Signs of Poor SEO Practices

Signs of Poor SEO Practices

Search engine optimization is imperative for today’s online business presence. If you’re working on SEO and you haven’t seen a successful uptick on your site, the following issues could be the culprit.

Keyword Stuffing – Keywords are important for SEO, but you want to be smart in their application. Some companies stuff excessive keywords in an attempt to get rankings but going overboard on this process will end up pushing your audience away and could lower your ranking overall. Think quality keywords over quantity.

Duplicate Content – This issue was discussed in detail in one of our previous blogs, so we won’t get into it too much here. Just be sure you’re addressing duplicate content effectively, and although your verbiage may overlap with competitors or various pages on your site, avoid a copy/paste scenario.

Cloaking – This tactic may initially bring users to a site, but they’ll quickly leave in frustration. Cloaking is giving misleading information as a trick to get someone to visit a certain website, luring people into a subject or action they are not interested in. You only want to attract an audience that is searching for and concerned with what you have to offer, producing a genuine and satisfied customer.

Clickbait – This is a similar tactic to cloaking. It’s drawing traffic to your site with a shock-and-awe keyword or title that is misleading to what you really do or offer. It may initially draw attention, but in the end, pushes away users and will not boost your ratings. Of course, you do want to use eye-catching verbiage to encourage users to your site, just make sure it’s applicable and not misleading.

Paid Links – Link building should be an earned process, not a paid method. Buying low-quality links in a quick attempt to build credit for your site will only end up hurting your score. Correctly earned backlinks can bring in positive results and will build site reputation.

Expecting Fast Results – It’s common for unethical SEO companies to guarantee overnight results, but honest SEO companies will tell you it should take a few months before seeing a shift. Bringing in quality, steady traffic and building site credit naturally takes times, so be patient and don’t fall for any get-results-quick schemes.

Unauthentic Writing – Although your content may be written with SEO as a priority, do not write solely for search engines. Your content should be written first and foremost with your audience in mind and who you want to attract. Like keywords, quality is better than quantity when it comes to your overall content. Authentic, valuable writing creates a reliable and genuine site, and users can pick up on that quickly. Not only will your users notice poorly written content, but search engines will also notice it, doing the exact opposite of what you’ve intended to do.

Are you ready to get quality SEO assistance? The professionals at Utah SEO are aware of the poor practices mentioned above and take great care in ensuring websites are effective and genuine. For all your SEO needs or questions, reach out to us today.