January 14, 2020

6 Easy But Stupid SEO Tactics You Must Avoid

As an SEO professional, you should know how to avoid the most common black hat tactics. It is always wise to stay on the side of white hat SEO.

SEO is a process that includes multiple white hat strategies, but some of those strategies can destroy the overall performance of your SEO strategies.

Such tactics are known as Stupid SEO Tactics.

6 Easy But Stupid SEO Tactics You Must Avoid: eAskme
6 Easy But Stupid SEO Tactics You Must Avoid: eAskme

Other people are reading: Biggest Link Building Misconceptions That Always Comes Up

The big reason why some SEO strategies can hurt your SEO performance is that they are too easy to be used.

Your organic search will suffer if you keep on ignoring the result of your SEO tactics.

Here I am sharing the list of 6 Stupid SEO tactics that you must avoid, such as;

Same tactic for every client:

This strategy is most common among most of the newbie SEOs or freelance SEO professionals.

There is one thing that you should understand is that the need of every client and every website is different.

Even the big agencies are using this stupid seo strategy for SMB to manage the projects efficiently.


After completing the on-page optimization of the website, the next thing they do is to start publishing blogs and buy backlinks.

It is an easy tactic, but the same time id doest not work well always.

This can bring some positive results in the beginning, but in the long run, it can severely impact the growth of your business.

What to do:

Study each website and create a unique SEO strategy for each site.

Find ways to reach the target audience in unique ways.

Take the help of a competitor analysis strategy and track the high ranking pages of your competitors.

Find out what type of content strategies they are using. Note down all the procedures your competitors are using and start searching for content gap opportunities.

Create content to fill the content gap.

It will surely take some time to do research and create content that will be better in every way possible, but the result will be much better than your expectations.

This will also help you build trust with clients.

Stop blaming algorithm updates:

I have met many SEOs who start complaining every Google runs an algorithm update. This is undoubtedly a stupid strategy.

Remember: Google algorithm updates are persistent these days. You cannot go away just by complaining. You have to make efforts to create an algorithm proof strategy for better ranking and more organic traffic.

Most of the time, ranking drop happens because your SEO strategies are not according to Google’s guidelines.

Here are the most common reasons why your Organic ranking drops:
  • Technical SEO issues
  • Seasonal content or updates
  • Content changes
  • Manual actions
  • Competitors
Keeping that thing in mind, you mustn’t just follow the easy way but find the best and unique way.

Important Tip:

Don’t panic, even if your website ranking took hits.

Sometimes things go normal with time.

Do not madly start editing everything because this can create more complications.

What to do:

Take the help of SEO recovery guides. Such guides sill help you to get back on track and improve your ranking.

But you should do it only if you are sure that your website got a hit by some search algorithm update.
Here is how you can find out if your blog or website got hit by algorithm updates:

New Technical issues:

Technical issues on a blog or website are the most common reason why your ranking can drop.

When a blogger or webmaster start editing or updating various parts of blogs or website, then it can cause technical issues.

Identify technical issues by checking:

Coverage report in Google search console.

Run Sitebulb crawl or Screaming Frog crawler to check for changes in crawl traps and structure.

Use SEO tools to run a website audit.

Check disallow factors in robots.txt

Check how Google is rendering your blog or website.

Content Changes:

Change or update in existing content can also cause a change in ranking.

If you have updated content and seeing a drop in ranking, then you should also check what is happening with your competitors.

Identify site changes by checking:

Wayback Machine

Use Activity log plugin to track changes.

Visit Google analytics and check which page has received a significant hit.

Seasonal:

You may hardly find any website that does not have a seasonal impact.

If your client complains about the rank drop, make sure that you should check already set benchmark history before replying.

Check the seasonality of the content and market; then, you will be able to tell your client if the impact is seasonal or not.

You can predict the future expectations.

This will help you improve.

Competitor:

Your organic ranking and traffic can even change if your competitors can start improving their content and SEO strategies.

You can start getting hints about it when your organic ranking starts dropping. Usually, you will see sharp drops in the Google Analytics report.

Even if your competitors are trying to steal your ranking, don’t panic.

You can also do the same. Start tracking your competitors and their ranking profile.

Manual Actions:

Check Google search console to find out any manual action.

Same Content Copy on Multiple sites:

One of the most common yet stupid SEO tactics is to use the identical content copy on multiple websites.

This usually happens when you are re-purposing the content and publishing on other sites to get link-backs but using the replica of original content.

You can get a better ranking if you use fresh content for each location.

Automated Auditing Tools:

There are so many SEO tools available online that can automate the process of error finding and help you to plan the perfect strategy.

But if you are solely relying on an automated auditing tool, then you will be missing the bigger picture.

Many SEO professional follows this somehow stupid tactic.

Why?

Automated tools don’t let you ask questions.

You should ask the question to SEO freelancer or SEO agency, such as;

  • Who is your target audience?
  • Is there any crawl issues?
  • Does the internal linking structure is the up-to-the-mark.

What to do:

Use visualization tools to identify the site structure.

Identify content gap opportunities and technical aspects of your website.

Search engines prefer error-free sites.

Buying Links:

Paid link building is a grey hat SEO tactic.

Usually, SEO’ fix a monthly budget to buy new backlinks.

But, relevance and quality are not always upto the mark.

What to do:

The snowball effect is associated with the link building.

If you earn a link from a popular publication, then other publishers also start linking to that article.

Earn backlinks from countable publications.

This will multiply the growth of your backlink profile.

Not Asking Questions:

You can search the answer online, but this is not the best way your strategy or planning depends upon it.

The better way to ask the question is by joining a one-by-one session with an SEO agency or running polls on Twitter.

If you do not know something, don’t worry, no one can make fun of you.

Final Words:

Are you still living with stupid SEO tactics?

Do you know that these tactics can not only cost you in terms of traffic and ranking but also cost you the number of followers and subscribers?

If you have any question, do let me know via comments.

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