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Search engine optimization, for quite some time, has been considered as one of the essential forms of digital marketing. Unfortunately, not all are beneficial to your website. And while you’re working on your own optimization efforts, you should not only know the tactics which are effective but you should also make yourself aware of those that can destroy your Google rankings. Although bad SEO isn’t something uncommon, here’s what you need to learn about some SEO practices that can hurt your search rankings.
Publication of Irrelevant Content
Content plays a vital role in getting your website rank highly on the search engines. If you have an irrelevant content on your site, then you’ll more likely lose your online visibility. That’s why content creation means having only what’s relevant to your business, industry and most importantly your customers. For example, Google may find it more confusing if you publish a content about plumbing services but your business involves hotel management. Remember that SEO isn’t about posting any type of content. Instead, all contents should be germane to what you’re selling to your customers. Likewise, it should also be something that considers the needs of your target audience. So if you’re not cautious enough when it comes to the type of content you’re using, then your rankings may be compromised.
Keyword Stuffing
Like content, keywords can also help your site rank highly in Google. With the right keywords, you can reach the top of the search results. However, keywords aren’t all the time useful in terms of website optimization. This is especially true if you keep on doing keyword stuffing. Take note that excessive keywords in the content can alert the search engines that you’re trying to trick their algorithms. Hence, you should refrain from repeating the keywords over and over again because it can be bad for your SEO campaign. If possible, mention your keywords in the title, meta description and in the content a few times only.
Excessive Ads Above The Page
You may not be aware but too many ads above your page is a bad SEO. Keep in mind that having excessive ads above the fold which is visible without scrolling can impact your rankings. This is because Google tends to punish websites with unnecessary ads in there. So if you notice a decrease in your web traffic, maybe it’s about time to check whether you’re affected by the page layout algorithm or not.
Slow Websites
Websites that have slow loading speed is also considered a bad SEO. With today’s digital advancements, an online user should expect sites to load in 4-5 seconds and these should also be available round the clock. Having slow websites can discourage users, which is why you should be very particular in terms of your loading speed. For instance, you can use the option of hiring a good hosting provider to help you build fast and 24/7 available websites which can load within the accepted time.
Too Much Outgoing Links
Incoming links aren’t only the ones that can hurt your website. As a matter of fact, having a lot of outgoing links can also impair your chances of ranking highly in the search engines especially if you fail to use the “nofollow” tag. To save yourself from bad SEO, make sure to use “nofollow” tags in links found in the ads, comments and even websites that you don’t know and fully trust.
Paid Links
In the world of SEO, building a good website takes some time and it needs a huge amount of patience to get valuable backlinks naturally. But because of the long process, most businesses prefer shortcuts to get what they want without thinking that it can only damage their SEO efforts. Even though you may experience temporary success, in the beginning, paid links should be discouraged because once Google will find out, your site will be in a terrible situation. As a result, you will lose your current rankings and what’s worse is you’ll start from scratch again.
Failure To Use Google Webmaster Tools
Although you have the best SEO strategies in place, these will still be useless if you’re not using Google webmaster tools. Your failure to use such tools means losing your opportunity to gather a lot of information about your website which is very important in understanding and boosting your overall SEO. With webmaster tools, you can track things like duplicate titles, bad links, crawl errors and many more.
The Bottom Line
While SEO can bring you on top of the search engines, you should still keep in mind that not all involve good practices. There are some that can hurt your rankings in a way that you’ll possibly lose web traffic as well as customers. However what’s important nowadays is to follow good SEO strategies which are based on Google standards. If you think getting a professional SEO company like omegaseo.co can help you with your marketing campaign as well as guide you in using the good strategies, then there’s no reason to wait. Do it now and start converting your rankings into profit.
