To tie in with the Halloween theme that is part of October, I have decided to write about seven SEO techniques that may have brought great results in the past, but are no longer effective. These techniques will be known as the Seven Ghosts of Search Engine Optimization.
1. Meta keywords:
The Meta keyword tag used to be your main tag for telling search engines which keywords were most relevant to a website's content. This might include a webmaster tagging the header section of their website and filling it in with the keywords they want their site to rank for. Eventually, spammers catch on to the fact that repeating keywords over and over again in Meta keyword tags can lead to better rankings for their sites. Google and other search engines eventually got caught up in this and made significant changes to their algorithms. The main change is to shift the focus away from meta tags and links. Keyword tags in Meta no longer have an impact on search engine rankings.
2. Keyword stuffing:
One technique used to rank tags along with Meta keywords is to stuff it with target keywords. When the algorithm was changed to move away from using meta tags, the keyword stuffing technique migrated to other HTML elements. Keyword stuffing titles, image alt attributes and page content have become popular techniques for gaining improved search engine rankings. Search engine algorithms eventually fell into keyword stuffing, which is no longer an effective way to improve rankings.
3. Keyword density:
With changes to search engine algorithms and the crackdown on keyword stuffing, keyword density was quickly born. It is decided by the webmaster that if the keyword density of the content on a specific web page on a website is within a specific percentage range, higher search engine rankings can be achieved by SEO. Webmasters start adding keywords to web content, trying to get a percentage of what the keyword density is and what they think is the best. The problem with this technique is that everyone has a different idea of what density should be. Page content begins to become written trying to include keyword density in the content to get the content right, causing the quality of the article content to decline.
Webmasters and SEOs today don't view keyword density as it was viewed in the past. Today, the best strategy is to write content for people who are likely to visit the site without reaching a certain keyword density. If the content is used this way and the keywords are ranked in the page then different HTML elements are usually included.
4. Hidden text:
Since content has a ranking in search engines, webmasters and webmasters decide on rankings, and if enough content is not created that is not found on the pages of a site, SEO has a great impact. Modifying content to include keywords or adding content to a web page can require changes in appearance, so adding hidden text grabbers is a great way to get keywords into the pages of the site. The most common way is to hide the text and make it the same color as the background. The technique was quickly flagged as a way to trick search engines. Using this technique today can hurt rather than help their rankings.
5. Footer link:
One way to get hundreds or thousands of keyword targeted links is to include the links in the footer of your website. The footer can include 20, 30, 40 or even more links. Footer links won't have the same impact on rankings today as they did in the past.
6. Full site link:
The concept is, if a link from another website can improve search engine rankings how about many links from the same website? This concept didn't work for a while, and getting a couple of links from a couple of sites to a few major sites did have a significant impact on rankings. Now it is not valid for much longer. Getting two links or two thousand links from the same website has the same impact on search engine rankings.
7. Post-comment links on forums and blogs:
I'm always amazed to see the link building efforts people continue to expend on these types of links. There are so many better options to spend your link building efforts on. Forums used to be an effective way to build links from blog comments. Websites now use the no follow attribute and are much more strict in deciding what is allowed and disallowed in terms of links. Posting short-lived and meaningless opinions just to remove a link back to your site often results in forums and blog accounts being banned or deleted. With this type of link building today, it's just not worth the time spent doing it.
So, there are my seven ghosts of SEO. I believe there are other SEO techniques that can also be classified as ghost. If you would like to add one that you think is a "ghost" please leave me a comment.
Please keep it for reprinting: http://www.vbosem.com/seo/google/2010/1031/170.html
Thanks to weilove6 for your contribution