There are many reasons why you definitely need to be careful when carrying out SEO for your site. Since the world of search engine optimization is subject to constant change with Google making updates – both small and significant – to their algorithms on the regular, techniques that used to work wonderfully can now result in a penalty, and other techniques that were once a complete waste of time are now hugely valuable. Because of this, anyone wanting to improve and maintain their search engine rankings and favor with Google should definitely keep up to date with SEO practices to make sure that they’re not using outdated strategies which will do more harm than good.
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Spammy Guest Posts
Yes, guest posting is still a very valid and hugely effective method of link building, but it’s all in the HOW. How you guest post is of ultimate importance to the results that you see from your SEO. Link building via guest posting may seem easy – just write a blog post, stick a link in it, and put it on a page, right? Yes, and no. In order to guest post the correct way which Google likes, you have to be a little bit more detailed than that. First off, the content that you write should be of good quality – informational articles, how-to guides, etc. – make sure that it is content that people will want to read! Secondly, you should make sure that your link is natural – don’t just add it on as an afterthought. And, last but not least, choose your guest sites carefully, as your content MUST be relevant to their theme.
Optimizing Your Anchors
Gone are the days of optimizing anchor text when building links. Optimizing anchor text, which is the practice of using a keyword as an anchor, used to work really well. But, following an update from Google which led to warnings against the practice in their ‘Link Scheme’ document, anchor texts are now much more effective when natural. For example, you could use a ‘Naked’ anchor text such as this one: baldyne.com, or use your site/company’s name for a branded anchor text. Alternatively, long tail anchor texts which go with the flow of content perfectly are also a good choice.
Churning Out Backlinks
One of the biggest rookie misconceptions and mistakes that you can make is believing that the more backlinks your site gets, the better. In fact, this couldn’t be further from the truth! One high-quality backlink is often much more valuable to your website and business than dozens of poor-quality links, therefore it’s hugely important to always value quality over quantity. Since any SEO value from link building depends massively on the quality, validity and authority of the site where it is placed, it’s vital to spend plenty of time researching to ensure that your backlinks are only of the best quality, rather than having the largest numbers.
SEO practices are constantly changing, and who knows – what’s working well right now might be rendered useless in just a couple of years!