SEO is ever-evolving, meaning what mattered with search engine optimization yesterday isn't necessarily going to matter today. There are lots of things you can do to keep your website relevant online, which is why we recommend you don't spend your time doing these outdated practices:
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1. Keyword Stuffing
This practice has morphed and changed more than any other practice over the years. While keywords certainly are relevant, slathering exact phrases and keywords all over your site is old school and won't rank you any higher than your neighbors.
Google no longer looks for matches this way. Today the massive search engine works to understand the meaning behind keywords so it can deliver high-quality, relevant content with every search.
2. Submit Your Site to Google
It used to be that in order for your brand new site to be found in a Google search, one had to submit their website information to Google.
This is no longer the case. Bots and crawlers will eventually find your site and index it accordingly, so submission isn't necessary. Just create stellar web content and you'll be noticed in no time.
3. Buying Backlinks
Once upon a time having lots of backlinks on your site helped you rank higher. Sometimes site owners would buy weak backlinks to achieve this. Now this is a no no.
If Google finds you're peppering your pages with backlinks that aren't real, they'll penalize you. They call it a link scheme. And while a decade ago it worked, today it's considered tacky and won't rank you at all.
Having said this, link building is still relevant in an SEO search. Focus on the quality of those links, however, rather than the quantity, and Google won't kick you to the curb.
4. More Web Pages Means More Traffic
If you think having more pages on your website will lead you to the number one spot in a search, you might be wasting time building pages that don't matter.
One, the additional pages may never be indexed. Two, Google may read those pages as bogus content. Thanks to updated Panda algorithms, Google can detect bad content quickly and penalize the culprit if necessary.
One page of solid, unique, specific, quality content will take you further than eight pages of keyword stuffed, irrelevant content.
5. User Experience is Secondary
Web pages deliver information, that's true. But today Google wants websites to deliver, first and foremost, an excellent user experience for visitors.
Look at is this way: when you search on Google, you are asking Google to bring you the best of the best. They need to deliver. If they bring you irrelevant or outdated information, you'll leave them for another search engine. That's why their current algorithm brings you pages that load quickly and have a low bounce rate.
If you want to improve your Google ranking, create a site that makes user experience delightful. Share content that is meaningful and you'll rank with relevance.
