The world of SEO has changed dramatically over the years and many of the tactics that worked to get traffic and status in search results pages no longer work. As a matter of fact, some of the tactics that used to be guaranteed ways to climb the results in a search engine could now get your website in a lot of trouble. If you want to avoid problems with Google and the other search engines, then you need to learn to avoid these old and dangerous SEO tactics.
In the early days of SEO, marketing companies would buy abandoned links that had some search engine credibility and then use those URLs to build a network of links that would help boost client websites. If this tactic sounds fishy, that is because it is fishy. People would pay for links into networks that were populated with websites that either did not exist, or the content was questionable. If you try putting paid links on your website today, your site will get shut down and hit with a penalty so fast it will make your head spin.
Keywords used to be like gold in SEO, but Google has changed the game so much that keywords are now just one tool you use to create good content. A keyword density of around one percent has always been the preferable level, but in the old days websites were actually rewarded for stuffing content with keywords up to a density of 10 percent or higher.
These days, the focus is on the quality of the content and not the keywords and that is why you need to hire SEO experts. If you try to keyword stuff your content today, your website will disappear from the search result pages for a very long time.
It was not that long ago that Google had no way of knowing whether or not a website owner actually loaded malware on their own website, purchased bad links, or put stuffed content on their site. In many cases, these websites were the result of sabotage SEO where a competitor would hack the site and cause all kinds of problems.
Today, Google’s ability to monitor Internet activity is extremely sophisticated and Google is getting much better at being able to tell when sabotage has taken place. There is a process a website owner can go through to try and get their website cleared and if the malicious activity points back to your website then you can expect your website to be pulled from search result pages indefinitely.
Misdirection occurs when you publish a page of content that will surely get plenty of search engine attention, but the content takes users to something completely different. For example, an article about personal finance might actually take users to a sales page for a debt reduction firm. This is an easy SEO hack for Google to catch and it will get your website blacklisted.
The Internet used to be the Wild West when it came to SEO rules and many marketing companies took advantage of that. But today, Google is getting the house in order and the old tactics that used to generate a lot of revenue can now get your website banned from search results forever.
