The best and worst thing about SEO is that it keeps on evolving, the primary source of which being the updates in the search engine algorithm. In SEO the tactics and strategies that were valid and popular a few years back are no more used, and the same goes for the existing strategies, which won’t be influential in the future.
In the online market, only the quality SEO optimization services providers survive who keep on updating themselves with the latest trends and don’t stick with old strategies and tactics for long. The lines below give the old SEO tactics that need to be avoided at present time.
1. Article Submission:
Submitting articles to article directories for the purpose of link building is a strategy long applied in SEO. However, it needs to be stopped from now onwards, as submitting articles means easy backlinks, which no more is true after the Penguin update. Now a webmaster should develop relations with other bloggers and maintain a natural link profile.
2. News-less Press Release:
The earlier strategy with Press Release was of doing it for the sake of building links, regardless of the fact that the business had any news to share with its stakeholders or audience. With search engines getting smarter, Press Release would no more be influential for SEO, until and unless the business has any news to share in the release that is attractive and informative for the audience.
3. Link Exchange and Reciprocal Linking:
Link exchanging and reciprocal links are the strategies commonly used by marketers to gain excessive links quickly. However, what the naïve marketers fail to realize is the fact that by exchanging links they are simply sending signals to search engines which would definitely raise red flag for the website. Therefore, an online marketer should no more indulge in link exchange of any kind.
4. Thin Content Creation:
One of the oldest SEO tactics that has been scorned all along is the creation of thin content. It has long polluted the SEO arena, but after the Panda update, it has lost its vigor. Now the content that would be created would have features like:
- The content must be link worthy
- The content should be produced while keeping the readers in mind not only search engines
- The content should be unique and informative for the user with no duplication whatsoever
5. Ignoring The Social Signals:
Businesses that ignore the importance of social sharing are definitely at loss. Businesses need to realize the importance and potential of social media to enjoy its full benefits. Social media companies can provide business with services that can help it to be more popular among the target audience and the results of which could be seen in greater promotion.
6. Focusing Rankings:
There was a time when the sole parameter of measuring the performance of an SEO team was the rankings they help a website achieve. However, businesses have become smart and now they use Analytics to review the true performance of the website in terms of traffic, users, bounce rate and conversions.
Bottom Line:
The gist of the discussion is that the SEO field keeps on evolving and the businesses or webmasters that keep up with this evolution and keep on changing themselves are the ones that survive and witness prosperity and growth in search engine rankings and website performance.