As the nature of the internet continues to evolve, more and more people seek out ways to bolster their internet presence without earning the wrath of search engines like Google. It was not that long ago that a few simple mechanical tweaks could push your website and its pages to the front page of select SERPs, making the need for comprehensive or creative SEO services rather weak. Led predominantly by Google, changes in search engine algorithms over the years have made it much more difficult to “game the system”, with many prime tactics of yesterday now either ineffective or damaging to your SEO rankings. Below, we will outline three tactics that you have to avoid at all costs in order to ensure future SEO success.

Link Building Through Poorly Rated Sites

The game of link building once revolved more about quantity, but today, quality is the name of the game. Websites that are viewed as low quality by search engines or have weaker rankings in SERPs can be a detriment to your long-term SEO strategy. While it is possible that you will gain some traffic directly through these websites, your site will also be pinging to Google and others a variety of warning signs that suggest your site may be using black hat SEO to gain an advantage. If this becomes the case, then the traffic you lose from search engines will more than encompass the gains from these poorly rated websites. There are dozens of metrics solutions and analytical tools available to help you ascertain the quality of a website before you request an inbound link from them.

The Duplication of Content

This behavior is perhaps the most obvious no-no in the world of SEO, yet so many people still engage in this tactic. While a quote here and there from another blog (with proper attribution) often causes no harm, the wholesale copy and pasting of an article from one site to another can wreak havoc on your SERP rankings and other metrics that search engines use to assess your rankings. In addition to this, spun content can present issues in cases where the content too closely resembles its original copy. If you are serious about SEO and want to please the Google Gods, then you must create captivating, quality content that is original and relevant to your audience. In this day and age of SEO, there really is no substitute.

Overt Anchor Text Usage

Even just a couple of years ago, the practice of using anchor text as keywords was common and accepted by virtually all search engines. If you are pinging to Google the same styles of anchor text that you were two years ago, then you may be harming your website’s rankings. In mid-2013, Google announced that this practice was now viewed negative by its algorithms. If the search engines observes an unnaturally high amount of this activity on your website, then it will be penalized in SERPs. Organic, relevant content continues to be the pathway forward for those who want to target specific search results, so ditch the anchor text usage and focus your efforts on quality.