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Nothing is as decisive for a website as the search engine ranking page (SERP). It is the first page people see after putting in a search query. A high rank on the SERP is thus a guaranteed way of getting noticed online, automatically leading to more traffic to your website. If you have invested time and effort in building an online presence for your brand, SEO must have been your go-to tool for the same. There is a lot of buzz around SEO and ways to boost SERP ranking on the internet. Every SEO agency will give you a handbook that includes a thousand different strategies you can follow or techniques you need to master to create the perfect little optimised website. But what often gets swept under the carpet are the “don’ts.” What will cause your website more harm than good? Which SEO practices should you steer clear of? If you are beginning your online journey, having a clear knowledge of the red flags also is supremely important. To help you ace your web game, here is a list of top 7 practices a website should never resort to.

Why should I avoid these SEO practices?

• Before jumping to the techniques, it is vital to understand why they should be avoided when many websites use some of these practices and crawl up the SERP. These sites have incorporated these SEO techniques and have gained short-term profitable results. Why should you avoid these then?
• The chief reason is that these practices are known as Black Hat SEO, a term used for unethical strategies websites can adopt to get a higher ranking. These do not comply with Google’s algorithms which penalize sites that use these techniques. The penalty is a low rank on the SERP.
• Google values only those contents which are of help to its users. Sites that use these techniques most often have little to offer to people because all they are interested in is manipulating traffic to their website and reaping short-term benefits. Google’s algorithms like Google Panda and Google Penguin will detect this unapproved behaviour, and recovering from Google’s penalty is difficult.
• Thus, if you want to build a long-term web presence for a legit brand, you need to look the other way.

What to avoid when optimising your website?

1. Use of wrong keywords:

Keywords are the lifeblood of your content. They are the exact words or phrases that a person searching for something in your niche types out in the search bar. Not doing enough research about which exact SEO keywords benefit your business can cost you that high rank on the SERP. If you are using a keyword that has little to no relevance to what your potential customers are looking for, you are shooting yourself in the foot. Also, Google will think that you have nothing to offer to users–down you go on the search page! That is why, while optimising your website, do not just choose any keyword. Invest time in figuring out which ones speak for your brand. Any leading SEO company will give you the same advice.

2. Stuffing your content with keywords:

If you have figured out which SEO keywords drive more traffic to your website, good for you! But are you using them in every other sentence? You might be carrying out keyword spamming or stuffing. Filling up your content with popular keywords makes it sound unnatural and results in a poor user experience. Sometimes, websites also stuff their pages with keywords that drive traffic but are irrelevant to the brand. You already know that Google does not tolerate that. Spamming was a notorious practice even a few years back, but Google’s algorithms figured it out. Now your website will get penalised for the same. Ensure that you are not making the same mistake with your SEO keywords.

3. Unethical and poor backlink creation:

High-quality backlinks are one of the factors that Google considers when evaluating your website. Backlinks are links to your website on other locations on the internet. Having good SEO backlinks shows Google that your website is valuable. However, many resort to Black hat link building by spamming links to their website on random blogs or paying different low-quality sites to post links to their website. Google finds this a manipulation scheme and loses trust in your content. That is not something your website deserves.

4. Generating thin content:

There is nothing that Google values more than its users getting just what they need. If your website has thin content (irrelevant, duplicate, or plagiarised information) that does not benefit users, it will suffer consequences. Even if your website is not creating thin content but is consistently churning out poor-quality content, Google will not be kind. Any experienced SEO consultant will recommend prioritising your core content over everything else.

5. Bad UX:

The last point highlighted that optimising your website to guarantee a good user experience (UX) is key to a high SERP ranking. But it’s not just thin content that causes a bad UX. Difficult-to-understand website design, confusing navigation, and low speed negatively impact your website’s UX. This is why building a user-friendly site with quality content should be your SEO strategy. A leading SEO agency can come to your rescue with its premium web designing services.

6. Not running frequent SEO audits:

Investing in SEO is fruitful as long as you run regular audits to detect faults in your strategy. Audits help diagnose underlying technical, on-site, and off-site problems in the website and provide you with tools to address the same. Even though you are confident in your SEO strategy, running audits every two or three months ensures that your website is perfectly optimised.

7. Not tracking Google’s ranking algorithm updates:

Google keeps releasing new algorithms that judge websites and assign them a ranking on the SERP. Since with each update, there will be newer aspects you need to optimise, keeping track helps a lot. If you know the evaluation criteria, you can adjust your website accordingly. A high SERP ranking will be the sweet fruit of labour!

Conclusion:

Avoiding these practices will benefit your website in a thousand different ways. Also, remember that honest and high-quality content always finds its way to the top. Make that your main goal. Be consistent in building your web presence. You can always take the assistance of top SEO consultants and digital solutions provider firms like Fenzo Digital. With experts by your side, there will be nothing stopping your website from ranking high on the SERP.