One of the most amazing things about SEO is that it’s always changing. Not only does that keep digital marketing companies like Wikimotive on our toes, it ensures those who are doing the best work achieve bigger and better results as time goes on.
Now, your average small business does not have the time or resources to dedicate to SEO the same way Wikimotive does, but that doesn’t mean you can’t work on building authority for your business’s website in order to rank for the most relevant keywords.
By serving the needs of potential customers through quality content, you can grow your organic search traffic, consistently increase sales, and increase brand loyalty–all without a large marketing budget.
But while that’s within your grasp, there are also some key practices you’ll want to avoid in order to gain search engine authority. These are practices that were once widely popular among businesses and SEO companies to manipulate search engine results.
Keyword Stuffing
If you’re new to SEO, keyword stuffing is the practice of repeating a specific keyword throughout a piece of content in order to increase the likelihood of ranking for that keyword.
In the past, this technique worked well for a lot of keywords, but has now become something Google looks for in determining how genuine a particular page is compared to similar pages.
This means it’s actually detrimental to your site’s success to take part in this practice.
Buying Links
We’re closing in on 2015, and yet paid links are still a big topic of discussion amongst SEO professionals. The practice has caused plenty of sites irreparable damage through Google penalties, many of which were (and continue to be) caused by careless SEO companies looking for quick results for clients.
Be aware of the tactics your SEO company or internal expert is using to grow your site’s search engine traffic. Oftentimes, you can’t rely on the information they give you. Using tools like Moz’s Open Site Explorer and Majestic SEO, you can get a list of sites that link to you.
Take time to visit these sites and identify your link placement. If you have sidebar or footer links with exact keyword match text, you more than likely paid for that link.
The risk far outweigh the rewards when it comes to paid links.
Content Without Purpose
One of the biggest problems with business-related content is the goal of creating content that people will like gets clouded by the need to rank for specific keywords. Google made it clear with the Hummingbird update that it’s looking to punish sites that publish thin or duplicate content.
When examining content on your website now, ask yourself this simple question: “Does this page solve a problem?” If the answer is no, you need to change that. Your content doesn’t have to always be groundbreaking, but it needs to be informative.
If you can present Google with content that serves a purpose, it will serve you will increased rankings.
Writing Exclusively for Search Engines
Just like writing content without purpose will lead to regret down the road, writing specifically for search engines will also be something many businesses regret. Google and other search engines are not the same as they were 5 or 10 years ago. There are a lot of different signals that can be picked up on to determine page quality, and writing with the intent of ranking for a specific keyword is one of them.
So instead of focusing on ranking for a specific keyword, focus on writing for user intent. You can still target a keyword, but think of the natural ways a person may phrase things related to that topic.
By writing for the user, you’ll find that your site will have much better success ranking in 2015 and beyond.