Community Discussion - What old-school SEO tactics no longer work? Which ones still do?
-
Hi there, friends!
This week's discussion comes from today's Whiteboard Friday:
Rand's outlined SEO practices that are outdated and no longer effective. Did anything catch you off-guard, making you want to pivot your strategy? Anything that you disagree with, or that you feel still works well regardless? What other tactics, in your experience, no longer work?
-
I always find these discussions interesting mainly because of the "nobody knows" factor.
What I want to point out more than any one particular thing is that there are a limited number of 'ranking factors.' Whether that number is 200, 50, 3, or 3000, it's limited. Whenever one tactic loses its effectiveness simple math says that other factors increased in importance.
Google is very, very good at messing with SEOs.
If keyword density is limited or removed, something took its place. Something that isn't "create quality content." Most serious competitors are creating high quality, relevant content. If you think the difference in ranking one bank over another is "quality content" on a target page for "home loan" you're lying to yourself. Backlinks, age of the page, age of the site, internal links, anchor text, and some level of "keyword density" (though I think it's much more sophisticated than that" definitely helps. H1s still matter, as do H2s and H3s, tbh.
I have competitive keywords ranking with NO on-page content AND no backlinks. The page literally has a title, H1 tag and the surrounding menus & sidebars. It ranks for gambling-related keyphrases in a supposedly hard to rank niche and has ranked for months (with zero on-page text.)
SEMRush shows that same site rank for over 1200 keyphrases. It has ONE backlink to the homepage. That's it.
I wish that was the only example. But I am ranking semi-competitive marketing & SEO related keyphrases on a site with about 8 links and virtually no content. If content + links = SEO, these would never rank. So again, it's beyond that. Age of the domain? No, one is brand new. One is older. One is registered for more than a year, one for less. One is an EMD, one is not.
We've had new clients struggle & struggle to rank for really easy keyphrases with no backlink spam, technical on-site looks good and titles/content/links are all in line with other (ranking) clients. We put all their content on a new domain & it ranks just fine. NO links.
SEO is just weird. Let's face it - we're all attempting to do the best we can for clients but at the end of the day, none of it truly makes that much sense.
-
Great topic. I wrote a post about this a few years ago - love to hearing the answers for 2016.
2 old school tactics that I think do still work are:
-
Title tag optimization - I don't mean positioning of the keyword, count, etc., but the power of keywords in the title is still pretty remarkable considering most things that are easily spammable were ultimately deprioritized by Google.
-
PageRank sculpting - "Crawl Budget sculpting" may be apt, but sculpting the bots path is still incredibly valuable. We do it all the time in our technical work, and there's often a measurable result. In my opinion, the more Google improved their ability to crawl the entire site, the more they learned the reasons to lean away from some sites' sections. Giving only the proper paths to Google keeps it simple for them.
-
-
That's a valid point. I'll make sure our Product folks have seen it.
-
When I first did SEO, my boss showed me different site to buy links from as well repurpose content. I would write content frequently with the hope of generating links on platforms like ezine and hubpages. Now I've found that marketing works so much more effectively to generate good links and the money spent on link building could be better suited for other purposes.
Also I think that Panda and Penguin did an excellent job of forcing people who did SEO to go clean. It's more about setting up a link strategy that scales to a larger area where the amplification will increase instead of gaining individual links at a budget that always seems more money than it's worth.
-
There are few tips that people discuss over and over again and in my opinion they are obsolete and does not work anymore.
Keyword Density: The idea of using exact keyword in the body tag certain time is something that tools like Yoast and Moz still recommend but in my opinion they aren’t important any more.
I mean Google is smart, they know what the page is talking about regardless of the fact that you are using exact match key phrase or not. For example if your exact match keyword is “excitement” and in the body you use synonyms probably Google will still find out what you are talking about and rank you accordingly.
Exact Match Domain: Again, a boring idea. I mean they maybe a small effect of having a keyword based domain name but saying that this will help you beat your competitors or that will take you to the first page of Google is nothing but a crazy talk.
These are the two ideas that I think people should stop talking about and focus more on creating something that their actual persona want.
Adding my 2 cents.
-
Absolutely! I was berated by a prospective client last year when I politely informed him that out content team don't write to keyword density these days and focus on the user experience instead.
His response: "I've heard enough; you should think about at least reading an SEO book if you're going to take people's money for it!" [slams down the phone]
Dodged a bullet!
-
My top five here:
- Forced keyword placement. "You absolutely must get your exact-match keyword at the start of the page title."
- Redundant pages for keyword targeting. "Create a page for each variation of your keyword(s) so you can rank for them all!"
- **Content doesn't matter, as long as you have the keywords in there. **_"Nobody is going to read more than maybe 100 words so don't bother putting anything more than a paragraph or two on each page; Google is just looking for keywords" _
- Content spinning on pages with a large volume of pages. _"Writing unique content for each page is a waste. Search engines are smart enough to read your content, the words just have to be moved around." _
- Spending big money on exact match domains.
Seeing these is kind of amusing until you remember that some poor business owner paid hard-earned dollars for this outdated rubbish to be applied to their site.
-
Hi,
I think keyword density is quite outdated. I've seen many people asking on Quora about optimal keyword density. I think this no longer applies. In fact, Matt Cutts has targeted this question like 5-6 years ago (here is a video), but, I still see a lot of folks trying to stuff their keywords everywhere. Hence, I think this point was missing on the latest WB Friday. However, I totally agree with other points mentioned.
-
From MOZ on-page grader...
"Recommendation: Edit your page to use your targeted keywords no more than 15 times."
I think that this is "old school advice" and have addressed it in detail in a recent Q&A question.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Magento 1.9 SEO. I have product pages with identical On Page SEO score in the 90's. Some pull up Google page 1 some won't pull up at all. I am searching for the exact title on that page.
I have a website built on Magento 1.9. There are approximately 290,000 part numbers on the site. I am sampling Google SERP results. About 20% of the keywords show up on page 1 position 5 thru 10. 80% don't show up at all. When I do a MOZ page score I get high 80's to 90's. A page score of 89 on one part # may show up on page one, An identical page score on a different part # can't be found on Google. I am searching for the exact part # in the page title. Any thoughts on what may be going on? This seems to me like a Magento SEO issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CTOPDS0 -
Can multiple geotargeting hreflang tags be set in one URL? International SEO question
Hi All, Thank you for this great post! I have a question please. If i target www.onedirect.co.nl/en/ in English for Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, are the tags below correct? English for Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg: http://www.example.co.nl/en/" hreflang="en-nl" /> http://www.example.co.nl/en/" hreflang="en-be" /> http://www.example.co.nl/en/" hreflang="en-lu" /> AND Targeting Holland and Belgium in Dutch: Pour la page www.onedirect.co.nl on peut inclure ce tag: http://www.example.co.nl" hreflang="nl-nl" /> http://www.example.co.nl" hreflang="nl-be" /> thanks a lot for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Onedirect_uk0 -
What can you do about negative SEO?
We have a list of 240 domains (look exactly the same) linking to our site for a certain keyword. over 3000 links in total. It means that 50% of our keywords are this keyword and it's not a branded keyword which can affect us in the long term. I have done a WHOIS search and found a name, email and number. Vikas Kumar. I linkedin searched him and found his "legit" SEO site which has EXACTLY the same registration details as the spam sites. I emailed him and he said it would cost 5$ a link removal. I phoned him and he DENIED these emails. He then denied owning these sites etc. We have disavowed them but the anchor text % is still affecting us. Is there anything we can do? I know negative SEO isn't illegal but it's really frustrating. Anyone else had any problems with this type of thing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyB_UK1 -
Why is page still indexing?
Hi all, I have a few pages that - despite having a robots meta tag and no follow, no index, they are showing up in Google SERPs. In troubleshooting this with my team, it was brought up that another page could be linking to these pages and causing this. Is that plausible? How could I confirm that? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SSFCU
Sarah0 -
How does authorship work for two authors?
How does Google's version of authorship work for 2 authors?: support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1408986 https://plus.google.com/authorship
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
SEO friendlier domain name
Hi, I just have a doubt. I am building a site I want to optimize for the keyword "slot machine gratis". I have bought two domains: slot-machines-gratis.it and slotmachine-gratis.it. Which domain do you recommend that I use to target the keyword "slot machine gratis"? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0 -
Web site Migration from one server to another does cause any impact in SEO rankings?
Dear Seomoz members, We are going to migrate our website to different server location(new data center). does this impact on our SEO rankings? If so what and all checklist i have to do....to retain my SEO rankings. Regards, kathiravan subbiah Caratlane.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kathiravan0 -
What are best SEO practices for product pages of unique items when the item is no longer available?
Hello, my company sells used cars though a website. Each vehicle page contains photos and details of the unit, but once the vehicle is sold, all the contents are replaced by a simple text like "this vehicle is not available anymore".
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Darioz
Title of the page also change to a generic one.
URL remains the same. I doubt this is the correct way of doing, but I cannot understand what method would be better. The improvement I am considering for pages of no longer available vehicles is this: keep the page alive but with reduced vehicle details, a text like: this vehicles is not available anymore and automatic recommendations for similar items. What do you think? Is this a good practice or do you suggest anything different? Also, should I put a NOINDEX tag on the expired vehicles pages? Thank you in advance for your help.0