SEO Strategies That Will Ruin Your SEO

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No matter which strategy you use, SEO is designed to help you climb up the search rankings. With its help, you should be enjoying a series benefits including…

  • Improved online visibility
  • Increased site traffic
  • Better engagement
  • A higher position on search results

But what if you’re not getting any of these?

Then you’re doing SEO wrong.

The sad truth is that not all techniques in search engine optimization are created equal. There will always be black hat SEO practices that go against Google’s standards. And if you don’t want an express ride to Google jail, you should watch out for strategies that will ruin your SEO.

The 5 Worst Things You Can Do In SEO

1. Plagiarism

Writing doesn’t come easy, especially if you’re a blogger and have to churn out content on a regular basis. Eventually, you’ll run out of topics or have writer’s block. It can be tempting to copy content off the internet when you’re stuck in the rut – but you shouldn’t for 3 simple reasons:

  • Plagiarism is unethical
  • It goes against Google’s policies
  • It is illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)

Not only will plagiarizing give you a bad rep if your readers find out your secret. Google is going to slap you with a penalty, and DMCA will take down your website.

2. Keyword overload

Using too many keywords doesn’t make for good content or SEO. They make your posts sound unnatural, which can discourage readers from exploring your website (read: high bounce rates). Google’s algorithms have also gotten smart enough to detect your overuse of keywords. Instead of improving your SERP position, the search giant will make it impossible for you to rank.

3. Bad backlinks

Backlinking is an effective strategy for improving your site’s authority and search rankings. However, there’s no easy way around it. Getting good backlinks from high authority sites takes time to build.

As for bad backlinks? You can buy them real quick. But they won’t help with SEO at all. What you’ll get is a bunch of links coming from websites that aren’t related to your niche. And all of them would pointing back to you. These backlinks will definitely hurt your SEO rankings.

4. Cloaking

One of the worst things you can do is cloaking. It is a type of “spamdexing” (even the name sounds bad) where the content shown to search engines and the users are intentionally different. The page shown to search engine bots is saturated with keywords. Meanwhile, readers are more likely to find unrelated content as they browse through a page. Cloaking is illegal and can get you a heavy penalty from Google.

5. Placing too many ads

Advertising may not be an SEO strategy, but we thought it would be worth mentioning here. It’s common for bloggers and site owners to display ads for monetization. And for the most part, there’s nothing wrong with it. But if you have too many ads it can bad for SEO. So if you’re going to show ads, you should limit them and be discreet with their placement.