Google gets smarter with every update, making it harder and harder to cheat the system. Today, there are a bunch of SEO tricks that people still utilize to try and improve their rankings and get more attention which are no longer effective, and it’s good to know what they are.
Keyword Stuffing
In the past, it was popular to stuff your content with tons of keywords to get ranked higher on Google. This is now no longer effective and can actually harm your SEO. Google rates the readability of your content and can tell if you’re keyword stuffing or writing quality content.
Backlink Spam
A cheap trick that has been used in the past involved buying your backlinks. Nowadays, Google will punish your website because the search engine can detect more information about the domain than before. It’s more productive to focus on getting better backlinks from actual people or companies that will help improve your SEO.
Exact Match Domains
Another popular hack was to buy domains that match the keywords you’re looking to rank for. For example, if you were a car exhaust company in Atlanta, you’d be looking to buy “carexhaustsatlanta.com.” But these days, this will now punish your domain. You can read more about it here: https://moz.com/blog/googles-emd-algo-update-early-data
Click Bait
Google is getting smarter at reading content, so if you’re generating content just for click-baiting, you’re going to suffer long term (and you’re essentially wasting your time). This is similar to keyword stuffing, and since Google values quality content over anything, it’s better to create superior copy from the get-go.
Directories
It used to be beneficial to have your website on multiple different directories. These websites typically had good page authority and page rank, so linking them to your website was thought to be beneficial. Today, it’s still good for you to have your website on one or two reputable business directories for your industry, but avoid spamming your site across too many of them.
If you have any SEO questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch with EQ. Our team of marketing pros is here to help you.