Search engine optimization is a long term process. There is no one formula to it except user experience. Unless you are really putting effort into making sure that the readers enjoy your content and navigate through your website easily, your SEO strategy is not on the right track. However, there have been a lot of techniques used in SEO that claim to provide instant results. People would tell you that those techniques are beneficial and can yield web traffic. That is true. You may receive web traffic for a while but there is no point in getting web traffic that would not convert later. Here are some of the techniques to absolutely avoid in SEO if you plan on being on the web in the long term.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the practice of stealing someone’s intellectual property. In SEO, it means when you copy content from a website and publish it as your own. Essentially, you are trying to give an impression that the content is created by you. You are stealing people’s ideas. In SEO, when search engines detect plagiarism, not only the website that plagiarizes but also the website that is the original publisher of the content gets penalized. This is because search engines lack the intelligence to tell what website has the original content. Likewise, the owner of the content can sue your website. You can be taken to the court for plagiarizing. Your website will be brought down. You don’t want that in any case. This is why plagiarism is important to avoid in SEO. You can use an online plagiarism to make sure that your content is not plagiarized. Another thing to note is that it is not just the text content that can be plagiarized. If you are using images from any website, make sure to give them proper credits.
Click bait content
Click bait content is the type of content where the apparent headlines, images and Meta description of the content are only there to ensure a click from the visitors. They make fake promises to get traffic on the web but that does not sustain in the long term. When websites do that, they lose credibility. You can make people to click on such content once but once they recognize your domain, you will lose followers.
Keyword stuffing
Keywords are words used in the content that when searched on search engines, your content is shown. There is an optimum level at which keywords should be used. Keywords are measured in terms of keyword density. The optimum density is between 2 and 3 percent. This means that for every 100 words that you write, your keyword can only repeat 2 to 3 times. However, it has been a practice that the keyword would be deliberately used over and over again to trick search engines into thinking that the content shared is very relevant. But that does not remain the case. Keyword stuffing leads to making search engines think that your content is spam.
Link building through certain sources
Link building is one of the best ways to improve search engine rankings. This means that the more links you have associated with your website, the better chances you have of ranking on search engines. However, it is not just the quantity of links that matter. Quality is equally important. If you want to make sure that the websites you are getting links from are of high quality, make sure to check their domain authorities. Without it, you are just wasting time in building links that yield no fruit. Avoid any links that don’t deliver your credibility.