12 SEO Strategies that No Longer Work

Most SEO strategies have been buried.     seo strategies

Would you like to know them…?

Search engine optimization is a fluid, ever-changing set of best practices.

Since Google gets the lion’s share of search queries in the US, it only makes sense that SEO gurus appease Google’s algorithms while putting others (like Bing and Yahoo!) on the back burner.

Of course, Google isn’t totally transparent with how their algorithms work so there’s no cheat sheet to really make the most of your SEO.

However, the company (and Matt Cutts, Google’s spam master) has been very vocal about what not to do.

Call them black hat tricks or just outdated practices; it’s pretty easy to mess up your SEO strategy. It’s why you should always depend on a reputable SEO firm to take care of business, and only do the basic tasks yourself.

Not confident that you know the latest SEO tips? Start by looking at what not to do—here are a dozen outdated, wrong or flat out illegal means of SEO that don’t work any longer

1.   Duplicate content

There’s a big difference between duplicate content and well-translated multilingual pages.

If your website won’t pass Copyscape (well worth the subscription), then Google will catch you. Copying and pasting chunks of content isn’t just lazy and lead to poor quality, you’ll also get slapped with a Google penalty.

2.   Keyword stuffing

Google wants you to naturally and organically include keywords and phrases into your content.

This can be pretty challenging to do, especially if one of your keywords is long-tail, incredibly niche and just doesn’t seem to work.

Awkward content leads to awkward experiences for your user, and will hurt your search rankings.

 3.   Short-tail keywords

It’s the era of long-tail keywords, or keyword “themes” as Google calls them, so forget about short and sweet.

Not only does it help you stay more competitive to use something like “tips for house flipping Tampa” compared to “house flipping,” it also better matches searches to websites like yours.

4.   Putting in links then forgetting about them

Both inbound and outbound links can be a great way to maximize your SEO, but not if you don’t stay on top of them.

Just because you at one time linked an authority landing page to your website doesn’t mean that authority site still passes muster. Check your links to make sure they’re working and quality on a regular basis.

5.   Review bombing

What’s an easy way to get positive mentions of your website all over the internet? “Bomb” review sites and try to make it look like they’re all genuine reviews.

This can work in the very short term, but there are many red flags algorithms (not to mention actual users) can spot. Instead, focus on garnering real positive reviews which is the slow and steady way to win.

 6.   Buying multiple domains

There are times when this strategy works, such as when you’re a multinational business that needs to have different domains in different languages for different countries.

However, if this is a means of pursuing duplicate content, don’t bother. More isn’t always more with SEO.

7.   Forgetting about images and videos

There was a time when SEO was all about written content, and for the most part that’s still true.

However, algorithms today can “read” things like infographics and video/image descriptions are avenues for SEO gold.

Just make sure you use quality written content whenever possible to marry images and written text.

8.   Ignoring Meta descriptions

Perhaps the most overlooked of all SEO opportunities, meta descriptions are those brief lines of text that pop up with your search queries.

It’s like the teaser or trailer to your website, but it can do so much more than let a searcher know your site is the best match for them.

It’s also an opportunity to include long-tail keywords, which (should be) exactly what your viewers are looking for.

9.   Invisible text tricks

“Invisible text” is just what it sounds like: It’s invisible to the average website visitor, but still exists on a website in order to illegally boost rankings.

However, just because your viewers can’t see it doesn’t mean Google can’t. Those algorithms can read ghost text just fine.

10.   Swapping speed for images

Of course you want any images on a web site to be relevant and high quality—but not at the cost of slowing down your website.

Google considers website speed when ranking websites and you should, too. The slower the website, the lower your rankings so strike a balance.

11.   Thinking mobile readiness doesn’t matter

It’s 2014 and there are more Americans on mobile devices than desktop. Your site needs responsive design and mobile readiness in order to stay competitive.

Otherwise, it might be slow or display incorrectly which doesn’t just annoy users, but also lowers your SEO rankings.

12.   Focusing less on quality and more on quantity

If you have to choose between the two, quality trumps quantity.

Yes, it would be nice to add a few more pages to your site (that’s opportunities for long-tail keywords), but not if the quality isn’t there.

Content is king with SEO, and the royal won’t be knocked off the throne anytime soon.

Focus on white hat tactics and understand that SEO is an evolution. Like yoga, it’s a practice that will never be perfected.

165 thoughts on “12 SEO Strategies that No Longer Work”

  7. Thanks for this article I was still using the key words for every site of mine , but now I try to exclude them and ad more write content and original imagines and videos ! The content is the king and the quality of the content is very important for SEO ! The SEO is changing constantly and articles like this one are very welcome for webmasters !

  8. Really nice information. Rather than focusing more on off page seo, on page seo should be taken into consideration first. We should work smart rather than working hard. Thanks for making this post. 

  9. The seo strategies arent so much always favourable these days as the strategies are being leaked out by the bloggers so it has now bceom the war of hard work and some secret link resources . If you think i am wrong then please do reply! 

  10. It’s really a nice and helpful piece of info. I’m glad that you just shared this helpful info with us. Please keep us informed like this. Thanks for sharing.

     

  11. Very awesome content sir. Very usefull seo strategies to stay in competition otherwise, we will wipe out in a minute. thank you for sharing this awesome post.

  15. Some strategies were new to me. I have even been notecing that onpage optimization has come back into trent as you mentioned leaving meta tags which seems to be very important these days. 

  16. Wow, awesome post, I must agree with all teh 12 points stated out here! I would also like to focus more on promoting my content via videos and images, infographics, etc., not only sheer text!

  17. We know that every year one of the seo strategies is failed and something new is introduced, This means we can not gurantee of any seo strategy for ranking.

  18. Incredible indeed! I had never heard of "invisibel text" ever that was something new for me.

    As you mentioned keeping up with broken links is a tast even if we have easy access to tools which can detect them. But its a necessary evil!

    Thanks for reminding all the things which have lost flavor in SEO world.

     

     

  19. Hi sir, Thank you for sharing these tips with us. I use to focus on these tips because people who taught me about blog told me to overuse keywords and stuff the article. Also they told me to make more and more backlinks. I think I am not going in a right direction. Perhaps I need to check out your blog regularly and learn more from you. Thank you for sharing these tips here.

  24. Nice guidelines about SEO, i previously always remain focused and conscious about the quality of my post but now i am focusing more on my quality and back-linking stuff, good article to read but really don’t get "the invisible trick" point9? kindly elaborate that for me..

  25. SEO Strategy is going in today life is more competition.every one try to rank their website on search engine 1st page but they failed because of little knowledge of seo and make some mistakes i also done some mistakes.So its very helpful for my blog to rank on Google. Thanks.

  27. I would also add (as a 13th Seo strategy that do not work anymore) "buying links", wich worked for many years but now it has become very dangerous (easy to get a penalty for that :)).

  28. I have found so many nes things in thi spost that i don't know about some of seo techniques like invisble text trick and more thanx for nice post i bookmark your blog for future reading keep writing 

  31. Yet another great article, so many great points, and high quality consistency is a key.  I use a great saying for my clients when telling them about their online marketing efforts, "If you can't say anything good about it, then don't say anything at all." Even if they hate something, saying nothing. Prevents hot headed discussions that usually are bad for publicity and are sometimes very hard to remove. They should be adding to the web, not taking it away.

     

     

     

  32. this article contains a lots for the infant professionals. knowledgeable and full of informations. i got somthing new to step forward. keep going, visit again to read some more nice articles

    • Greetings to Content marketing Team… Best part of your article was about Links…

      One thing is sure a Dead or Broken links can definitely impact your Web SEO and broken or keyword stuffing can also lead to Penalty too..

      Have you found any SEO Impact among Length of articles?

      Other wise.. Well Written article bro..

    • I believe that if you do anything right, according to Google rules, there is no way you get punished and your blog will definitely rank great. I agree with all the successful strategies states, such as to avoid duplicate content, images that make the loading speed of your page slow, etc. I consider that short tail keywords are obsolete now and it is hard to rank with them cause of too much competition.

  34. In the overall picture SEO is basically still the same. I have noticed that it looks for and punishes anything close to link farm postings. In Local SEO, it now rewards YELP directory listings Back links need to be done manually with a variety of key words on high page rank do follow sites.

  35. I agree with the points you have shared in this blog post. This is an informative and useful post… This being the first time of landing here, I’m impressed 🙂

  36. Keyword stuffing has strictly been spammed by Google now days and I rather prefer to use matching keywords rather than inserting the same keyword a lot of times .Thanks fro the great post.

  37. Hey buddy Thanks for sharing this awesome SEO Tips with us. Espically I loved the One about Optimizing images and videos also Keyword Stuffing. I will Love to Share these tips with my friends. 

  38. I faced such a issues with my blog but later applied your stretegies and it worked well. I am getting good response even the readers are sending me e-mails and asking questions. Thanks for sharing such a good post.

    • Many thanks a lot. You  really a wonderful write-up that you posted. Content that you’re undertaking like wonderful share for people like us, visitors,  made the day.

       

    • Thanks to Google for making such an advanced algorithms to make this online world spam free.

      Back in 2005-05 such techniques were working and people made hell lots of money by putting very less effforts, but as the internet is growing spamming is also growing.

      Thanks a lot for putting efforts to list all these methods which are no more working now. This post is going to help all SEO experts who are working on their own or client's websites.

      • I think we need radical changes in our content marketing strategies since google recent algorithm updates. What used to work before in terms of SEO is no longer applicable. We need to check for broken links, disavow bad links, update outdated content from past posts!

  43. Hi , Lovely startegies even I did the same mistakes when I started my blogging career, thanks for recalling those bad memories 🙂 very nice points to beware of this blogging.

  45. Keyword stuffing has never worked and will never will, more generic keywords in any post do drive traffic but Google can clearly see stuffed keywords. 

  47. A big focus I think we need to make with SEO in the near future is getting the technical elements right but also working on making our sites places our audience want to spend their time with great design & content too

  49. I agree with the points you have shared in this blog post. This is quite an informative and useful post for many who want to learn ranking factors. I think you have included all the vital parts of SEO that are necessary to use with proper strategy. Thanks for your valuable thoughts.

  51. You have complied an amazing list here…I am learning a lot about Seo everyday, the more I lean the more I realize, how much it is changing on daily basis. Google is getting smarter with its algorithms and the techniques that once were considered gold are not good enough anymore. So, I agree to all these points you have shared and really appreciate your efforts on this post. Thanks

  54. Its a good post, now seo has changed a lot and rather then stuck with old techniques we should try to experiment with new which is working otherwise we will be left behind and our competitors will win the race, you have mentioned some of the very common old techniques which is still in use by many seo's thanks for creating awareness.  

  55. SEO still needs to be managed carefully as a core sales/leads driver, that means dedicated specialists who understand crawling, duplicate content, on-page and off-page ranking signals. In particular you need specialists who can mine the analytics to identify opportunity or problems from SEO.

  58. This is all reputable advice and I agree that quality is king when it comes to SEO. You should offer your audience something value and not just try to sell something. Take your time a build a quality site that Google loves. 

  59. Today user experience is most valueable thing for ranking up on search engines.SE love the user exeperince to rank high to website and we know that only one way to improve user experience   & that is quality.

  60. Hey Mate!

    Is it necessary for a website to bre responsive? If yes then what framework or theme will you recommend to newbies? BTW, I appreciate your post as you've highlighted very important points. I really like the images point. I think, i used to add large images to my articles. Now i'll start using smaller images. Thanks 

  61. Hey Michael,

    I am very much impressed by yor way of writing just because that you writes a complete article every time. I don't think you have skiped any of the SEO techniques over here. Thank you.

  62. This is awesome post and I think very necessary for all the new as well as establisshed SEO. As this world is Panda and Penguine era now, it is very difficult to rank the site and the strategy which do not works, should not be followed. Thansk for all the points, I agree with all the points which you have metioned.

    So thanks again for the post.

  65. Bill gates Says – Content is King And these words right now at this time. Quality content with backlink always work and give huge traffic. I am apply this method on my blog and i am getting traffic from this method. You are share all these thing right. duplicate content, site speed and mobile friendly blogs is important thing now days. So thanks for sharing this great article.

  66. This is a valuable post for all newbies out there. Many newbies waste there intial time to earn income fast online. There are so many of them who are still following above tactics to rank good but all of them are a big fail. It is great that people like you are there to help. 
    Keep it up!

    • Hey man, finally an useful post about the SEO tactics that no longer work. I have been reading a lot of outdated SEO related posts lately, but I was pretty sure that some of them no longer work nowadays as Google is very frequent in updaing their algorithms. Thanks a lot for sharing this post, will do a share on my social profiles for sure. Keep up the good work!

  68. You have shared such an amazing post here. I really like reading this information.These all seo strategies are so useful. I will definitely share this information among my friends.

  72. Hi !

    You created a great list! They're quite simple but there are incredibly important for any website. 

    I look forward to seeing your future posts !

  73. Hello,

    Amazing post . Your all points are very helpful for all bloggers .I understand seo strategies from your 12 points. I will share this post with my followers.

    Thanks to share this post with us:)

    Have great day!

    Regards,
    Mohd Arif

  74. Hi Michael,
    This is such type of topic you have go through in this post is something that very blogger wants to touch. But you have done a splendid job by giving a thorough discussion and deep information over here. Thanks alot !!

  75. I agree on everything but the 8, about meta description: surely it helps a lot the users, so it should be used, but for my experience I don’t think it can give you a boost in serp: maybe 10 years ago, now not any more.The tag title is ten times much more useful for seo reasons. A site without meta can go along quite fine. Of course just IMHO. Anyway thanks a lot for the article and your advice, your blog is great, that’s the first time I visit it. Sorry for any possibile mispell: I’m italian, from Rome.

    Andrea

  76. I already know about this. This is why i focus on quality posting. No copy paste. No gossip and so on. Just produce the articles that benefit for reader for something that they want to know

  79. Great Post man it is really helpful, even i am the victim of some of these mistakes. Your article will really help me in improving tactics with SEO optimization.

  80. Hi,

    True, Most of the new bloggers and even some experienced ones are still focusing on quantity of post they post per day on their blog. They actually believe that if they will push 5-10 posts per day their blog authority will increase.

    I actually don’t agree to the point. Google keep saying that it loves quality content and I don’t think people who post 5-10 posts per day could maintain the same quality in each of their post. I prefer to write a detailed article rather to write multiple 500 words articles.

    Regards
    Tauseef Alam

  81. Hi Mate
    I am totally agree with your tips which you have mentioned here in this article.

    I always notices that your blog posts are so unique and easy to understand. Many people like me will surely get help with thids post because this post is so helpful to others including me. Thanks for sharing it with us. 🙂

  82. thank you for sharing this important list of seo strategies. People often tend to use keyword stuffing for short term goals but they tend to fail. Most newbies should learn from this post. thank you for sharing.

  83. Hello Michael,

    I used to do this mistakes when i was new in this field.
    Thank you for making it easy to understand for new bloggers.
    What i think here, not only google wants new content but readers are also hungry for new content they like to read different and new topics with new content.
    When we are focus to increase the quality of writing same time we should not ignore the quantity..
    Thank you 🙂

    • I personally I i Dont Like duplicate content   or keyword suffling etc its all spamming  i seen google no longer with these type of website but its really a nice reading article

       

  84. This is right; these strategies of SEO are no longer working. Now days more smart type of new work is needed to get you site or blog ranked in Google.

  85. The Seo Stratgies which you have shared with us is Best for newbie like me.

    I have Learned lot of things from this Article and thanks for sharing such a helpful article.

    I want to tell you last one was the best. you are write that Quantity is not important . Quality is more Important.

    Thanks again for sharing a helpful article. 🙂 🙂

  86. Hello,

    This is great information.We at times tend to forget all these simple tips.We put so much in our websites not considering a reduction in loading speed and quality.This makws so many people no experience better results.

  87. It’s another learning method about these 12 SEO Strategies that no longer work. This is very helpful and useful most of the bloggers. I learned and many great tips here. Thanks for sharing the article. Great post!

  89. Happy New Week Michael,
    This is the first time i am coming to your blog,i am impressed by what you have here, your layout, style of writing and choice of words are awesome, keep doing good sir.

    ….. Edith.

  90. Hi Michael,
    Your 12 points are well understood, in time past i had fallen victim of some of this stuff you mentioned above, thanks for a reminder to be focused once more.

    May i use this medium to inform you that i have listed your great blog amongst Nigerian Bloggers List in my blog @ http://www.oracleblogger.com

        • Great Post, also sharing the site of Facebook dont boosts up the post nowadays. 

          The only way to rank a blog these days according to the Google Algorithm is Quality and Quantity as well. Google changes its Algo always so better focus of Content because Content is King 🙂
          Thank You 

          Happy Blogging 😀 

          • You know what is best about this post? Every point is explained in a nice manner.

            Recently Google gave out a news that now it is going to rank websites over its truthfulnes, not over its links which is a bad news for spammers who provide low quality content but get high rankings due to high amount of links they get.

  92. Many new bloggers doing these mistakes you have mentioned here. That’s why many bloggers quit blogging in few months.

    This is about your 12th point. There is no doubt that quality is better than quantity. But we can’t forget the quantity. Google wants fresh content. We have to give it.

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