The one aspect that’s consistent about search engine optimization practices is that they are always changing. The changes aren’t small either – they usually dramatically alter the landscape of SEO practices and marketing techniques whenever they do happen, although each change is for the benefit of web and organic search.

Google actively tries to make search better for everyone by removing and adjusting how SEO affects search rankings, so while it does cause a ripple in the marketing industry, it’s for the greater good.

Despite this, some people and organizations still insist on using outdated practices, either it’s because it’s what they know and want to cling to it, or they aren’t aware of the changes.

Either way, sticking with old approaches not only is no longer effective, but it can actually hurt your Google ranking. Finding an agency focused on SEO such as SEO Company Manchester can help you avoid outdated tactics, as they are experts and engage in forward-thinking practices.

Find out the 3 Popular But Outdated SEO Practices That Are Hurting Your Google Ranking

However, if there isn’t room in the budget to invest in an agency, you can quickly learn—or unlearn—which SEO practices are outdated and shouldn’t be used anymore.

1. Keyword Stuffing

This one shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone who’s paying attention to current digital marketing practices, because keyword stuffing has been seen as a negative SEO practice for quite some time.

Writing for a specific keyword density simply doesn’t work anymore, as Google’s algorithms don’t depend on the number of times a specific keyword is used the on-page copy in order to determine whether that page is useful in answering a search query. Google doesn’t crawl for keywords anymore – it’s much more advanced than that now.

Stuffing your copy with the same keyword over and over will only make your content incredibly difficult and tedious to read, which will hurt your ranking as Google will consider your web page to be spammy.

Furthermore, Google recognizes what keyword stuffing is, and how unnatural the text combinations read. It’s considered a form of search result manipulation, and you can get your website penalized for this practice.

2. Article Syndication

Article syndication refers to the practice of writing one quality blog post or article and then rewording it slightly to create multiple versions of the same article to be posted on many different websites.

This practice was one of the earliest forms of digital marketing and seemed like a sure-fire easy way to push out a lot of SEO content across the web, but it doesn’t make sense anymore.

Google looks for high-quality original content to promote, and the whole concept of content marketing backs that up as well. It’s all about the content that’s uniquely written, showing expertise and authenticity.

3. Buying links

Backlinking is a common SEO practice that is considered to be beneficial, but when marketers turn to shady tricks like buying backlinks, it can quickly turn into a negative practice.

It’s incredibly easy for Google to identify low-quality websites, especially ones that send out a large number of links when they have no business doing so.

Paying someone to manually build backlinks isn’t fooling anyone, especially Google, so avoid this practice completely and earn your backlinks via the proper methods and channels.