Search engine optimization is a very complicated art and the rules for success are always changing. SEO experts are constantly learning new tricks as the algorithms of Google and the other major search engines are updated and changed. In order to be successful in bringing websites to the top of the search results, SEO experts must keep their finger on the pulse of which techniques work and which ones are outdated, ineffective or impractical.
There are many SEO techniques which are being practiced as we speak which actually don't have any effect on raising a websiteâАЩs ranking. Although these techniques might still be practiced, they are essentially useless and will not improve a websiteâАЩs ranking, sales, visitors or conversions. If you are concentrating on improving the SEO of your website, forget about using any of these tactics:
Meta Keywords
These were useful back in 1999, but as of this year they are virtually extinct. These days, most of the large search engines actually ignore these meta tags and do not use them when indexing the website. Adding anything to these meta keywords will have no bearing on how the search engine crawler understands your page. However, making sure the Title Tag of your page is descriptive is a good idea because this is what will show up on the Google search results page.
Instead of worrying about keywords too much, just write your web content as if you would normally and add the keywords into the text where they naturally flow. This will make your content much easier to read and it will not look like you are "keyword stuffing" which many web users find annoying.
Copying Content
Think you can get away with copy and pasting some content from someone elseâАЩs website or blog. Although you might have gotten away with it in the past, Google's duplicate content detectors are very well evolved and your ranking will actually be punished if the text on your website matches another one too closely. Other than this, donâАЩt you think it is morally wrong to steal someone else's written material without permission?
Your website should always have original and unique content. If you see something on another blog that you would like to share, you can discuss the article on your website instead and provide your own impression of it.
Submitting to Search Engines
Perhaps 10 or 15 years ago you might have needed to submit your website to search engines so that it could be indexed, but those days are long gone. Search engines no longer use that method to index sites on the internet and so it has no effect on your rankings.
Instead, search engines now have programs called "crawlers" which methodically go throughout the internet and search for new websites. Then, they search through the content of these pages and index them according to their relevant keywords. The best thing that you can do is to make sure that your pages have the right links and navigation so that the search engine crawlers can find all of the pages of your website and index them.
Header Tags
Some people might have told you that making your keywords into header tags such as H1 or H2 will cause them to have more impact on the ranking of your website. However, this is not true. While it is a good idea to make sure that your web copy is visually appealing with many headers to divide up the text, this formatting detail has no effect on your keywords or your rankings.
These are just a few of the outdated or ineffective techniques that should be avoided when improving the SEO of your website.
As any SEO expert of SEO reseller will know, the proper techniques of SEO have changed a lot over the years. Here are a few of the most overrated techniques which are still being employed even though they are useless.
