What Bad SEO Practices Makes Search Engines Hate Your Websites

Stiff competition dominates the digitized platform for business, with thousands of websites striving to snatch a top rank in Google’s search engine index. A well-developed SEO strategy can pilot your business to success amidst the competitive clutter.

In order to do so, it is necessary to come up with updated SEO tactics to maintain good compatibility with Google. Today, around 70-80% of customers go for organic searches^[1], ignoring paid ads. Most of the successful companies leverage their virtual profiles by optimizing their sites.

A website is not a mere electronic representation of your brand; it is one of the most powerful marketing weapons in your arsenal. SEO experts craft strategies for various companies and clients, increasing their website’s exposure in cyberspace.

It is important to keep bad SEO practices in check, which can have disastrous results on your ranking. Adopting black hat practices or poor strategies can invite the wrath of Google.

Your website’s ranking will drastically fall, and it will be lost in the crowd of generic brands. You need to keep the content relevant to your target group, while adhering to cherished SEO strategies.

Here are five SEO practices that will make search engines hate your website.

1) Keyword Stuffing

One of the greatest blunders in developing an SEO strategy is keyword stuffing. You may think that your website will get a better rank if you flood your content with keywords. You are wrong.

This strategy became obsolete a decade ago. The Google algorithms undergo 500-600 changes per year^[2], and they dislike spamming website content with keywords, which makes articles and blogs look cluttered. Your SEO performance is likely to undergo a dip in you overuse the selected keywords.

You need to research popular keywords and integrate a good mix of both short-tail and long-tail keywords in your website. Make sure you maintain the ideal keyword density and do not repeat the same phrases too many times. It degrades the quality of content and makes it look repetitive.

Currently, Google is using Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), a semantic search feature that can identify the context of your content without too many keywords. Keyword stuffing will result in poor rankings and repel visitors from your website.

2) Too Many Ads Above The Fold

Your intent may be to generate huge revenues through advertisements on your website, but placing too many advertisements above the fold will result in poor rankings.

Google takes serious measures against websites that have too many ads placed in the upper half of their pages, viewable without scrolling.

It is important to adhere to the established norms of Google, as 93% of website traffic^[3] is generated by search engines. People visit websites for relevant information. Welcoming them with trash is considered to be an unacceptable greeting by Google.

If you want to place advertisements on your websites, you need to focus on the lower fold and borders.

Unless you make your website popular among your users, advertisers will not invest in your site. Websites with several advertisements in the upper half of the page fail to obtain a good rank with search engine. Even if you come up with relevant content, your presentation defects will mar these efforts.

3) Bad User Experience

User experience may have become a buzzword among web developers, but for a good reason. You cannot afford to give a bad impression about your website to visitors.

The website layout, presentation, and overall user experience determine the volume of traffic flowing to your site. Slow websites often result in user abandonment.

The majority of users expect the website to load within five seconds. Remove heavy graphics, images, and other materials from your website that increase loading time. Moreover, you need to focus on the navigation of your site.

Those that are easily navigable help users locate the information they want, fast. This refines the user experience and leverages the sales potential of the website. It is necessary to compress images and optimize the speed of your site to create an impressive user experience.

4) Getting Backlinks From Low Authority Websites

Your backlinking technique may go awry while trying to optimize your website, leading to a poor ranking in search engine results.

Guest posting is one of the strategies adopted for link building. When you incorporate this successfully, your site ranking gets a boost.

However, linking your content to irrelevant sites may backfire, as users will find no consistency in the material on your site.

You need to choose high-authority websites and link them to your content, providing users with the ability to explore the topic in detail. The wrong choice of the website can damage your ranking. Make sure that you do not overuse backlinks, as it will have a negative impact on your site.

5) Avoid Duplicate Content

Creating original content for your website is one of the most important parts of devising your SEO tactics. A large number of websites face plagiarism issues, which is detrimental to both reputation and ranking.

Remember, 50% of customers click on a website^[4] if it appears more than once in the search engine results.

Duplicate content can damage this ranking, decreasing traffic flow to your site. Google’s algorithms scan content for originality, and when you place copied content on your website, you get punished.

Well-researched and unique content enhances the ranking of your site. You can seek professional help from creative experts for content generation if need be.

Read More: Voice Is The New Search Trend- SEOs Now Build Your Business Accordingly

Conclusion

A well-optimized website enjoys a greater volume of traffic than its competitors, leveraging its marketing potential.

You should avoid the aforementioned bad SEO tactics that can damage your ranking.

Stay apprised of the latest updates in Google algorithms and comply with the standards set up by Google for SEO success.