The business world is full of traditional tools and strategies that are often described as “old is gold“, or in Hindi, old is valuable. In digital marketing, and specifically in SEO techniques, there is not always a place for the use of old strategies, and this happens due to the simple fact that the algorithms
In digital marketing, and specifically SEO techniques, there is not always room for the use of old strategies, and this is simply because Google’s algorithms and other search engines are constantly being improved.
That is, what helped optimize a site or content for more and better organic results in 2003 could penalize your strategies today.
Keep in mind that the main goal of search engines is to bring the best response and search experience to their users. And it is based on this that, throughout its various updates, Google seeks to improve its conditioners to find the most relevant content.
See the evolution of some of the most striking updates:
- Florida (2003): It was the first major update of the Google algorithm and took a good chunk of low-quality structural sites from search highlights;
- Panda (2011): If Florida focused on the structure, Panda and much of the upcoming updates aimed at improving content, for example, favouring sites and publications with few interruptive read ads;
- Penguin (2012): update focused on backlinks. Google was punishing unnaturally acquired links;
- Humminbird (2013): insert the importance of keyword semantics and facilities as search suggestion features for users;
- Rankbrain (2015): brought artificial intelligence to contribute to interpretation and presentation of results. That same year, Google had also released an update that favoured smartphone-friendly content called Mobilegeddon.
In 2018 some updates fixed Fred’s algorithm flaws, emphasizing search-friendly content on the smartphone, but the one that resonated most was the one that penalized low-authority content YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) or your life).
Sites that exploit such content, according to Google, may affect the future happiness, health, financial stability or security of users. Therefore a greater demand for the authority and reliability of these sites and authors.
With so many upgrades, strategies that once yielded excellent performance results can now be considered black hat techniques worthy of search engine penalty.
Want to know if any of them are still part of your digital marketing actions? We have put together a list that deserves your attention. Check out.
1. Try ranking by focusing only on link building
The update of the algorithm called Penguin 2.0 eliminated the strategy that many SEO professionals adopted by massively focusing on link building. It consisted of getting and doing as many links as possible, even disregarding the domain of its origin.
The big problem with this strategy is that it neglects several other factors that are extremely relevant to rankings, especially affecting zeal for content.
Link building, alongside quality content, is still one of the most relevant SEO strategies and needs to be done efficiently.
It’s not just the big acquisition of links that will put your site on top. Focusing on just that can be a gunshot and even if you build a great backlink profile.
If your content, site structure, and user experience do not share this quality, you can hardly achieve great results.
2. Just focus on ranking first and forget about other SERP features
In a traditional list, being among the first results clearly offers an advantage over the other results.
But since this same page as such a list is presented is also populated by other information resources that divide the user’s attention, it makes little sense to focus exclusively on being first.
To be clear, SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page, ie, it is the search engine results page.
Thus, in the past, SERP presented only a list of links and a brief demonstration of the content.
Nowadays, given the algorithmic updates and Google’s focus on the user experience, it can present much more than links, ie features that optimize the search performed.
Focusing only on the top positions of the research, then, is a limited strategy. You have to think about optimizing content for every new opportunity that SERP presents.
In some cases, snippets of website content far beyond the first position are presented in the format of featured snippets, which are quick response boxes that are at the top of search pages, ie a position that could be called zero.
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In it, the credits and the link to the full content are made available.
They can be presented as paragraphs that describe the best concept or answer to a question, bullet-point lists, numbered lists, and tables.
2.1 Other features
The types of features that may be presented in SERP depending on the type of search performed. But, some of them are:
Rich snippets (and rich card):
In addition to the title and link of the content displayed in the search result, rich snippets are complementary descriptions or representations of content, such as a company’s geolocation or its star rating. Rich cards are variations for the mobile version of the survey;
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Graphics and knowledge panels:
Charts are displayed on the right side of the search and contain information about places or people in an organized and logical manner, such as hours and days of operation, contact data, links of interest, etc. For dashboards, they work the same way but they get the listing information from Google My Business and Maps;
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Picture Packs:
For the user experience, some search results are best presented with images. Searching for the word “cute dogs”, for example, will display a sequence of images at the top of the page.
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These examples are all free, but other strategies can also receive investments to favor the user experience, and of course, the best ranking for the company.
3. Force keyword usage
The latest updates from Google’s algorithm make it clear that the content that will rank high on is what actually produces positive effects and read quality for searcher users.
By penalizing, for example, YMYL-type sites, Google wants to offer content that is relevant, rather than directing its users to actions that may harm their physical, financial health or the general welfare of society.
In the same vein, if a publication has more to do with the nonsense accumulation of keywords and less with a message to be transmitted, its position will not be among the first ones either.
You need to consider the fluidity of the content, the writing rules of the language and even the layout of the text blocks so that the content has good positioning.
Recalling that Google knows how to interpret the keywords, ie if the word that has a high search volume is “clothing gym 2019”.
You don’t have to repeat this KW within your text or use it in your headline to rank, you must adapt it so that the headline looks good and attracts the user. And of course, during the content, you will write “from” or “to” gym clothes.
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As you can see, Google interprets the search and the best-placed results are focused on “fitness fashion”.
4. Take Yoast too seriously
Yoast is a plugin that suggests optimizing content so that it has a good search engine categorization. However, as per beaded, it is just a suggestion.
Many professionals and businesses, however, take their suggestions to the letter and end up editing the content and its settings excessively.
Remembering that Yoast is focused on good practices, not rules. And Yoast doesn’t punish your site. You can have some inner orange lights and still rank first.
Check out this other content where I explain peer-to-peer each Yoast review you need to follow and which ones you can focus on.
Working on content taking Yoast too seriously favors search engines, but not necessarily the user experience. Therefore, this strategy is not currently recommended.
5. Making non-contextualized Link Baits
Link baits are content produced to be bait and attract other external and internal links to the site, as well as promote their substantial sharing because they are fun, informational, controversial or of interest to the general public.
However, when not substantiated, it can be negative for SEO and end up penalizing the site as a whole.
An office furniture site, for example, should not use link baits talking about a child singer who has won a music contest, unless she has a relationship with her products and industry.
6. Bet on keyword stuffing
This tactic is a major focus of Google’s first major algorithm update, Florida.
Considered a black hat technique, an unethical tactic of digital marketing, is to fill the text with keywords out of context, but that is up in search volumes and most commented subjects.
It was used both associated with link baits and randomly.
In addition to being penalized by search engines, this tactic is so detrimental to the reading experience that the audience itself gave clear demonstrations that the content was bad.
That is, keyword stuffing ended up affecting other blog parameters and statistics that determine its quality, such as the length of time pages stay, for example.
7. Create one page for each variation of a keyword
SEO strategies today may not have a single front, but that does not mean they need to have one page for each variation of the keyword. This, as is already clear, pulverizes the ranking effort.
Thus, for current algorithms, the idea is to work the semantics of the keyword on the same page.
Remembering that as Google interprets the search, it knows that the same page responds to different searches, but with the same intention.
See this example with our Digital Marketing content that ran to:
Digital Marketing :
Image URL: https://www.bloggercage.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/tecnicas-de-seo-7.jpg
Online Marketing:
Image URL: https://www.bloggercage.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/tecnicas-de-seo-6.jpg
Internet Marketing:
Image URL: https://www.bloggercage.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/tecnicas-de-seo-5.jpg
In addition to strengthening the keyword by semantics, condensing its variations in one place also privileges another feature of Google search, related search.
8. Consider that larger content ranks better
Long content may or may not be more informative than others, so its size alone does not guarantee good search engine ranking.
They may have a higher volume of keyword mention, but we’ve also made it clear that this isn’t necessarily a positive factor for their optimization. Therefore, content should be large if each passage is relevant and rich for reading.
In research conducted by MOZ SEO TRENDS 2018, the trend of quality content is confirmed. Now, 69.8% confirm that posting materials and blog posts are their biggest investment in digital marketing.
This includes publications of various types and sizes. Evergreen, news, differentiated, rich, surveys, infographics and many others all come together, as together they produce a more enjoyable and efficient reading experience.
Each type of publication has a different purpose. Long, quality content also plays a crucial role in strategy, but it does not always have the immediate, but long-term effect.
They also require constant control of upgrades to continue their roles.
In short, it is interesting that a post is at least 300 or 500 words long, but this number is not rigid enough to prevent a relevant post from being made because it is not within these standards.
Lightweight content is often more shareable and the restriction of not publishing it because it is too small can take an interesting opportunity.
So always keep in mind that the ideal size of a content is always the one that completely answers the doubt that brought the reader to it, regardless of the number of words.
9. Do not use technical SEO
The evolution of how content is privileged in search results has shown that search experience is increasingly important and how relevant the results are. But that does not mean that some ground rules should not be adhered to.
Then lies the difference between technical and creative SEO. While the first focuses on elements of code organization and site structure, the other focuses on user experience in search and reading, such as the semantics that has already been cited, but also on the content scans, the use of images to enrich the information etc.
One of the main ranking factors today, for example, is the page loading speed. And every structural detail of your site can influence it.
Having a well-structured sitemap is also critical, as he will guide Google’s robots as they crawl your site, showing you the most important pages and making crawler and user navigation more optimized.
Failure to use the elements of technical SEO can be a big mistake. Ideally, a balance should be struck between the two.
10. Enter multiple keywords in Meta Description
It worked, but it doesn’t work anymore. When search engines had, as it were, limitations in their search analysis and structuring processes, a solution was created for site association and its main keywords: the Meta Keyword.
Basically, site developers and their content entered in this field what were the keywords that defined their site and wanted to be associated.
But with a lot of power comes a lot of responsibility. Or at least common sense.
And that’s not what happened. Many sites began selecting keywords that were strong but unrelated to their content or made an endless list.
With the algorithms updated, stuffing the meta keyword tags can be considered even a keyword stuffing, that is, a black hat that seeks to circumvent the search engine.
However, it should not be completely abandoned, after all, besides the tags, there is still the title and its meta description. These two can and should be worked out naturally and consistently, within their 160 character limit and varying with each page of the site.
11. Develop microsites in separate domains
This practice is not very effective because it divides the strength of ranking strategies; after all, separating links by sites does not allow one to contribute effectively to the other.
The idea was to use small sites with different domains to publish the same content and thus gain more links from other sites and hoped to attract more qualified readers to the topic.
In addition to the questionable results, it’s a strategy that doesn’t go through Google’s quality protection filters today.
12. Buy links instead of focusing on content
Too many websites over the internet, so how do you get your content referenced and not the others? This is a desperate question that always comes with the urgency to rank as quickly as possible.
This mixture of disbelief and the latent need to gain search engine positions has led many professionals to invest in buying links in forums and websites that claim to be specialized in the subject.
Some points that confirm that this strategy is bad are:
- Entities that sell links to business also do so to a variety of other stakeholders. That is, even though your project is interesting and this measure is by way of exception, once related to these contents, your link will be in the company of others of low quality that is anchored in this tactic; and
- Given the patterns algorithms are always looking for, hiring links can spawn atypical associations that will pique attention from the mechanisms that combat black hats.
SEO techniques will continue to change, but contrary to what some people in the market say, they will never cease to exist. They evolve according to the new demands of search engines and have the same goal as them, to privilege quality content.
So by scratching out old SEO strategies and investing in content relevant to the target audience, the planned content marketing goals for the website or blog will have much more business-relevant results, allowing your other elements, such as the funnel. sales and lead qualification are much more successful.