Why it’s time to move on from old SEO strategies

Google, SEO strategies, search engine optimisatiion
Local SEO Concept Business team hands at work with financial reports Links Global Hyperlink search engine optimization and a laptop

Search engines update their algorithms regularly to keep up to date with consumer search habits, to ensure consumers are given correct content for their searches, and to ensure the most relevant websites remain at the top of their results pages. Businesses must ensure, therefore, that their site’s search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy keeps up to date with these changes. Through their sophisticated algorithms, search engines are getting quick in spotting the difference between a legitimate and relevant website and one marked with spam or which uses old SEO strategies.

Here are some SEO techniques that have become redundant to today’s search engine algorithms.

Keyword stuffing

Adding specific keywords on your site will help your website get recognised on search engines, but adding too many keywords will actually do your site more harm than good. A good keyword strategy is more than just having long lists of keywords as a block of text – some people hide keywords all over the page by hiding them in the margins and in the same text colour as the background. However, Google will is able to pick up on these tactics.

Search engines can now recognise if a phrase or a word is being used multiple times in the same way. Your web writers need to be careful in how they craft content. Avoid using the same phrase repeatedly or it will look like spam. Use synonyms and change up phrasing to keep the copy natural and your site will still be marked as relevant.

Deceptive redirects

Redirects are a way of making a web page available under more than one URL address. This can happen when you haven’t checked your site or adjusted links in a while. Deceptive redirects are links that intentionally direct a visitor to a page that is completely different to the one they expect to go to.

This old SEO strategy isn’t effective, as your website will send people to a page they don’t want to see, leaving you with a high bounce rate. A bounce rate is the percentage of people that leave your site after one page visit.

Link bombing

A tactic that has often been used by some SEO strategists is to post links of a website on the comments sections of other recognised sites. This could work if the comment is relevant to the discussion. If it isn’t, search engines will identify these tactics as spam.

Freshen up this strategy by taking the time to search relevant discussions and contribute to them in a meaningful way. A simple copy and paste message will almost always be removed by site owners and moderators, which can mark your website as spam by search algorithms.

So, what’s next?

As search engine algorithms are constantly changing in response to user needs, it can be difficult to predict what changes will be made. However, if you focus on making your site improve the user experience instead of becoming number one on Google, your page will stay relevant.

Lucas Bikowski, Managing Director, SEO Shark