Last Updated on January 28, 2018
Some outdated SEO tactics may seem effective but are not fruitful in reality unless in case of web content with high quality and interesting niche. Most of the SEO experts and Google warn the people to avoid such techniques otherwise the websites may get penalized.
1.Link and Article Directories
This technique may seem evergreen SEO technique to get massive traffic for your websites but in real, most of the websites provide link and article directories to enhance their market and sometimes these links may be filled with low quality content which is not at all helpful to you. The intention behind adding link and article directories to your content is to provide easy access for the users to the content they are looking for. The reason behind the success of this technique is this is an easy source of revenue for website owners and this is a simple way of finding their requirements for the users. The disadvantage behind this tactic is that most of the website owners started to use software to rewrite the articles and these websites does not pay any concern to the requirements of the visitors. This tactic is futile unless in case of high quality content.
2.Exact-Match Domains
Earlier, the exact-match domains or EMDS were helpful in improving the website rankings as they match the keyword search near to the exact requirement of the user. The EMDs were very useful to hit the point in search engine optimization, but this idea lost its effectiveness after search engines adjusted the algorithms accordingly. The drawback behind this tactic is some users may consider these domains less trustworthy or sometimes the domains may prone to spamming.
3.Reciprocal Linking
This technique may seem as quid-pro co, though sometimes helps to improve the traffic for your website. This tactic lost its power as manipulative websites and phishing sites began to use this tactic for enhancing their traffic or promoting low quality content in exchange of your interests.
4.Flat URL Architecture
Flat URL architecture is also one of the outdated SEO tactics. This is difficult for users to understand. Flat URL architecture makes the search engines to confuse about the importance of your links, which one to show in the search first. The solution for this mess is to take care about setting permalinks to the content. The nested or clear URL structure is useful to communicate the user about order of preference and about quality of the content they are searching for.
5.Indiscriminate guest blogging
Guest blogging is sometimes helpful to improve the website rankings. This is possible only when the guest blog relates to the requirements of the visitors. Most of the website owners fail to nail the point that the guest blogs should be in relevance to the audience. Most of the guest bloggers paste their crochet links in the website which is not relevant to the objective which may cause the loss of popularity of the website.
6.Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is also an outdated tactic in search engine optimization. This may not develop traffic to your company if the content is not relevant to the requirements of the visitors or the content is of low quality. This tactic may cause outrage among the audience most of times.
7.Exact-match anchor text
This tactic is a key factor for hike in website rankings in earlier decade but most of the marketers abused this in a way that Google started to lower the rankings or penalized the websites which used anchor texting for certain texts in the content or keywords.
Google focuses on following points to rank your website
- Relevance of anchor text to the content
- Authentication of your website
- The number of relevant website links directing to your website content
8. Paid links
According to SEO experts, paid links are almost dead. These are not very helpful to enhance your website traffic. Paid links may sometimes work to develop your website rankings, but there are chances that websites may get penalized for spamming or irrelevant content. In short, this method may work for short term but cannot give good results in the long run. Google considers paid links as a violation of rules.
9.Low- quality content
Most of the website owners agree that they have no time to write articles for their website. For good SEO, the website content should be amazing. The work should be engaging and should be appealing for the visitors worldwide. Most of the website owners hire content writers from non-English speaking countries. To get high quality content for your website, you may outsource your work for websites like upwork. Most of the website owners are accepting content just to publish something. Google is now working seriously to lower the ranks of websites that publish low quality and less engaging content. Google developed core algorithms to place the websites with low quality content backward in the search pages.
10.Automated link building
Automated link building became malignant in search engine optimization. This may seem purist attitude, but this tactic may work for short time period but the websites may get penalized for this. In the past decades, most of the website owners focussed on building automated links to increase the revenue and published low quality articles with keyword stuffing which showed good results in getting massive traffic to their websites. Submitting your websites for bookmarking services is violation of Google webmaster rules. Automated link building may be helpful to enhance your business, but this may not give significant results all the time.
Some of the other outdated SEO tactics neglecting the requirements of visitors and publishing content only for advertising and concentrating about keyword mashing rather than creating amazing content will defame your website in the long run.
Developing good customer relationships, publishing high quality content in your website and genuinity are the only ways to enhance your website traffic. There are no short cuts for your success other than these ways to make your website top the searches.