There are plenty of different ideas and tactics to consider when building a website, brand, business or other entity through the lens of SEO. Many different experts will advise start-up brands in a variety of ways, providing insight into many different methods and tactics that can inevitably build SEO clout with search engines. This will help boost traffic, increase sales and establish the brand as a viable competitor. However, some ideas are objectively bad ideas in the world of SEO – knowing the difference between which ideas are good, which ideas may not work and which ideas are just outright bad is important. Below, we’ll talk about which ideas you should steer clear of when dealing with SEO.

Providing Links to Anyone

In the age of an internet in which billions of webpages now exist, there have to be at least a few measures in which search engines quickly assess quality of websites. One of the ways they do this is through the links that go to and from each website. Whenever individuals ask for links back to their websites, you need to be careful about who you accept. Be sure to verify each domain’s authority and inspect the website personally in order to see its content. There are a variety of tools available that can help you determine whether pinging links to these sites is a good idea or not. Sites that are not ranked well or have spam on them can inevitably jeopardize your site’s rankings in search. Be careful!

Copying Content from Other Sites

In years past, it was very easy to copy content from other websites and pass it off as your own. There were no search penalties for websites that did this. Today, however, copying content verbatim from other websites can result in severe penalties from search engines that make it hard to be visible in search results, and even harder to recover. Likewise, spinning content can often be just as bad of an idea, as it is often not done properly and results in patterns and commonalities easily detected by search engines. When creating content – which is the most important element of long-term SEO efforts – it is vital that the content be original, informative, thorough and targeted to the audiences that will enjoy it most.

Forgetting About Social Media

Many people view social media separately from SEO, especially considering that social media signals generated in search are usually no-follow links. The reality, however, is that social media can play a huge role indirectly in long-term SEO progress. By having a well-developed social media platform across multiple networks, you’ll be pinging links to thousands of followers and subscribers who will like and share the content. Each one of these engagements creates a dynamic in which the possibility for a share or backlink from a reputable blog or website becomes impossible. In effect, building backlinks is assisted through the use of social media, and we all know that building backlinks is crucial to SEO. Of course, there are literally dozens of other non-SEO benefits that come with building a social media presence as well.