page. However, this was an unwise decision.
The user doesn’t like to navigate between a plethora of pages and land up on a page which doesn’t match their search intent. Hence the practice to be followed now onwards is to eliminate the extraneous web pages and create an effective one for the matching keywords.
SEO is evolving and will continue to do so. With the passing years, the strategies and techniques will keep on changing. It is preferable not to waste time over the outdated one and waste the money. Instead, keep your strategies updated.
