Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most important marketing strategies out there to provide a company with a competitive advantage. While there are many different ways to do the proper SEO strategies set in place by Google, on the other hand, there are also plenty of bad ways to do “good” strategies. 

The only difference between a bad SEO strategy and a good one is one small choice. Here are the top six outdated SEO strategies. 

1. Keyword stuffing 

One could argue that this is the most commonly well-known element of outdated SEO practices. This is when websites have more keywords than the actual content on the page.  Keyword stuffing is using as many variations of keywords as possible to rank for all of those keywords. 

It sounds smart, why wouldn’t you do this? The thing is, just like other strategies in this blog, it was once the exact way to do this. 

However, as SEO experts from those “olden days” have spoken about, the problem was the irrelevance of this website traffic and the keywords used. For example, Britney Spears was used as a keyword for websites that weren’t related to Britney Spears at all. But she was trending, and it was a keyword, so why not use it! 

2. Thin content

Google states that one of the most important steps in improving your site’s ranking in Google search results is to ensure that it contains plenty of rich content, relevant keywords, used appropriately, that indicate the subject matter of your content. 

Thin content is content that is written simply to fill the space up on a page with a singular keyword. It has no true value, doesn’t answer any search queries, and can seem to rank on Google. The exact term for this is called Doorway Pages. 

There can be plenty of thin content on a website and the only difference between the different pages is the keyword. 

Back in the wild west days of Google and other search engines, if you wanted to rank for a keyword quickly, you could create a landing page, copy the other content, publish it, and start watching the website traffic come in. 

What happened when there were multiple variations of this keyword? A new page was created for each different variation of the keyword. A great example of this would be creating a different page for all the keywords listed below: 

3. Article spinning

This is probably a less heard of outdated SEO strategy, but this is typically done with some type of AI software that spins the articles enough that they appear to be different. Remember in school when teachers would say that the content needed to be changed around to not be plagiarized, this is the perfect example of this. 

“In 1982 she passed away.” “ 1982 she died.” 

The article is the same context and wording, and in the end, it’s a mess of an article. 

The best option for writing long-form content for backlinking or blogging purposes is to hire an SEO expert who can ensure the best work. 

4. Buying links 

Buying links is the same as purchasing fake followers for social media. Backlinks are supposed to be high-quality backlinks that bring qualified referral traffic to the site. And sometimes, when other companies reach out to you to purchase backlinks, it could be the perfect opportunity, but not always.

A number of times the website is actually a low-quality website that follows black hat strategies which fall into the category of low-quality links. 

5. Low-quality links

Low-quality links, also known as spammy backlinks, are links that are referring back to your website from low-quality websites. Links are one of the top-ranking factors that Google notices from websites. 

The higher quality and reputable backlinks a website has to refer back to their site, the better that website will do in search engines, especially Google. This shows that your website is a credible one in the industry. 

When SEO first began with backlinking, it was the more links the better, and it didn’t matter where the links were coming from. However, as time has changed practices, this was one of the first changes that were made! 

The saying, “quality over quantity” holds true when it comes to backlinks. 

6. Republishing the same content

The methodology of taking old content, updating it, and publishing it does not pertain to this section of this blog. What this means is that this content is not updated at all.

In this instance, our SEO experts are speaking about content that was never changed. Not a single keyword, link, word, or even period. It is the exact same content as before, just published at the current time and date to appear to be “new.” 

Here are 25 approved ways to update old blog content! 

The biggest point to remember is to always hire the best SEO experts and professionals in the industry. Make sure to ask questions during the initial and final process of interviewing an agency! 

For more information on SEO strategies, contact us today.