SEO Past: A Ghost That Still Haunts?

Surely there are some SEO tactics that don’t work anymore!?!?

A few months ago I was talking with a “professional” in the SEO industry (I love talking). The way the conversation starts dictates my responses. I usually like to take the backseat in a conversation when a know-it-all is present. Quite early on I realized this person knew it all!

Once this person realized I worked in the industry the one upping started. I don’t really care about bragging as long as results are visible and obvious (hey, maybe I will learn something). I am not sure there was much substance in this conversation.

For whatever reason the conversation moved to current techniques that search engines love. After a few brief descriptions of tips that I think might work (content and natural link building), we walked down SEO Past Lane. At one point I was in shock and if anyone could have seen my face they would have thought I was acting like a whale trying to catch tiny plankton.

I have been actively involved in SEO for 6 years. I caught a small portion of the “bad practices” widely used early on in SEO. Shortly after I got involved the engines started quickly evolving, especially Google. I, for one, am OK learning and asking questions. I follow several websites and blogs. In fact, I frequently ask friends and other professionals for opinions about techniques and tips I am currently using. Shortly after my conversation I realized a post was needed about SEO practices that no longer work. In no particular order…

1. Stuffing Meta Tags (not including Title) – While I will accept a best practices approach, keyword and description tags carry very little weight. Some, including myself, believe these tags carry no weight in search algorithims. Personally, I still add a description tag for snippet purposes in the SERP’s.
2. Hidden Text – Not only is this a worthless practice it can totally mess with the aesthetic feel of your site. Also, this practice can get you banned from the search engines. I have listed two reasons why this technique should never be used while optimizing your website.
3. Traditional Link Exchanges – Link farms and link exchanges should be avoided. In an SEO age where the customer matters why would you have 75 link pages with 50 links on each page? Will anyone’s customers view these pages as beneficial? These types of link exchanges carry very little weight and value. To add merit for not doing traditional link exchanges, a few small mistakes can hurt your sites overall trust. Spend some time generating relevant links from very trusted sites.
4. Search Engine Submissions – Literally no value to any websites.
5. Stuffed Footer Links – There is some discussion on this topic. Please understand I am not talking about a typical footer with a few important links. However, in my experience I have noticed some discounting on Google’s part for lots of links in the footer.
6. More Visitors Means More Money – This no long works. Tracking and conversions can impact revenue more than adding thousands of visitors.

Over the next few days I will add reply’s from my twitter accounts. I am quite excited to see some responses. Feel free to leave comments as well.

@Aaronabber – Relying on meta keyword tags, & other on page factors alone, now off page (link building) factors are more important. For more information visit Full Tilt Blogging.

@seo_duke – Concentrating on traffic alone no longer works…

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