Nowadays SEO is becoming more difficult, and Google is releasing many algorithm updates and many websites are losing their rank. Here are some off-page SEO techniques you should stop doing today. These techniques may affect your website rankings negatively. Below are six SEO techniques that you should stop doing.
What is off-page SEO?
Off-page is SEO which is short for the term off-site SEO. Basically, off-page SEO techniques are those actions that we do outside of our website in order to increase rankings in the Google SERP.
Here I have broken down the off-page SEO into three sections.
1) Link building.
2) Social media marketing or SMM.
3) Mention Brand your name on other websites without having hyperlinks.
Is off-page SEO important and why?
Many SEO experts say that “backlinks are not important for ranking better in Google SERP.”
It is half correct and half incorrect. Don’t get confused. Here is the thing.
The statement is true in the case where you are targeting a focus keyword with low competition or low keyword difficulty. In this case, if you provide quality content and with good on-page optimization, your page will rank easily without many backlinks.
But in the case of a highly competitive keyword, on-page optimization and quality content alone will not do the thing. Here you will need lots of quality links pointing towards your website.
If you are starting a new website focus for less competitive longtail keywords. Once your new site ranks well, automatically you will gain quality backlinks. Only then should you can focus on highly competitive keywords.
Here is what Google and Bing have said about the off-page techniques and backlinks.
Worst Off-page SEO techniques
Directory submissions.
It was a great off-page SEO technique a few years back when Google algorithm was not smart enough. Now Google algorithm is much smarter and directory submissions are simply just a waste of time.
Web directory submissions involve a danger that you may not still know. According to a survey taken by Moz on 2678 directories, 20% of them were penalized/banned by Google.
Being banned by Google means that your website link on these websites will harm your SERP rankings.
Directory submissions sites are having a high spam score now since lots of low-quality websites with high spam scores are being submitted on these directories. Google quality raters also recommend stopping doing directory submissions as an off-page strategy.
Source: Moz Blog
Today more than 50% of the free web directories are deindexed by Google.
That means if you search for the web directories 50% of these directories are nowhere to be found.
Article submissions.
This method is also not recommended by Google. This 0ff-page technique is also irrelevant now.
It was a great way to increase article popularity and drive traffic to your articles. But it is not a good source to obtain backlinks to your website. Here are the reasons why article submission directories are bad.
Article directories sometimes publish poorly written and spammy articles from random writers. Using this type of practice reduces the article directories page authority.
Many sites published articles that have duplicate content from unknown writers.
Source: search engine land
As a result, the Google algorithm detects these article directories unfaithful sources. Hence Google deindexes these article directories. It is in the best-practices to stay away from these articles.
Buying or selling backlinks
Buying or selling backlinks is referred to as a black hat SEO according to Google webmaster guidelines.
Source: Google guidelines
Buying or selling backlinks is a very risky technique.
It will only be a matter of time before Google will catch your website for buying links. Don’t do it. Google will penalize your website and you will lose all your rankings and Domain rating. Here is a better way to build your SEO strategy.
Getting out of the Google penalty is a hectic task. Remember: don’t buy or sell backlinks. In the language of SEO, implement central keywords as a safe strategy.
Private Blog Network (PBNs)
This technique is not appreciated by Google. For those who don’t know about PBN.A PBN it’s a group of blogs or websites that are under your control and these blogs or websites link to your main website. Again: Don’t.
Source: search engine land
To elaborate, consider that you have five websites under your control, and they are linked to your main website in order to rank in Google SERP. It is also a great way by which you can get penalized by Google.
Google strictly prohibits the use of PBN for gaining rankings.
Link Exchanges
Google doesn’t like websites that promote link exchange.
What type of link building is termed as link exchanges by Google?
The link made in the way “link to me and I’ll link back to you” is termed as a link exchange. Cross-linking or link exchange is a good strategy, but excessive link exchanges and cross-linking are not recommended by Google.
Source: Google guidelines
Try to make minimal crosslinking. A careful strategy can benefit your website — but excess cross-linking will burn you. Better not to cross-link.
Comment spam on blogs
If you are using the comment as a referral source for your website, it may help you.
Some blog comments drive referral traffic to their website or blog if it is relevant to the blog that they are reading.
But if you are trying to gain SEO rankings through comments then it is a waste of time. Almost 99% of links in the commenting sections are marked No-follow.
Source: Google guidelines
You won’t get any link juice from links left in the comment section of the article or blog. Google will not track that link.
Dropping links in other blogs for the sake of link building is termed as comment spam.
Source: Moz Blog
The no-follow tag was introduced so that Google could reduce the amount of comment spam.
You can comment and provide relevant links that may be useful for the readers. Try to make good no-follow backlinks.
Remember: March 1, 2020 — Google will be starting to treat No-follow links as hints. A “hint” means that there is a chance that Google crawls these links.
Conclusion
The way to make the very best site possible is to follow the Google rules as they are laid out for websites. You don’t want to end up with Google Penalities.
For best success follow the rules, and proper off-page SEO techniques suggested here — and skip using the tactics that can negatively impact your site and company.
Happy success to you in your SEO efforts.
Akshay K
Akshay is an expert SEO analyst and digital marketer with content writing skills working in an eLearning development company Xpertcube. Helps to attract users into the website and convert leads into customers. Achieved success in making the school management software Eduxpert.in to rank in top positon of Google SERP. Also writes in eLearning industry, and elearning.adobe.
