3 Outdated SEO Techniques to Avoid in 2014

Search Engine Optimisation – or SEO for short – is an extremely important part of your online marketing campaign and shouldn’t be ignored. When used correctly, SEO has the potential to bring your website tons of new traffic and this can lead to more subscriptions, sales and a bigger presence online. However the nature of SEO has changed in recent years, and old SEO techniques may no longer be effective in helping draw ever increasing amounts of traffic to your little corner online; in fact, some of them might actually be hurting you. That’s why it can be helpful to speak to SEO experts Search Factory if you’re serious about your SEO in 2014 and beyond. But in any case, here are 3 outdated SEO techniques that you’d be wise to avoid from now on.

Article submissions

In the past, submitting articles to article directory websites such as Ezinearticles.com was an effective way to get some much needed link juice. But in 2014, it’s simply no longer effective to submit articles to these websites for the purposes of SEO. Instead, website owners serious about SEO should focus their efforts on building relationships with other bloggers and websites. Writing guest posts is a great way to get some quality links pointing back to your website. As a general rule, the bigger the authority of the website you’re guest blogging on, the better the pay off in terms of SEO.

Writing for Search Engines

In the years before the Penguin and Panda updates, savvy online marketers wrote content that appealed to the Search Engines instead of actual people. Why? Because in days long gone by, it was possible to craft content in particular ways that made it appear to be more relevant and of higher quality than it actually was. This would then help the website rank higher on Search Engines such as Google. For example, stuffing your content and meta tags with certain targeted keywords used to help websites rank higher for those particular keywords. But not anymore. These days, Google and other Search Engines scan websites for this unethical SEO technique, and ban those that are guilty of it – either temporarily or permanently. So make sure you always write your content for real people. This means crafting your content using natural language and aiming for quality over Search Engine appeal.

Over-optimised anchor text.

Finally, recent algorithm updates mean that Google (and other Search Engines) are now on the lookout for websites that use unnatural or over-optimised anchor text throughout their content, and penalising (sometimes banning) those websites found to contain too many of them. Over-optimised anchor text suggests that the content has been written for marketing purposes only and not for real people. And this won’t help you at all with your SEO. Remember: Google are committed to providing search users with content that is of high quality. Websites that provide none of this quality are looked down upon by Google, and consequently won’t occupy too high a position on the Search Engine Results Page.

So there you have it. Make sure you avoid these outdated SEO techniques in 2014 and beyond and give your website the best chance of ranking high with the Search Engines. What other outdated SEO techniques do you think website owners should avoid from now on? Leave your comments below and contribute to the discussion today.