Having your website appear on relevant search engine searches is invaluable for your business. Without this, your company would effectively be nonexistent on the web as far as your potential customers are concerned, no matter how much you invest in your website's design.
As such, you need to execute a strong search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. That said, you shouldn't waste your time with certain SEO strategies, because many of the old ways do not work -- or may even harm your SEO campaign. Here are some SEO strategies to avoid and alternative solutions that will deliver positive results:
Keyword stuffing
When SEO was in its infancy, search engines relied heavily on counting the number of times a keyword was used on a particular page to determine how high a website should be ranked.
As a result, many SEO strategies consisted of stuffing a website with as many keywords relevant to their industry as possible. Google and the other top search engines have since put a stop to this by minimizing the value they put on a keyword.
To determine a website's relevance to keywords, search engine algorithms consider two factors: the quality of the content developed and the topics that the website's content usually covers.
Alternative: Instead of flooding your web content with the same keywords, you should develop high quality content around a topic that your target audience is interested in. Focus on writing first for human beings, not search engines. Remember, you don't have to use that exact keyword several times on a page or blog post.
"Quantity" link building, or buying links
The popularity of your company's internet presence is a factor for determining how high a search engine will rank your website. Link building emerged as one of the most powerful SEO strategies to enhance your company's internet presence.
Building (or buying) as many links as you can without consideration for where those links are coming from, however, is one of the most risky SEO strategies you can engage in.
Search engines are smart enough to know how reputable a website is and how relevant it is to your business. Low quality, irrelevant links can hurt your SEO. On the other hand, your internet presence will be boosted by relevant, high quality links.
Alternative: A handful of quality links is more beneficial than hundreds of low quality links. For example, your chemical manufacturing company will benefit from links from manufacturer's associations and chemical blogs moreso than hundreds links from "thin" websites that have nothing to do with your company or industry. Putting information on your website that's helpful to your target audiences will earn links.
Submitting your website to Google
Many SEO companies will claim that submitting your site to Google will improve your rankings. The notion that you need to submit your website to Google to improve rankings is nonsense. Google can find your website without you submitting it, and submission has nothing to do with ranking.
Alternative: If you redesign your website or you have a brand new website, you should instead establish a Webmaster Tools account and submit a sitemap XML file so Google is aware of the new pages on your website. You should also configure 301 redirects on your web server so Google (and people that have bookmarks to your website) can cross-reference old web addresses with new ones.
Make sure that you are using the right SEO strategies
By engaging the right SEO strategies, you can make sure that your company is ranked highly on relevant search engine results pages. Avoid the wrong ones listed here to lower risk of penalty at set yourself up for success.
What SEO techniques are you holding fast to?
