By Jennifer Simons
You may be using ineffective and outdated SEO strategies. We are certainly not talking about black hat SEO strategies that could ultimately destroy and ruin your site. Here the discussion is about all those tactics that at one point in time used to be pretty effective and that several web-masters keep on using them due to a force of habit. However, the following few SEO tactics are no longer in vogue and you should better stop using them as they are of no use to you and they certainly do not help in improving your rankings in any way. You should avoid wasting any of your time on these strategies.
SEO
Concentrating on Single Keywords
Stop targeting single keywords. It is high time you stopped running after highly-generalized and highly-competitive keywords. Previously the mindset was that it is always better to get more and more search traffic even though that traffic seemed to be hugely irrelevant to your website or business. For example, if your keyword was dogs, you would end up getting thousands of visitors but if your objective was selling your precise dog training services, it is unlikely that any visitors would be converting.
However, today emphasis is on driving highly-targeted and highly-relevant traffic. You must concentrate on visitors who are actually looking for products and services you are offering and who are willing to purchase what you are selling. It is, therefore, necessary to focus primarily on long-tail keywords.
Long-tail phrases seem to be less popular and definitely relatively easier for ranking and the most important thing is that they are really compatible with the user’s intent. For example, using the above instance, it would certainly be a much more lucrative affair to automatically rank highly for the keyword “dog training Seattle” as compared to simply “dogs”. For successful online Internet marketing, it is high time that you concentrate more on the quality and not on the quantity of search traffic.
Opting for Keyword-rich Anchor Text
It is a good idea to use descriptive but diverse anchor text. It is a flop idea to use one particular anchor text repeatedly. Google aspires for some natural link profile. While link building to your site you must always remember to use helpful natural anchor text which has been designed for maximizing not search rankings but user experience.
You must stick to using phrases that would make some real sense to the readers and would give them a clear idea of what to expect if they click on your link. Needless to mention, that you have no magic formula that could determine the finest anchor text, but you could simply rely on the rule of thumb that urges you to use only that text which would make the best sense to all your readers. Try to opt for descriptive text which is able to communicate effectively and conveys the real subject of your target page.
Using Press Releases for Enhancing Your Rankings
Many have understood and explored the efficacy of using press releases for boosting rankings. The idea is basically to write an interesting and newsworthy press release. It, however, includes links back to your site precisely by making use of keyword-rich anchor text. If you submit these press releases to different publications, you would be successful in building several links to your particular site thus boosting and upgrading your search rankings. Press releases have various valuable benefits. However, Google has clearly stated that these press release links have no special or positive effect on rankings.
Guest Blogging on Unrelated Sites
Guest blogging simply for building links is just not happening anymore. Submitting guest posts without thinking at all, to random sites irrespective of whether those sites seem to be relevant to your target audience or not, is a sheer waste of time and could even be pretty damaging to your specific site or your brand. Guest blogging is still a popular practice but you must ensure that the sites you decide to contribute to should be relevant to your precise business and is of high quality. Stay away from over-optimizing your anchor text.
Image credit: https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3541/3431433137_1329a1f5cc.jpg
Author Bio: Jennifer Simons is an SEO expert who is a senior consultant in a private consultancy services firm at Boston. She has been advising her clients on various SEO issues successfully and recently solved the problems related a dental SEO company. She is seriously hooked on to blogging and devotes her spare time to it.
If you would like to submit a guest post on food, wine or travel to Where and What in the World, I would be happy to feature your travel experience , drink, special wine tasting, or family or simply delicious recipe. If you go to submission tab, you will see how to submit, as well as have the opportunity of telling me if you would like to would like to be a regular contributor. When uploading a file for submission, you are also able to upload jpgs. Please feel free to put a last paragraph about you and a link to your profile. No html please. You can also include a head shot.
