The internet is always changing, and you have to change with it if you want to keep your website at the top of the search engine result pages (SERPs). As the search engines, and especially Google, continue to discover methods website owners may be using to "game" the search results--and as they learn new ways to make their search results more authentic and relevant to users--their requirements for getting good rankings change.
If you are using outdated website practices, you are putting your website and your business at a disadvantage within search engine result pages. To keep your top position and ensure the visitors keep coming, you need to stop using these four outdated practices immediately.
4 Website Practices You Need to Stop Immediately
1. Stuffing Your Website With Keywords
This was a common website practice a few years ago, when website owners got good rankings for their sites for the keywords they were using by stuffing their sites with them. The idea was that the more times a website used its target keywords, the better chance there was of the search engines noticing and ranking accordingly.
This worked for a little while. Then, the search engines noticed, and realized this was not a good thing for their users. Sites that use what is called "keyword stuffing" are not normally written for real human readers, but for the search engines' bots. These sites come across as rather "spammy," and do not provide a good user experience.
While you should use your keywords in your website, do so naturally and with no more than a 1 to 2 percent concentration among your site's content. If you stuff your site with keywords, the search engines are likely to penalize you for it, so don't do it.
2. Stuffing Your Meta Description with Keywords
Your meta description is the description of your site usually found in the search engines. It is typically 160 characters or less, and you write it yourself, directly into the code of your site. It should ideally have your keywords in it, or at least the main keyword for which you want to rank.
However, you do not want to put your keyword in your meta description over and over again. This is another tactic for getting high rankings that worked a few years ago, but does not work now. Search engines want to see natural meta descriptions that are written for real readers and not bots. The meta descriptions no longer have any bearing on ranking as they once did, and if they are stuffed with keywords, it will only make your site seem untrustworthy and will discourage people from clicking on your link.
3. Using Duplicate Content
Search engines do not like duplicate content. It makes it difficult for their bots to determine how to rank sites. It also annoys visitors if they see the same thing on your site that they saw on someone else's. There are also legal implications for copying and pasting someone else's content onto your site without permission.
Using your own content in more than one place on your own website is also considered to be duplicate content. This indicates your site is repetitive and unoriginal, which is a sure way to get penalized in the search engines.
4. Publishing Content of Poor Quality
In the past, it didn't matter too much what you wrote on your site as long as you used your keyword a lot, and had as many backlinks as possible. Now, though, quality content is king when it comes to search engine rankings. You want to write for real readers, giving them things that are relevant and interesting to them, and that keeps them coming back to your site.
Investing the time and/or money in quality content is one of the best things you can do for your website in today's search engine environment, as it is the most important ranking factor right now, above anything else. If you want excellent organic search engine rankings, this is the surest way to get them.
