We rely on the internet for virtually every aspect of our personal and professional lives. And as such, we use search engines to an extraordinary degree. Without a doubt, Google is our go-to — and the first organic search result receives 32.5% of the traffic share.

But in order to be featured prominently in search results, you have to optimize your website correctly. You’ll need to use recommended practices that signal to the search engine that your website is relevant and valuable. One of the best ways to do this is through SEO.

Professional SEO services have been around for quite some time, but they’ve changed a lot over the years. In some cases, what used to work well is no longer effective. That’s often due to improvements Google has made to the way that it ranks websites. Professional SEO firms know that techniques once used to essentially game the system are now frowned upon (or may result in major punishments for offenders).

In order for your site to be ranked favorably, you’ll need to adhere to the best practices for search engine optimization. Of course, working with a reputable search engine marketing agency can ensure you’ll never make any of the following mistakes. But whether you’re going it alone or you’re evaluating your current marketing provider, here are a few outdated techniques you’ll want to avoid at all costs.

Keyword Stuffing

Keywords can tell both search engines and human web users what your site is all about. It used to be that more was always better with keywords; the higher the keyword density (e.g., the number of times a given keyword appears on a page), the more likely it was for a search engine to recognize that page’s relevance. Unfortunately, businesses started manipulating this metric to include a given keyword as many times as possible — a practice known as “keyword stuffing.”

While this tactic used to work, Google has gotten a lot better at recognizing when keywords are being abused and misused. Content is now evaluated semantically, meaning that the way in which keywords are being used need to relate to the search query. Engaging in this technique can result in major ranking penalties for your website. In other words, it doesn’t work and will backfire. Securing premium SEO services will ensure your content is geared towards actual people and that it’s relevant to their needs.

Article Spinning

We just mentioned that it’s important to write for humans. But it’s also important that your content writing be performed by humans, as well. AI-produced content is always going to pale in comparison to content written by a real person.

One way that websites used to try to get ahead was through a practice called “article spinning.” Software would be used to take an article and rewrite it in a bunch of different ways — creating huge amounts of poor-quality content. These pieces would all have slight variations, but they didn’t make a whole lot of sense. These pieces could then be posted on the business’s website or on other websites with backlinks in an effort to improve domain authority.

These days, Google can recognize low-quality content, particularly when it’s eerily similar to other pages online. If you engage in article spinning, you can definitely expect website penalties. Ultimately, it’s not worth the risk. It’s far better to create original and interesting content to attract readers than to be associated with this type of content. A website design and SEO company can ensure your content is compelling and that your site makes it easy for everyone to find that content.

Purchasing Links

Backlinks are an important part of professional SEO. But as your local SEO company would tell you, how you obtain those backlinks matters. While you can simply buy a bunch of backlinks from different websites to pass link juice, Google can usually figure out when this happens.

Ultimately, this tactic isn’t going to help you. It’s far better to earn your backlinks over time and make sure they’re from high-quality sites that have some kind of relevant connection to your own.

A great way to avoid these SEO mistakes? Work with an experienced professional SEO agency that can take your marketing to the next level. For more, please contact us today.