These SEO Practices Are Dead-Concepts Walking
The Internet is a platform that never remains stagnant. If you are to get to where you want to be - ahead of the competition - you need to stay up-to-date with the latest SEO techniques. There are lots of companies that are still using incredibly outdated search engine optimisation strategies. These approaches are not merely ineffective, they are damaging and could be killing your SEO campaign. So, let’s take a look at the SEO practices you need to stop using immediately.
Writing for bots rather than people
If you have ever come across an article or a webpage that incorporates unnecessary heading tags, awkwardly forces a keyword phrase into a sentence in a manner that doesn't make any sense, or uses the same keyword over and over again, then you have probably seen an example of somebody that has not been writing for people, but has rather been writing for bots. While it is true that back in the day we needed to spell everything out for search engines to understand and rank web pages, SEO has come an incredibly long way since this. You should be writing for the people that are going to purchase your products and services. Stop writing for search engine bots!
Reciprocal linking
This is a tactic that has been dead for about a decade, however, it is surprising how many website owners and bloggers still use this approach. A link to another website is viewed as a ‘vote’ to that site in the eyes of a search engine. Therefore, if you include a link to another website on your page in exchange for them doing the same thing for you, it has the same sort of effect of someone saying if you vote for me, I will vote for you, and there is little value in this. It screams to Google that you are using linking practices that are manipulative. Even worse is when website owners trade links with other websites that have absolutely no relevance to the products and services they are selling. Sometimes these links are simply dumped on a resources or links page, which offers absolutely no value to people visiting the website in question. This is the sort of approach that will have you falling down the search engine result pages quicker than you can say SEO. If you want to do link building correctly, contact an SEO agency and have them put together an organic and effective campaign.
Article and link directories
Last but not least, link directories are virtually useless today. There are a few exceptions, for example, directories that follow strict editorial guidelines and are niche specific and high in quality. Article directories are even worse than link directories. This is because they are now bloated with content that is of an incredibly low standard, and so they have reached a point where there is no value to visitors.
These are the three outdated SEO practices that you need to stop using today! If you are still using any of the approaches mentioned, they will be killing your campaign.
