What's the worst SEO Advice you've ever heard?
The internet is probably the greatest miracle invented by our species, a place where all kind of information is shared, and everyone has the ability to express his own opinion judgement-free. Unfortunately, that could lead to quite a few cases of misinformation and people following purely false advice. It’s no different when it comes to the topic of SEO. Throughout our years of experience, we’ve heard plenty of bad advice on SEO, here is a good list of them.
Okay, we’re going to admit that it is in fact so when viewed from most perspectives. There comes the question of whether the content matters if it’s unreachable thought. There are probably millions of different articles, studies, and cases posted on the Internet which could show genius results and conclusions yet they never became viral. You cannot focus on one single element when implementing an SEO strategy, there’s the strategy side, the technical side, and the content solutions. A good balance and combination of the three are what would lead to significant results. Just remember, it's not all about writing sales copy!
That’s quite a common advice given by the “Experts”. Adding all combinations of the keyword sets on your images not only would bring the opposite result, then the one intended, but it’s simply not worth the efforts.
When a crawling bot enters your website, it cannot “view” the image as a normal person would. It reads the ALT tag of the image and stuffing keywords would penalise your website. You should, however, take advantage of the alt text; otherwise, you’d be missing an opportunity for advancement.
The “trend” for development of Google’s search engine algorithm is to detach from link building. In previous years, the number of links was basically the most major factor in determining a website’s ranking. Nowadays link building does matter, however abusing it might lead to penalisation. There are quite a few factors to take into consideration such as the Authority of the domain from which you’re receiving a backlink.
Link building isn’t going to penalise you as long as it’s done properly. Experts aim for high-quality websites, instead of going for large quantities of back links. That would also bring more appropriate visitors to the website.
It’s quite hard to grasp the concept of that expression. It implies that the SEO process has an end, which is simply untrue. Algorithms and trends constantly change; thus the strategy must adapt in order for the technicalities to be smoothened out. Ranking yourself at first page of the result page is important, but once you’re done, it doesn’t mean that you’ll stay there forever. You would need to watch out for the changes in the ranking factors, continue acquiring backlinks, continue posting new relevant content and etc. otherwise your website is bound to fall in rankings. Remember, it's a continuous process if you want to improve google rankings for your website.
If you don't measure it, how will you know if it's getting better or worse. This applies to everything that you care about, think about it. If you are saving for a new car but never track your savings balance, you'll not know if you are on target.
There are several industry standard tools that will help you measure your SEO progress. From Google Analytics, Ahrefs and Moz are just some. But remember, regularly track your progress.
Don’t follow the advice of random people on the internet blindly. Always talk to an expert or make a research of your own. And remember to share my blog on the Worst SEO Advice :)