SEO optimisation can improve your site’s position in search engines such as Google. This translates into attracting additional traffic, a higher number of clicks and conversions. Poor SEO can, however, negatively affect rankings and visibility in search engines. This leads to a loss of time and money. Fortunately, the possibility of poor SEO happening is under your control.
To prevent drops in rankings and damage to your reputation, pay attention to the common poor SEO practices below. However, it is worth first finding out what poor SEO is and what its consequences are.
What is poor SEO?
By poor SEO we mean any practices that negatively affect a site’s ranking, cause poor user experience (UX) or are not compliant with Google’s guidelines. Usually, this group includes old SEO practices that have already become obsolete.
Poor SEO activities can also happen accidentally. For example, your website may contain a lot of duplicate content that you are unaware of. Such actions can also be deliberate, such as using unethical techniques to deceive Google’s algorithm.
- 01Negative impactHarms the site’s ranking and UX.
- 02Outdated practicesOld, obsolete SEO methods.
- 03Algorithm manipulationDeliberate, unethical deception of Google.
Key point: Poor SEO is harmful, often outdated or unethical activity that violates the guidelines.
What are unethical SEO techniques?
Unethical SEO techniques and practices are used to improve a site’s position by violating search engine guidelines. These practices are used to manipulate the search engine algorithm.
Alternatively, ethical SEO techniques are practices used to improve a site’s position while complying with search engine guidelines.
As search engines develop, unethical SEO activities are easier to spot. The penalties received for being caught carrying out such activities are not worth the risk. Although it is worth emphasising that any penalties and filters are becoming increasingly rare.
The most common poor SEO practices and how to avoid them
Familiarise yourself with the common SEO mistakes below. Also find out how you can avoid them.
- 01Ethical SEOGoogle standards & quality
- 02New algorithmsTracking changes & relevance
- 03Avoid outdatedToxic links & stuffing
The key is to build trust and avoid manipulative techniques, focusing on quality and honesty in SEO activities.
Low-quality content
High-quality content is one of the key elements in SEO. It is therefore natural that low-quality SEO translates into poor SEO.
Creating low-quality content in order to save time or money can lead to the exact opposite. It will result in a drop in search rankings, a low number of conversions and have a negative impact on your brand’s reputation.
Content may be characterised by low quality if it:
- is not original,
- does not answer the user’s question (e.g. what the user typed into Google before landing on your site),
- does not support claims with facts and quotations,
- contains many grammar and spelling mistakes,
- has poor readability,
- lacks E-E-A-T.
The acronym E-E-A-T stands for Experience (doświadczenie), Expertise (eksperckość), Authoritativeness (autorytet) and Trustworthiness (wiarygodność).
This is particularly important in the case of YMYL (Your Money Your Life) content, such as health and financial advice, which has the potential to affect someone’s income.
E-E-A-T is not an official ranking factor, but it is included in Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, which quality raters use to assess content.
How do you avoid low-quality content?
To avoid publishing low-quality content, you need to create high-quality content that is:
- precise and relevant,
- readable,
- useful,
- aligned with search intent,
- grammatically correct,
- credible (strongly demonstrates E-E-A-T).
Content of this type is suitable both for your website and for your audience.
Duplicated content
Duplicated content refers to pages created with the same or almost the same content, in which only a few words have been changed.
By nature, duplicated content is not original. A lack of originality may mean low-quality content. There are several potential negative consequences of duplicated content, such as:
- low page rankings,
- the wrong version of the page appears in Google results,
- indexing issues.
All of this can lead to reduced traffic to the website. This in turn harms your business and means the goals set for the website are not being met.
Duplicated content can also appear when you are not aware of it. For example, you may accidentally create new content on a topic that is covered on one of your other pages.
How do you avoid duplicated content?
There are many ways to avoid duplicated content:
Canonical tags
A canonical tag is a piece of HTML code that signals to Google that a page is original, even if there are other versions of it elsewhere. Google may treat the canonical page as the main page and show it in its results instead of other versions of this content.
Use 301 redirects
A 301 redirect informs Google that a page has been moved permanently. This solution can be used in many situations, such as moving an existing page to a new URL.
Too many ads above the fold (“Above the Fold”)
Displaying too many ads above the fold (ATF) can have a negative impact on your website. Ads can of course be a great way to monetise your website. Placing them in the front or middle part of the page makes their noticing and clicking usually deliberate.
However, having a top-heavy page means you have too many “Above the fold” ads – in the part of the page that is visible first before scrolling.
Top-heavy pages may be penalised in search rankings. In addition, too many ATF ads can discourage users from staying on the page.
How do you avoid too many ATF ads?
Keep a balance between ads and non-monetised content above the fold. Ads in this area are allowed, but users should not see large blocks of them when they land on the page. Instead, it is better to mix them with the content that users visited your site for.
You should also follow best practices for ad placement. For example, you need to avoid displaying these types of ads on standard devices (desktop):
- pop-up ads,
- autoplay video ads with sound,
- ads that cannot be closed with a countdown,
- large “sticky” ads.
Keyword stuffing (Keyword Stuffing)
Keyword stuffing is the practice of unnaturally saturating content with keywords. This practice makes the content look unnatural and difficult for users to read. This can result in a penalty from Google.
This is an outdated SEO practice that was once commonly used to manipulate Google’s search algorithm. However, the algorithm has been improved so that it detects stuffing, and this practice has a more negative than positive impact on SEO efforts.
The quality of the content suffers from keyword stuffing. Writing simply to cram in as many keywords as possible is clearly visible. This leads to low-quality, often confusing content.
How do you avoid keyword stuffing?
Use keywords in the content naturally. Keywords are key elements of good SEO. Page optimisation for them should, however, never mean that quality suffers as a result.
So what matters is how you use keywords, not how many there are or how often you use a particular keyword. It is important to use them naturally, where it makes sense.
For example, your target keyword should appear in the following elements of your website:
- title,
- meta description,
- initial section,
- main content (where the keyword fits naturally).
Toxic backlinks
Toxic backlinks are links that negatively affect site visibility in Google search results. Such potentially harmful backlinks are usually acquired through activities that Google refers to as “link spam”.
In its link spam guidelines, Google gives the following examples:
- link exchanges in return for money, goods, services or samples,
- excessive link exchanges (“You link to me and I link to you”),
- partner pages created solely for linking,
- using automated programmes or services to create links leading to your site,
- paid ads with optimised links,
- low-quality directory or bookmark links,
- widget links rich in keywords, hidden or low-quality links embedded in widgets,
- links in footers or templates appearing on other sites,
- forum comments containing optimised links.
Having links gained through the use of one of these techniques can lead to a drop. We are increasingly less likely to see any penalties or filters for this reason. The key is the devaluation of that link fashion. And link-building campaigns are becoming increasingly creative, using different assets, e.g. publishers, which is debatable against Google’s documentation. But is it worth taking everything seriously? 🙂
Content spinning
Content spinning (or article spinning) happens when you use someone else’s content, lightly rewrite it, and then publish it on your own site. Essentially, this is plagiarism.
Even if you swap a few words here and there, publishing such content is detrimental to your SEO efforts.
How to avoid content spinning
You can avoid this problem by publishing only original content.
There are two ways to stay ahead of the competition in this area:
- Draw inspiration from competitors’ content – look at what competitors create to gain inspiration for your own content. Then find ways to discuss topics differently or take a similar approach, but provide added value where it is missing from the competitor’s text.
- Use content gaps left by competitors and create content that is simply better.
Over-optimised anchor text
Anchor text is the clickable text associated with a link. Links help Google crawl and index your site by directing search engine bots from one page to another. Anchor text allows those bots to better understand what the linked page is about.
In addition, anchor text is important for user experience. It directs users to the relevant sources and tells them what they can expect after clicking the link.
Some SEO specialists use anchor text incorrectly by over-optimising it. The text of such an anchor is stuffed with keywords in order to rank the page higher for those terms.
Such anchors use high-value keywords at the expense of user experience. They do not clearly indicate what can be found after clicking the link.
How to avoid over-optimising anchor text?
To avoid over-optimisation, follow best practices for its content, such as:
- use descriptive but concise text,
- place the link only where it is relevant,
- make sure what you are linking to,
- do not stuff keywords into anchor text,
- use natural language.
Remember that Google’s guidelines are intended to provide the best possible experience for users. First and foremost, think about what benefit the anchor text and its content provide to the user, rather than how it looks in the eyes of Google’s bots.
Not using Google Search Console
Google developed webmaster tools to provide better communication with them. You can get a wealth of information about your site and find many tools that will help you understand how to improve your SEO and rankings in Google.
You can check the site for broken links, crawling errors, duplicate titles, descriptions and many other issues.
Slow or inaccessible websites
Your site should load in less than 3-4 seconds and should be available 24/7 at all times. Anything that causes these rules not to be followed may be considered bad SEO practice.
A good hosting provider is very important when it comes to 24/7 availability and modern software (such as WordPress). This makes it possible to create fast sites that load within an acceptable timeframe.
Summary
In today’s world, for a site to succeed it is important to follow good, ethical SEO practices based on Google’s standards and to keep up with the latest changes in ranking algorithms.
Outdated practices such as keyword stuffing, acquiring an excessive number of toxic links and stuffing banners should no longer be used and should be avoided.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What actions are considered bad SEO practices?
These are practices that negatively affect a site’s rankings, user experience, or are against Google’s guidelines. Such actions include, among others, low-quality content, duplicated content, keyword stuffing and toxic backlinks.
Why does low-quality content harm SEO?
Because it can lower a site’s position, reduce the number of conversions and damage brand reputation. The problem also lies with content that is unoriginal, hard to read, linguistically incorrect or mismatched with search intent.
Can duplicated content reduce a site’s visibility in Google?
Yes, because it can lead to low rankings, indexing issues and the wrong version of a page being shown in the results. As a result, traffic to the site also drops.
How can you avoid keyword stuffing in content?
You need to use keywords naturally and only where they fit the context. The most important thing is the quality of the text, not the number of keyword repetitions.
What are toxic backlinks?
These are links that can harm a site’s visibility in Google and usually come from activities considered link spam. The article mentions, among others, paid links, excessive link exchanges, low-quality directories and links in forum comments.
When do ads at the top of a page become an SEO mistake?
When there are too many of them and they dominate the content above the fold. Such an overcrowded page may be judged more poorly and discourage users from staying on it.
