5 SEO Tactics Your Business Should Avoid

Aside from my interest in Internet marketing, I am a huge exercising enthusiast. In a way, SEO and exercising are quite similar.

You're probably wondering, how do these two, completely different things relate to each other?

Well, exercising takes time. It requires dedication and motivation to achieve desired results.

For example, people are always looking to get quick results. They want to build muscle fast and lose weight quickly. Therefore, they opt for steroids and other substances to bring fast results. However, these types of substances are unnatural and harmful for the body. In the long-run, they'll even cause you to lose the muscle you've gained.

Similar to steroids, taking the quick route for SEO by using black hat SEO tactics will bring you negative results in the long run. Sure, these tactics may bring you an immediate boost, but they will eventually cause you to receive penalties from Google.

Besides steroids and black hat SEO tactics, I'm going to talk about 5 SEO tactics that your business should avoid in this blog.

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Broken Links on Your Website

Broken links are hyperlinks that no longer direct to its end destination. Many website owners don't realize that some of the links on their website are broken.

When you're linking to old content or any content at all, there's a chance where the destination website may be removed or the URL has changed. In fact, changes to the name of a webpage or linking to content that has been removed or deleted can all cause a broken link.

When customers click on these links and get directed to the wrong pages or a broken page, they're most likely going to leave your website. Broken links can affect your search engine rankings and user experience.

If you have a broken link on your website, make sure to find the appropriate link to replace it. There are several tools on the web and extensions you can install to find broken links on your website.

Non-credible Links

Website links are very important for Google. They allow Google to understand and analyze your website. The best analogy of this is doing an exercise routine and have Arnold Schwarzenegger comment on your great form. It is a powerful testimonial from a reliable source.

Similarly, quality links from reliable sources are what Google looks for when ranking your websites on their search engine result pages. When you're linking other websites in your content, make sure to choose reliable and resourceful links. Avoid spammy links or non-credible links that can affect your SEO.

Obtaining links may be difficult, especially when Google has encouraged individuals to avoid link building. Instead, build yourself as a credible source and earn your links.

Links from quality sites may not be easy to obtain, but you should work from the theory “quality vs quantity”. One good link is more likely to boost your organic ranking than ten spammy links.

Not Measuring Your Results in Analytics

When you're looking to lose weight and build muscle for your body, you need to track your calories and understand the amount of food you're taking in. When you don't pay attention to your eating habits and track your progress, you won't know if you're on the right track.

The same can be said monitoring your SEO performance. When you're not monitoring your Google Analytics, you won't be able to see how your website is performing. Did your website's organic traffic drop? Where are most of your customers coming from? Where are you losing traffic from? Do you know which web page has the most referral traffic for your business?

If you're not monitoring your website's performance, you won't be able to understand where you need to make improvements. Therefore, it's extremely important for you to track your performance and understand where your website may be falling short.

There are many different types of reports you can look at in Google Analytics. Check out this great blog here to see how you can use Google Analytics to monitor your website.

Plagiarism

No one like's a copycat and in the SEO world, copying someone else's’ work is definitely frowned upon.

When Google performs an audit on a website, it looks for distinct and unique content to provide searchers with the most relevant results. Copying someone else's work can cause your search rankings to decrease. When you're duplicating content in hopes of ranking on search engines and driving more traffic to your site, you may risk getting a Google penalty.

Although creating unique content can take more time, it will provide SEO results and overall marketing benefits for your business.

Never Updating Old Content

A few years ago, Google released an update to help make search results "fresher." When Google is auditing and crawling website, they want to find the best result for their searchers.

In addition to updating content for Google, you want to update your content for your readers. You want to provide the most relevant and recent information for your readers.

For example, if you have a blog on Internet marketing strategies from back in 2012, then you may want to update the blog and remove any strategies that no longer work or provide the best results. If you don't want to refresh your old blogs, you can consider writing a new one and link your old ones to it.

I hope these five SEO no-no's will keep you on the right track for your SEO efforts. Remember, lasting and positive results take time.