Search engine optimization (SEO) is a crucial element of any advertising strategy focusing on organic growth. However, the trends and requirements for these SEO practices keep changing with the evolution of search engine algorithms.
Practices that helped businesses a decade ago may not be beneficial today. Understanding these outdated SEO practices and removing them from your strategy is vital to long-term marketing success.
These practices will hinder your growth and make little to no contributions to your online traffic. This article will line out some of the top outdated SEO practices to quit immediately.
Outdated SEO Practices You Should Quit Now
Following is our pick of outdated SEO practices that may harm your customer conversion.
Missing or Irrelevant Keywords
Keyword optimization is a crucial element to any ideal SEO strategy, and it is one of the quickest methods to increase one's organic growth and get more customers. However, using the right keywords matters the most.
Business owners will find several online tools that incorporate the wrong keywords or miss out on the important ones. It may seem small, but it is one of the biggest and most common SEO strategy mistakes. The wrong keywords can drastically drop your search engine results page (SERP) ranking, reducing your traffic, despite the quality of your content.
You could spend weeks trying to fix other on-site elements but will still not get the required results unless you fix the keywords. Performing detailed keyword research is crucial before picking out the best suited ones for your business.
Remember that low competition and high intent keywords are the most favorable ones. You can also segment your keyword targets and make the results more customer-centric.
Additionally, using the wrong keywords can also create confusion for the users. Imagine searching for something on a website and finding something completely irrelevant. You are unlikely to revisit the website after that. The same goes for the audience you try to target.
Miscalculating Keyword Density
Most new businesses make a common mistake with their SEO strategy: stuffing their content with keywords. Keyword infusion does indeed help to increase traffic. However, overdoing it can be counterproductive and lower your website in the SERP.
Google no longer relies on keyword density to determine the quality and relevancy of a particular piece. Search engines now use many signals to determine the results rather than relying on crawling alone.
These keywords are still important but are not the ideal metric for high-value search queries. Modern search engines know about keyword stuffing and can easily detect the overuse of words. It's understandable if some content uses keywords multiple times, but it's not the same for everyone.
Unnatural Writing
Like other updates in the SERP ranking algorithms, readability standards have also improved. Search engines can generate robotic language or AI-generated text more easily. Thus, any website with subpar or poorly readable content is more likely to rank lower on the SERP.
Unnatural writing is not limited to the language alone and needs contextual understanding. If the search engine finds deviance in the content title and the material inside, it will not provide a ranking. Thus, businesses should focus on incorporating the most user-friendly content and easily readable material within their website content. So, it would be best if you focused on creating engaging, detailed, and clear content.
Overusing the Anchor Texts
Anchor texts are one of the simplest methods of incorporating the targeted URLs within your text for maximum traffic. However, these anchor texts can also be unproductive if you overuse them. One or two instances per blog are best , but it's not worth the investment if they reoccur.
You should also learn about the various types of anchor texts and choose them accordingly. The most common anchor text types include:
- Brand
- Exact-match
- Naked
- Page title
- Website / brand name
Bottom Line
SEO practices have changed over the years, and businesses must make strategic changes accordingly. Anyone dealing with problems in their SEO needs to recalibrate their strategy. If you are confused about how to do this, let ShopDango help you. We are industry leaders and understand how to get the best SERP ranking, so all you have to do is contact us.