5 worst SEO habits to avoid in 2018

Adhering to faulty SEO habits can eventually doom your business’ website. It is advantageous for SEO practitioners to step back and change habits if they are detrimental to ethical marketing. With the new Google updates, it is important to leave the old SEO routines as sticking to them could result in a major drop in rankings. Check out the worst SEO habits that digital marketers should avoid in 2018.

1. Making an SEO plan based on previous algorithms

Search engine optimization is evolving based on the change in search engine algorithms over the years. Sticking to previous strategies could negatively affect a website’s rankings and could even result in site penalties from Google. Every SEO specialist needs to stay up to date and make a new SEO plan based on the changes.

2. Overlooking the site’s technical issues

Maybe you are consistent in building a good profile or creating content for your business, but you also need to address the technical issues that are affecting your website’s performance. These tech issues can also hurt your website’s rankings on search engines.

Check out your site’s loading time, broken links, duplicate content, content errors, sitemaps and even the robots.txt file on a regular basis to weed out errors and keep the site’s optimal performance. Further, you can take a look into on-page SEO guide where you can find some helpful techniques to optimize your website.

When creating content for SEO, make sure that the information remains vital and educational to indulge your readers in exploring your website. (Photo by DepositPhotos)

3. Building content without context

SEO is impossible without relevant content. However, most marketers are known to stuff content without relevance for SEO’s sake. By adding irrelevant and ambiguous content, your website is bound to crash and burn. If your website is connected to a blog, it is important to provide informational value to potential readers. Provoke engagement with the visitors with dynamic useful content on a constant basis. Produce good content, and your website will be soon rewarded with better rankings.

4. Putting search engine technicalities before user needs

Many marketers stick to high SERPs by satisfying all the conditions of search engines and their algorithms. But specialists forget that a search engine ultimately caters to interests of searchers and even matches user intent accurately. The endgame of SEO is to pique the interest of users, not search engines; otherwise, it is bad SEO.

5. Efforts in manipulating rankings

Search engines have consistently detected black hat techniques over the years, and have weeded out errors in their algorithms. Regardless, some specialists still stick with tricky tactics. That is akin to walking the razor’s edge since it is evident that search engines will soon identify them.

Reader-oriented content and genuine backlinks are still the order of the day, which are now recognized by search engines and cited as trusted resources.

All in all, with search algorithms getting smarter, marketers need to develop the habit of aligning their tactics with the latest SEO strategies, leaving behind old habits that are sure to affect sites negatively.

(Featured Image by DepositPhotos)

—

DISCLAIMER: This article expresses my own ideas and opinions. Any information I have shared are from sources that I believe to be reliable and accurate. I did not receive any financial compensation for writing this post, nor do I own any shares in any company I’ve mentioned. I encourage any reader to do their own diligent research first before making any investment decisions.