Content is king and SEO is God — it is the crucial ingredient to growing a business’ brand. Now that Google is more punitive and SEO mistakes could tank your ranking or can make you blacklisted, it’s essential to work on your SEO, the right way.
Every marketer knows that no matter how good and effective your SEO strategy is, Google changes its search algorithm frequently, and everybody is affected by these changes. So while you looking at the latest SEO trends and applying them to improve your website’s ranking, make sure you don’t commit the following SEO mistakes because they can actually get you penalized by Google.
Buying links
Google doesn’t necessarily have a problem with paid links per se. But it does when you’re using it to manipulate PageRank, the algorithm used by Google to rank web pages.
Sure, some companies are in the practice of buying links as a way to drive their revenues. However, if you buy links from spammy, and disreputable sites then good luck to you. It’s like you’re dealing with a crack dealer, you might not get caught today, but sometime soon Google will find out.
Bad links
On top of buying links, another big SEO mistake that you should steer clear from are bad links.
When Google launched the disavow links tool back in 2012, marketers went crazy. And here’s why: they felt that every bad link will potentially tank their rankings—and they weren’t wrong. Bad links can and will hurt your website’s rankings, but it doesn’t happen often. (You can breathe easy now.)
Generally, you shouldn’t encourage these kinds of links, but the bigger your site is the more likely junk site will naturally link to yours. Of course, you can always disavow every bad link.
Wrong link directories
Nowadays, link directories are one of the misunderstood aspects of SEO. Back in the day before modern search engines like took over, they were ‘the internet’. They were an essential aspect of any SEO campaign.
So how does this affect your site? Well for one, Google categorizes web pages into “neighborhoods.” If your website is frequently mentioned along with trusted, authority websites then you’re considered a part of a “good neighborhood.” But if your links come from pages that link to spammy, junky sites, then you’re a part of a “bad neighborhood.”
Where does link directories fall in? The bad neighborhood, but not all of them. The web directories that are nothing more than a repository for junk links are the ones you should steer clear from.
Keyword stuffing
“Keyword stuffing” is basically using a keyword over, and over, and over again in the desperate hope that the article will get better ranking.
Here’s an example:
Golden retriever dogs are adorable! Many of my friends would love to have golden retriever dogs as pets. They say golden retriever dogs seem too difficult to be trained, but golden retriever dogs are really smart! I hope to be able to own or adopt golden retriever dogs soon.
Reading it is unbearable, isn’t it? Because it’s unnatural to stuff the same keyword in a short sentence. But hey, it’s optimized, isn’t it? That’s the important part!
Wrong. And here’s why: Keyword density plays a part in Google’s algorithm. It’s part that tackles Google’s top concern for good user experience. Meaning, nobody is going to read articles that are stuffed with keywords, and Google won’t allow it either.
But let’s say you get to have your article published with stuffed keywords, do you think anyone is going to link to content like that? Sorry, but nobody with any authority or good sense on their head would.
Throughout the years, techniques have been developed to help websites rank higher and possibly show up on the first page in Google’s search results.
However, some of these tactics are only effective but at the expense of the audience’s user experience. Good thing, Google got smarter and some of these techniques are now considered black-hat tactics or just bad enough to get your website penalized.
So while you’re improving your campaign with the latest SEO trends, you might want to think twice before committing these SEO mistakes. No matter how good or smart you are, Google just gets smarter and will eventually find out. Or as Liam Neeson, from the movie, Taken, puts it:
“What I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills [that] I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. […] If you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.”
Motion Cabin is a full-service digital advertising agency that can help you increase your conversion rates by crafting effective campaigns and engaging content that still follow the good practices of SEO.
Collaborate with us! For inquiries, just message us at info@motioncabin.com, and let’s turn your creative ideas into actions.
