TOP-5 SEO Techniques That No Longer Work

Today we will talk about old dinosaur-era techniques of website promotion, which not only do not work anymore but can also harm our web resources.

Every day search engine algorithms are improving to make websites more and more convenient for ordinary users. That is why many SEO methods that could effectively ‘deceive’ search engines and bring the site to the TOP do not work now, but, unfortunately, they are still very popular among webmasters.

That is why we have collected TOP-5 techniques that will help you check your SEO optimizer's professionalism.

Highlighting promoted keywords in bold

First, let's figure out how to highlight keywords in the text in bold:

• HTML markup / - long ago, this markup made it clear to imperfect search engine algorithms which keywords were ‘important.’ In other words, the optimizer thus hinted to the search engines which keywords should be used to show the site in the search results. 

Nowadays, highlighting text in this way is an alarming sign of ‘machine’ optimization.

Here is an example of our case, a medical website.

Here we can notice toxic optimization using HTML markup, where the symbol ‘b’ stands for the tag:

We immediately drew attention to these ‘promotion methods during the initial audit.’ Having formed the TOR, we quickly managed to get rid of such optimization.

However, customers often have a problem: how to highlight text to become more readable? It is for such cases that we use:

• CSS styles (font-weight:bold) - such styles are necessary only for the user's convenience and, in this case, do not affect the processing of the text by search engines, except for improving behavioral factors.

An example of how bold font can increase the readability of the text:

In the end, what do we have? Simply putting text in bold is either a completely negative sign (HTML markup) or is part of optimizing content for user readability (CSS styles).

A large number of spam links

Many manipulations began as soon as search engines began to consider the external optimization (the number of backlinks) of the promoted site.

Customers often ask us: “We have so many links, and texts are written. Why can't we reach the TOP?” The answer is simple. You need to monitor the quality of links.

If the site has a large number of low-quality and spammy backlinks, as in the example, it leads only to a large pessimization of requests and sanctions from search engines:

As we can see, some specialists still use this optimization method, leaving many backlinks without text to their promoted sites on the forum or in the comments under the article.

If you have many such URLs that link to your site, you should urgently contact the Google disavow service and refuse such a number of backlinks.

How to properly increase external website optimization?

• Purchase article links – articles on popular and trusted information portals where we can describe the promoted product or service.
• Use crowd marketing methods – some forums still have people who communicate there and discuss pressing issues, so why not communicate with users there and tell them about our product or service :).

Behavioral factor cheating

Behavioral factor cheating is the simulation of users browsing our products or services, reading articles, etc.

In other words, bots artificially spend a lot of time on the site, so search engines believe that our site is popular and should be brought to the top.

Unfortunately, this method no longer works, but we sometimes get cases with this type of optimization. Search engine algorithms have learned to analyze the actions of real people, the ratio of the number of keywords at the top and the amount of traffic, etc., so such actions can only cause harm and sanctions from search engines.

We improve behavioral factors for our customers by improving usability, which not only gives a good profit from search engines but also increases the number of leads.

Overspamming keywords in the tag

Each page of the site has a tag in the HTML markup. Previously, it was used for the SEO optimizer to show the search engine for which queries the site was being optimized. Now such giants of the Internet as Google have improved algorithms, which is why it determines for which keywords to show our resource and for which other keywords we cannot compete with other Internet resources.

Fortunately, cases where this optimization technique is used are rare, but our initial audit includes both evaluation and analysis of the <(keywords)> tag.

Today this tag is practically not used to evaluate our site's keywords by search engines, and over-spamming can cause pessimization. That is why we analyze competitors in the niche to determine the optimal number of keywords in this tag.

Hidden elements on the site

As long as there has been optimization, the webmasters have tried to cheat the search engines somehow. There are many methods of hiding content, for example:

Insert text with the background color

Hide text using styles, for example, display: none, opacity: 0, position:absolute, etc.

There are many such cases with hidden content on the site, and sometimes even the site owner does not suspect that the contractor uses such a technique of SEO optimization. This type of promotion is ‘gray’ and most often appears from not-quite-friendly optimizers who can insert links to their other resources into the site.

Hiding content from ordinary users and showing it only to the search engine is fraught with strong sanctions from Google, so before carrying out any work on the site, we analyze all the content on each page to exclude such ‘gray’ SEO techniques.

Conclusion

Now that we have clarified the main outdated SEO techniques, you can check your SEO optimizer to understand your business. We at SvitSoft use only white-hat promotion methods, based on the recommendations of assessors, so that not only search engines but also the client and visitors who will be future customers are satisfied with the promoted site.