{"id":3118,"date":"2019-03-01T17:22:53","date_gmt":"2019-03-01T17:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/link2city.com\/dev\/4-spammy-seo-mistakes-to-avoid\/"},"modified":"2019-03-01T17:22:53","modified_gmt":"2019-03-01T17:22:53","slug":"4-spammy-seo-mistakes-to-avoid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/link2city.com\/dev\/4-spammy-seo-mistakes-to-avoid\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Spammy SEO Mistakes to Avoid"},"content":{"rendered":"

4 Spammy SEO Mistakes to Avoid<\/h1>\n

Many\u00a0businesses are so eager to get ranked in Google that they over-do it. They use aggressive SEO techniques that ultimately backfire, pushing\u00a0their website further and further down the rankings\u2026<\/p>\n

1 – Stuffing Keywords into Page Titles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Google looks at the title of every page, and it helps to tell Google what your page is about. Your titles have a major impact on how your pages will rank in Google.<\/p>\n

In case you\u2019re not familiar, your title is part of the code of each page. It\u2019s actually not visible on the webpage itself, but if you open up a browser, in the upper left-hand corner of that browser, you\u2019ll see the title of the page.<\/p>\n

(For a primer on how to find meta tags, read this article:\u00a0How to find title tags and meta descriptions:<\/p>\n

Because of the weight Google puts on titles, a lot of people try to force their keywords repetitively in the title. I see this mistake very often when I\u2019m reviewing websites.<\/p>\n

Back in the day, this type of keyword stuffing could improve your search engine rankings<\/a>. But these days, that tactic does not work as well. Instead, it can be counter-productive.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to include your keyword in the title, but if you repeat your keywords a lot or include lots of different variations unnaturally, that can actually hurt your search engine rankings because Google will see that as manipulative.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s another way that stuffing your titles with keywords can backfire\u2026<\/p>\n

The title is actually what shows up in the search results \u2013 it\u2019s the blue underlined link in Google\u2019s search results. And if you\u2019ve just put a lot of keywords as the title, then when somebody does search, and your website shows up, then that\u2019s going to look pretty spammy.<\/p>\n

I know, personally, I\u2019m not going to click on that link if it doesn\u2019t look like a legitimate website.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2- Forcing Keywords into Your Webpage Copy<\/strong><\/p>\n

The second over-optimization tactic I see all the time is stuffing keywords into the actual webpage copy.<\/p>\n

Before, I was talking about stuffing keywords into the title. From a website visitor\u2019s standpoint, you could sort of fly under the radar stuffing keywords into your title tag, because most people actually don\u2019t notice that when they\u2019re on your website.<\/p>\n

But putting keywords directly into the body of the webpage is obviously much more noticeable to your website visitors.<\/p>\n

If you force keywords into your copy, your website visitors will read unnatural sentences and random keywords stuffed into the content. That looks really spammy, and it can be counter-productive for your ultimate marketing goals.<\/p>\n

After all, what\u2019s the goal of SEO anyway?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just rankings. And it\u2019s not just traffic either. The ultimate goal of SEO should be to generate leads and sales. And if your website content is spammy, that could really hurt your website conversions.<\/p>\n

Plus, if you force keywords into your website copy, Google will see that as unnatural and spammy as well. And that can hurt your search engine rankings. So it\u2019s just not a good idea.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3- Creating Near-Duplicate Pages Purely For SEO<\/strong><\/p>\n

Imagine you\u2019re a dentist, and you wanted to rank for the keyword phrase \u201cNew York City dentist.\u201d You might create a page on your website focused around that keyword phrase, right? Maybe you\u2019d optimize your homepage for that phrase.<\/p>\n

But then, you might decide you\u2019d also like to rank for a similar phrase like \u201cManhattan dentist.\u201d And so, maybe you\u2019d create a page for that keyword phrase too.<\/p>\n

And so on, and so on.<\/p>\n

Creating those near-duplicate pages used to work OK years ago\u2026<\/p>\n

But not today.<\/p>\n

Google has gotten smarter at figuring out that a lot of different keywords are synonyms with the same\u00a0search intent. And the Hummingbird update improved Google\u2019s abilities even more.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t need to have two different pages for New York City dentist and Manhattan dentist because Google understands that\u2019s the same search, so they\u2019ll display the same results for that.<\/p>\n

Instead of creating near-duplicate pages for different synonyms, you should group your keywords into topics, and then create the best page you can for each topic.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4- Over-Optimized Anchor Text<\/strong><\/p>\n

When it comes to SEO<\/strong><\/a>, you need to build up your website\u2019s authority.<\/p>\n

And a major factor in your website\u2019s authority is the quantity and quality of links from other websites that are linking to your website. You can basically think of a link from another website as a vote in your favor.<\/p>\n

Every\u00a0link to your website has what\u2019s called\u00a0anchor text<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, which is the clickable text. \u00a0This anchor text helps Google understand what a particular page is about.<\/p>\n

Again, imagine you\u2019re a dentist based in Manhattan, and you want to get your website ranking at the top of Google for \u201cNew York City dentist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t it be great if lots of websites linked to your website with the anchor text\u00a0New York City dentist<\/u>? That would help you reach the top of Google for that phrase.<\/p>\n

And so, that\u2019s how a lot of companies have approach SEO for years. They would go out and build tons of links with identical or very similar anchor text.<\/p>\n

When we\u2019re conducting an SEO audit<\/a>, we\u2019ll take a look at a website\u2019s link profile, and see how many links they have and where they\u2019re coming from, and the anchor text of those links.<\/p>\n

Often, we find that websites have very highly-concentrated anchor text, with almost all the incoming links containing the same keyword phrases. \u00a0Well, this is extremely unlikely to happen naturally!<\/p>\n

Google knows that, and increasingly, this type of linking has become a big red flag to Google. When Google sees this, they know you are trying to manipulate the search results. As a result, taking this approach with your SEO can do more harm than good over the long-term.<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s Penguin updates and \u201cunnatural link\u201d penalties are focused on devaluing (or penalizing) these unnatural linking schemes. So you should avoid building links to your website with overly-concentrated anchor text.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re in business for the long-term (which I hope you are!), then it makes sense to take a long-term approach to SEO. By avoiding these 4 mistakes, you\u2019ll stay on Google\u2019s good side and protect your rankings for the long-term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4 Spammy SEO Mistakes to Avoid Many\u00a0businesses are so eager to get ranked in Google that they over-do it. They use aggressive SEO techniques that ultimately backfire, pushing\u00a0their website further and further down the rankings\u2026 1 – Stuffing Keywords into Page Titles Google looks at the title of every page, and it helps to tell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-search-engine-optimization"],"yoast_head":"\n4 Spammy SEO Mistakes to Avoid - Link2City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"4 Spammy SEO Mistakes to Avoid - Link2City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"4 Spammy SEO Mistakes to Avoid Many\u00a0businesses are so eager to get ranked in Google that they over-do it. 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