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Tactics You Should Avoid
SEO Horror Story Black Friday/Cyber Monday
As far as search engine optimization goes, there’s a few horrifying stories. Search Engine Specialists tell tales amid the incandescent glow of their computer screens. It’s scary!!
It’s about a terrifying monster. So scary, that it puts fear in the hearts of anyone who work diligently on the tangled and twisted web sphere.
This menacing creature crawls websites inflicting damage so significant, that is impacts the overall health of your website.
Who is this masked creature of the night, you may ask? It’s the Black Hat of SEO! (Amid screams!)
Black Hat SEO Black Friday/Cyber Monday
If you haven’t soiled your pants by now, let us go deeper into this gruesome tale.
There has been those folks who have attempted to game the system. They are seeking a more favorable position in the unending quest of better search engine results. This has been a problem since the rise of search engine rankings.
However; over time, search engines have improved their algorithms. (a set of signal updates to determine the authoritativeness and reputation of your website). This, in order to make the web safer and more useful.
As a result, many of these unannounced updates have included a series of penalties to “punish” websites who utilize these deceptive practices. We would like to warn you about some Black Hat SEO tactics.
These tactics whether purposefully or not, do much more harm than good. Avoiding these practices will prevent you from getting coal in your Christmas stockings!
1. Keyword Stuffing
Keyword Stuffing
Just Don’t Do It
A good analysis of keywords, is the foundations of SEO knowledge. You should understand that utilization of good keywords. Keywords are a great way to optimize your website. That is well researched keywords.
And in the quest of utilizing keywords, more is definitely not better.
Keyword stuffing is referred to as over-optimizing. Therefore; search engines have been diligently advocating against it. Also, avoid stuffing your meta descriptions, title tags and on-page content with a bunch of keywords separated by commas.
General Rule of Thumb
The general rule of thumb is about 70 characters for the title tag and about 155 characters for the meta description. Additionally, you make out better if you use a free online tool to craft these tags!
Write a few paragraphs of helpful information for on-page content. You know what information your customer will find valuable. Most of all, focus on readability and overall usefulness.
2. Irrelevant Keywords
Never use Irrelevant Keywords Black Friday
Using Keywords That Do Not Relate To Your Product
Avoid another tactic that is plain wrong! Using keywords that do not relate to your product or category in order to try to rank for that key term.
The point of the matter is that in the event a customer lands on your page because of this subterfuge, they will quickly bounce from your site anyway. Since this page does not offer what they are seeking, they will leave anyway. This damages your site’s authoritativeness.
Search Engines Are Smarter
Search engines are also much faster now in determining the true subject of each web page. This is a losing situation. Conversely, try focusing on keyword quality. Choose keywords that are relevant to each page of your website and products.
3. Repetitive Content
Avoid Temptation Black Friday
Avoid This Temptation
When you are selling items that you have not manufactured, it can be tempting to use duplicated content on your category and product descriptions.
As a result, it is crucial that you understand that content is important. So borrowing these lines of text may seem like an easy fix. But beware, that duplicate content may lead to a weakening of your website’s trust factor.
This is because whenever there are multiple versions of the exact same content, search engines have to choose which version is more relevant.
For example, as a result, the relevancy is determined by which is older, has more traffic, or has a higher trust metric. This means that if you have just opened your ecommerce store, your site probably won’t be chosen.
Useful and Unique Content
Search engines favor content that is not only useful, but also unique. It is advised to take time to write unique product description where applicable. This will increase your chances at being organically found.
4. Repetitive Content
Never Fake Account Black Friday
Creating a Fake Profile
You may feel comfortable enough, because you are familiar with the importance of a quality backlink profile that you engage in another taboo tactic.
You may create business listings to online business directories in order to get a link back to your website.
You may even feel the need to create a business listing because you justify it that “everyone else has a profile.”
Well, that isn’t true. We are here to dispel that rumor. So before you click that “Create” button on a random business directory, take into consideration the quality of that site.
Therefore; if it’s a local business directory and you don’t have a brick and mortar location, then you really don’t have to create it. Believe it or not, there are reports where business owners say they actually get surprise visits from customers to their warehouses.
The customers report they found a business directory saying the business was open and they decided to drop by.
Customer Dropping By
Just a FYI, all links are not created equal. The same way you should never write content that is not applicable to your site, also just don’t build links that are not applicable to your business.
