You always hear about the SEO techniques that you should be using. But just as you can hurt your SEO strategy by leaving out important methods – you can also hurt it by using the wrong ones.

Times are always changing, especially in the world of search engine optimization. For this reason, you want to ensure you’re staying up-to-date with what’s in and what’s out. Because we all know, Google is infamous for changing up its algorithms.

When you don’t stay abreast of these changes, your website ranking is at risk. Instead of focusing solely on what you should be doing, it’s essential to know which SEO techniques to avoid.

In this guide, we’ll discuss some of the methods you should definitely remove from your SEO playbook.

Let’s take a look.

1. Duplicate Content

Here’s an obvious one – but some website owners still fail to see this through. Duplicated content doesn’t always mean copying content from another person’s site.

In most cases, when a website owner switches domains, they forget to remove the old content. In this case, you have two of each page, which in Google’s eyes is plagiarized.

There are several ways you can handle this issue. One, you can use 301 redirects to the original pieces. Another option is to use rel=canonical attributes, which will let search engines know to give credit to one URL versus several.

Third, and final, you can use the Meta Noindex tag to prevent the page from being indexed.

2. Using the Wrong Keywords

If you want to see an SEO campaign fail quickly, then optimize your pages with the wrong keywords. And by wrong keywords, we mean those that aren’t relevant or too high-competition to rank for.

Keyword research is one of the most important SEO techniques you can use today. What you should aim for are low hanging fruit keywords. In other words, those that won’t take much to rank high for.

Focus on finding low-competition keywords that are untapped by your competitors.

3. SEO Techniques Involving Bad Link Building Practices

Links are what make the world wide web go ’round. But the only way you’ll benefit from them is if you’re using good link building practices.

What do we mean by good and bad link building practices? Well, you want your methods to be as organic and natural as possible. This means, no buying links or using link bait to get users to click on your content.

If your links take users to content that is poor quality and/or irrelevant, then it will turn both the visitor and search engines off.

Also, keep in mind it’s about quality, not quantity. It’s better to have a few high-quality links pointing back to your website than a ton of low-quality ones. Avoid placing links on sites with low trust and a spam-like feel.

4. Avoiding the Elephant in the Room (Mobile)

We can no longer deny that mobile is quickly taking over the world (wide web). Millions of users now prefer these devices to surf the web, communicate with others, and shop for products and services.

It makes sense that you optimize your website for mobile search. Not only will this attract more visitors, but it will appease Google. Google has a mobile-first index, which means you rank higher if you are mobile optimized.

Make sure your web design is responsive so that it conforms to whatever device the user is on. Also, ensure the speed of your site is fast – preferably less than three seconds to load.

5. Posting Content Infrequently

It’s easy to get caught up in other aspects of your SEO campaign, which can cause you to abandon your content creation efforts. But in doing so, you’re only hurting your chances of ranking high.

Google and users love fresh, unique content. The more content you can push out that’s high quality and relevant, the better it will be for your ranking.

Plan ahead by creating a content schedule and writing content in advance. You can even use tools that will automatically publish your content, so you won’t forget.

6. Ignoring Technical SEO Errors

It’s common for technical SEO errors to go unnoticed, especially if you don’t know where to look. But if you pay close attention, you’ll find them. And once you do, you need to fix them quickly. Not doing so will only hurt your SEO ranking.

There are various SEO errors you may come across. For example, you use “robots.txt” to help Google find and index your pages. If it’s missing, then it’ll hurt your ability to rank. The same goes for incorrectly using “noindex” for pages you don’t want to index.

Even having too many H1 tags can hurt your SEO.

7. Using a High Keyword Density

We know keyword stuffing is a big fat NO when it comes to optimization. However, there are some website owners who mistakenly place one too many keywords in their content.

You can also over-optimize by putting too many keywords in the Meta tags. You’ll find some webmasters that overload Meta tags with every possible keyword variation, thinking it’ll help.

Research keyword densities that work for the word count you’re aiming for. You’ll find that you’ll rarely have to use more than a handful of keywords per page.

8. Over-Optimizing Your Anchor Text

Here’s another area some website owners mess up in. Anchor text is the text you create a link for. The anchor text helps search engines rank your pages, so it helps to use keywords as anchor text – sometimes.

When you’re overdoing it, it will mess up your SEO. Google looks for anchor text that’s relevant, linked to an authority site. It also looks at how many relevant backlinks you have from authoritative sites.

9. Allowing Any and All Comments (Even the Spam)

Sure, comments on your blog posts look great because it shows user engagement. But keep a close eye on what they’re posting.

If there’s too much spam going on, then you need to do some cleaning up or risk a penalty.

10. Using Interstitial Ads

In other words – pop-up ads that cover most or all of a web page. These are annoying and hurt the user experience – Google doesn’t like this and neither do visitors.

Expect penalization from Google if you decide to use them anyway.

Learn More SEO Techniques

You can never have too much knowledge about SEO – there’s just so much to learn. If you’re new to search engine optimization, then you should head over to Attracta.

Our site is a valuable resource for anyone interested in learning all they can about SEO. We even have free SEO training.

Whether you’re looking for info about blogging, SEO tools, and services or Google updates, we’ve got you covered. Stop by today to see what you can learn to improve your own SEO strategies.

And if you need help with link building or optimizing your site, feel free to contact us for expert assistance!