While striving to rank higher on Google remains one of the core goals of any website, we sometimes forget to ‘stay with the times’. There are search engine optimisation tactics which are not only very dated, but they may waste a lot of precious time and even harm your Google ascend.

Over-keywording
Also known as ‘keyword stuffing’. When a website is laced with too many keywords, the text becomes a jumbled- up mess, appearing unreadable to Google. Websites are no longer ranked according to the frequency of certain keyword appearances, so check the density of your keywording before you sit back and wait for Google to rank your website. This does not mean that you should completely avoid keywording; it simply means that it should be approached through careful research. Only include longtail keywords which are painfully specific to your company. For example, Sound Idea Digital would be more suited to a key phrase such as ‘digital marketing pretoria’ than simply ‘digital marketing’. You can also take to avoiding using footer link keywords, as Google focuses on the keywords which appear in your website’s primary content. The same approach applies to meta-keywording. Ensure that your visual element (images, videos, gifs, etc.) have Meta data embedded. Titles and descriptions are some of the main factors search engines pay heed to when considering your on-page SEO.

Blog commenting
This kind of SEO tactic is not only terribly obvious, but it is quite rude. It involves commenting nonsensically on blog posts in order to direct traffic from another website to yours. Google has of course picked up on this kind of spam and devalues such links.

Duplications
Duplicate sites, domains and posts will not allow your website to rank higher on Google. Google might take to dropping your page ranking or even removing certain pages from their search index all together. Another form of this would be to create doorway pages, which only serves the purpose of luring search engine traffic as they contain very little or no content at all.

Link building
This involves making a deal with another website, that if they will post a link to your website on theirs, you will do the same in return. The black hat version of this would be to insert your links on someone else’s website without their knowledge or consent – very similar to the blog commenting tactic mentioned above.  Another black hat version of this is to insert invisible text – for example, white text on a white background. Page swapping also falls under this category, whereby a page is changed after it has been indexed by Google.

While today these tactics are either frowned upon, or can get your site banned from Google, some years ago these were legitimate SEO tactics. Almost as rapidly as web trends change, so too do search engine optimisation techniques, Google changes its algorithm over 550 times a year. This might be daunting to consider and it may seem that it is impossible to stay in line with the latest practices, but at the end of the day, Google strives to provide users with quality content, which is exactly what any content creator strives to do.

In 2014, these were the top ways to increase your SEO ranks; content creation, content promotion (through social media, outreach and public relations), conversion optimisation (clear communications with users and offering content in real-time) and finally, providing users with a pleasant, recommendable experience in the form of website usability, easy navigation and quality content.

If you are able to provide good quality content on a user-friendly website, using social media to promote that content, your website should stay somewhat protected from the constant algorithm updates and continue you pursuit to the top of the Google ranks.