Every website wants to grow its Google presence. After all, getting your website on the first page of Google is the holy grail! It’s a goldmine of opportunity where thousands of visitors will flood to your website. As such, we all employ a variety of SEO techniques to boost our Google ranking. The problem is that Google changes its algorithm almost every year. The direction of digital marketing is always in flux! The techniques you were using last year are no good any more. Worse, they could actively be damaging your search ranking. Google penalises websites that don’t stay up to date. With that in mind, are you making any of these mistakes?
Keyword stuffing
Keywords are still incredibly important to Google’s algorithm. They use keywords to determine exactly what your website does. Google use keywords to categorise your site and determine how relevant you are. It lead to websites cramming their content full of keywords to capture Google’s attention. Eventually, Google got wise to this tactic, and began to penalise websites that stuffed their content full of keywords. Instead, trust that Google will recognise a few simple keywords, and write natural content.
Duplicate content
In the past, websites could use duplicate content to double the number of keywords on their site. For example, you might have a completely duplicate website for mobile devices. This is no longer a wise choice. In fact, Google actively penalises sites for repeating content. Whether it’s an entire website or just a blog, avoid printing the same content twice on your site.
Irrelevant linking
Much like keywords, linking is still a core part of Google’s algorithm. It measures the quality and quantity of inbound links to your site. Lots of high-quality, relevant links means your website is probably authoritative. As such, Google would rank it highly. In the past, Google focused on quantity, not quality. It lead to sites building thousands of poor quality, irrelevant links. Google can now spot these spammy activities and penalise them. Instead, look for natural, organic, authoritative links in and out of your website. An experienced SEO agency can help advise how best to create natural, authority links.
Posting too much poor quality content
Google still loves content. In fact, it’s one of the key factors in its ranking algorithm. Regularly updated, good quality content is great. It attracts lots of inbound links and it keeps visitors engaged on your site. However, some people have interpreted this incorrectly. They think you need to post lots of blog posts every day. Instead, focus on creating longer, more useful pieces of content. Aim for quality, not quantity.
Invisible text
In the past, you could sneakily include more keywords on your website with invisible text. By hiding white text among white spaces on your site, you can cram the page full of keywords. In Google’s early iterations, this worked incredibly well. Now, of course, Google is smarter! It can identify this hidden text, and penalises websites for using it.
In simple terms, it no longer pays to ‘trick’ Google. After all, they are the biggest, smartest tech company on the planet! Focus on natural, quality SEO techniques if you want to see a real difference in your Google rank.
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