We’re talking about SEO, so we can only rely on case studies and observations. We can never tell how our site would have ranked with a different strategy, and what seems to be working for me, might not work for others. In this article i will explain to website owners, and most SEO companies, 3 SEO techniques that will not improve search engine rankings or Internet marketing. If anything, they could possibly damage rankings or even get kicked off Google altogether.
Link Directories – A big NO NO!
Google have removed thousands of link directories from their index because they see them as spam. They are page after page of just links and nothing else. Google redress websites and web pages that have great, high value content. If you have a natural backlink within a web page with high value content, you will be rewarded by Google for that backlink. If there are pages and pages of only links and no genuine content, do you think Google will see this as a quality web page? NO! So any backlink on these directories are worthless.
Blog Comments
If your only source of link building is through blog commenting, please stop now. Blog commenting should only be used for contributing your knowledge and experience to the post to start or join a discussion. You should only be commenting on post for the sole purpose of building up a relationship with the blogger and opening a genuine discussion. People reading your comments and see you are politely making your point, they could click on your link to have a look at what you offer. Using exact keywords as an anchor link instead of your name or brand will not improve your rankings for that keyword, possibly the complete opposite.
Keyword Density
Being in the UK Internet and SEO marketing industry for over 4 years we have come across clients who have joined us because their old internet marketing company couldn’t rank their site. These clients all have the same problem, high keyword density. This is when you repeat your keywords over and over again on a web page until your keyword is mentioned more than any other word. Content should always be focused on quality with your keyword included once or twice, as long as it reads naturally. You do not need to include it 15+ times.
These are the most common spammy Internet marketing practices still being performed today, mainly by SEO companies if you can believe it. You pay your money to these companies and trust them to deliver on high search engine positions and traffic. Instead they try and create shortcuts and perform old SEO tachneques that Google openly come out and say is spam. Please ask the question before joining a UK Internet marketing if they focus on any of the above 3 spam techniques. Most will say no, but always check their work because it could be very expensive to undo all this work.
Learn more about Bad SEO here.