SEO has undergone extensive changes and evolution over the past few years and is doing it every day.
While most traditional marketing strategies (to a large extent) still apply to today’s digital marketing, SEO changes have dramatically changed the marketing environment.
Most, if not all, of these changes have helped improve the Internet, especially with improved search.
However, some people still insist on “old methods” and try to use outdated SEO practices to improve the organic search visibility and performance of their brands.
Some strategies worked a few years ago, but now they are not as effective as before.
However, many newcomers/small business owners are still using these “zombie” SEO techniques (these strategies should have died, but not for some big reason).
Not only are they ineffective, but many of the following 12 outdated SEO practices are potentially dangerous to the health of your brand, website and other digital property.
Abuse of keywords
There are many ways for webmasters and “marketers” to continue to misunderstand the role of keywords in general SEO activities and how to use them in everyday strategies.
Let’s take a closer look at specific types of keyword abuse and mismanagement, including irrelevant use, writing specific keyword densities, and keyword filling.
1) Unrelated keyword targeting / confusion
Search engine optimization novices often try to limit their content and information to the scope of keyword research (other than that, there is no other way).
These “marketers” will shape the content and its metadata to represent keywords that do not match it, as well as the appropriate intent of the large number of keywords that the user searches for.
This makes it possible for brands to lose their attention before they have the opportunity to exchange real information with their readers.
If the keywords of the marketing are inconsistent with the content on the page, this disconnect will hinder the success of the content, even if the content quality is good.
Don’t try to mislead users, don’t lead users to content that is incorrectly represented by bulk keywords in order to increase visibility.
Baidu knows what it looks like, and it can really be defined as an outdated SEO practice (and “black hat” SEO technology, in many cases).
2) Keyword density
Just like many keyword-centric marketing strategies, writing for a specific “keyword density” just doesn’t work.
Baidu no longer relies on keyword density (or the ratio of specific keyword usage to the content of the entire page) to determine if a web page is a valid source for answering search queries.
It’s much more advanced than simply crawling keywords; search engines like Baidu use a lot of signals to determine search results.
While keywords are still important to the themes and ideas they represent, they are not the “lifeline” of high-value search query rankings.
The quality of the content and the way the message is delivered is the “lifeline” in this regard.
3) Keyword optimization
This is probably the oldest trick in search engine optimization books.
SEO is about keywords, this convention is customary, right?
So, loading our web pages with keywords — especially those high-value keywords we’re actively targeting across the entire site — will help us get a higher ranking in our search and outperform our competitors.
Absolutely not.
Search engines have long known what is keyword stuffing and what is unnatural text combination. They noticed that these were trying to manipulate search results and downgrade the content.
Yes, there may still be some valuable content populated with simple keywords, either intentionally or unintentionally, because it is not degraded for the actual value of the user.
Speaking back to the past, the webmaster wants the game system to try to change the high-value keywords of each keyword as much as possible in the footer of the website, or more roughly, to make the same color of these keywords the background of the website, effectively Hide them and fill them specifically for search engine crawlers.
Some webmasters have also tried with links. (Reminder is, don’t do this.)
Remember that you are writing for humans and not for search engines.
2. Writing for the robot
It is important to understand that unnatural writing is ultimately unnatural.
Search engines also know this.
Their belief is that writing for the web means that we should repeat it with its correct name each time we mention a topic, working in the synonym and synonym version of the word to “cover all the foundations.”
When crawling, the search engine crawler will see the keywords appear repeatedly, and appear in several different versions, so that the page ranks high in terms of keyword changes used (over and over… repeatedly used over and over again) This SEO “trick”).
At the moment, this method does not work.
Search engines are advanced enough to understand recurring keywords, their changes, and the unfavorable experience of often bad content.
Write for humans, not search engine crawlers or any other robot.
3. Article marketing and article catalog
In the world of SEO, any attempt to “game” the system will usually not succeed.
But this does not stop SEO practitioners from trying.
Especially when these strategies provide significant improvements to a brand, its website, or its associated digital assets.
Of course, the article directory can work. And for a long time, they worked very well.
Articles are often considered to be one of the earliest forms of digital marketing, and for those who are aware, it is a handy outcome. This makes sense because the idea is similar to other channels such as TV and printing that have often used syndicated content.
But Baidu finally released the “Blue Sky Algorithm” update that changed the SEO “Game Rules” in 2017.
“Blue Sky” undermines the search arena, with the goal of cracking down on selling soft-text, directory behavior, and other sites that provide spam (whether it’s written badly, meaningless, or stolen from someone else).
The idea behind article marketing is meaningless in today’s world, and your high-quality content needs to be original and showcase expertise, authority and trustworthiness.