4 SEO Habits That You Should Unlearn

Benny August 22, 2016 2 comments

4 SEO Habits That You Should Unlearn

You must have heard the phrase that says ‘Change is Constant.’ Well, at least that’s what Google promotes and popularizes with its record of around 500 to 600 algorithmic changes per year. With such massive transformations on cards, it becomes highly imperative to keep up with them. Simultaneously, you can’t ignore the significance of search engine optimization.

According to stats, almost 93% of the online experiences originate from search engines. That’s not all; nearly 70% of online links clicked and searched by users are organic. Hence it makes total sense to ensure that relevant practices are embraced and outdated practices are left behind, as they tend to do more harm than good to your SEO rankings. Check out the following SEO ill practices.

1. Keyword dumping or stuffing

There’s no denying the fact that ‘content is the king.’ But that will only be true if it’s unique, fresh, innovative, and creative. Make sure that you stay away from an irrelevant and outdated content or even keyword stuffed content that doesn’t add any value to your readers.  Check this line

“Walden’s cheap Houston Electrician is the best cheap Houston Electrician for your residence. Contact a cheap Houston Electrician and get Walden’s cheap Houston Electrician at your doorstep”. It says just one thing – “Walden has the inexpensive electrician in Houston”, which doesn’t say much to the readers.

Google has identified this as a black hat SEO method and clearly states that keyword stuffed pages will be penalized for rankings.

Instead, aim for responsible optimization of keywords so that you rank naturally in organic search.

2. Link building

Although a lot of misconceptions about link-building still continue to exist, simply focusing only on this aspect is . Depending solely upon artificial SERP improvement through link-building efforts will take away your attention from other significant SEO aspects,

As a number of approaches like paid links or reciprocal programs keep coming up, Google will keep strengthening its algorithms to keep spammy link building out when factoring in rankings for a particular page.

   3. Ignoring latest and modern SEO techniques

Latest techniques such as the below will help you stay relevant in today’s competitive times –

• Working together with content team – The demand for crafting personalized experiences makes it essential for SEO and content teams to work together. Content Marketing Institute had predicted that companies are increasingly using content such as blogs and website content to target their market. Also, the need for meaningful and relevant content as per Panda updates means that content teams need to put in more effort to target a given persona of the intended buyer.

• Structured data markup – so that your efforts yield higher ranking signals. How to use the schema for organizations, website, videos or software applications? This link has more details on the different types of schema available for a webmaster.

• AMP – Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) provides the necessary framework to allow web developers to create pages that load faster. Implementing this SEO ranking signal will not only improve the speed of the mobile page but also elevate the user experience substantially.

4. Avoiding Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics

If you are not caring to look into Google Analytics and Webmaster tools, you are inevitably building a bad SEO habit. Always try to refer to key performance metrics in the form of

• Search queries: It shows a list of keywords which users typed in to land up on your site.

• Click-Through-Ratio: The ‘search queries’ section also shows the number of clicks and view. Together they inform you about a particular keyword’s CTR (Click-Through-Ratio)

• Backlinks: The ‘Links to Your Site’ section contains information on internal links (links to the particular website from pages belonging to the same website) as well as external links (links that tie to web pages of other websites).

• Keywords: This is interesting. It helps to show the keywords that Google has come across on your site. Try to see if there is a lot of difference in the keywords listed in ‘Keywords’ section and the keywords given in ‘Search queries’ section. This difference will show that your targeted keywords are different from what users are querying to search and thus help you optimize your keyword research program.

The final word

Almost 93% of online experiences have their source in the humble search engine query. Thus SEO is important for your site’s fortunes. By controlling these bad habits, you will achieve a well-optimized business site that brings in relevant and targeted traffic.