SEO Practices: Good vs Bad

Websites rely on Search Engine Optimization to climb up search engine rankings for relevant keywords, attract the attention of visitors, gain credibility in the online world and ultimately increase the success of a business. However, not all SEO practices implemented or suggested by SEO experts positively contribute to these goals.

Recently articles have been published highlighting the negative reputation SEO agencies have, this is due to certain practitioners that focus on the short-term results or simply by promising more than is possible, rather than identifying opportunities and building them into long term ethical SEO strategies.

SEO Practices You Should Avoid

Keyword Stuffing

Keywords, which should be in URL slugs, schema tags and page titles of a website, help search engine crawlers work out what a web page is about and what search queries the page should rank for.

If a webpage is ‘stuffed’ with keywords it can appear confusing, repetitive and hard to follow. Keyword stuffing is a practice used by unprofessional SEO agencies and, although a webpage may rise in rankings to start with, it won’t be long before Google robots detect this and penalise the website.

With algorithms updating in real time, the negative impact of keyword stuffing will become apparent very quickly.

Duplicating Content

Content on webpages should be new, current and up to date. Content is not just an SEO tool; it is a great marketing strategy to engage your audience.

Using the same content and republishing it, either throughout your website or by sending the exact same article to numerous bloggers/online publishers will be quickly flagged by Google robots and you will be penalised.

Link Spam

Gaining valuable links from other websites who have a good, relevant audience and a good domain authority (anything over 50 is usually a very well trusted website and a great link) is an important step in increasing your websites ranking.

Link building is not always an easy practice, however getting good quality links from relevant and trusted websites should never be compromised for low-quality links. Avoid link farms and outdated directories. Link building is based on trust, if Google sees that a site is being linked back to by low domain authority and untrusted websites, that site will soon be branded as untrustworthy as well.

POLARIS is an SEO agency based in London, for a free audit contact one of our account managers at : info@polarisagency.co.uk