Bad SEO is not something new or uncommon, and yes, it can really destroy your Google rankings. In this article, I will explain bad SEO and the top 10 practices that can negatively impact your rankings.
What is Bad SEO?
Practices that are unethical, outdated, or outside the boundaries of Google webmaster guidelines are considered BAD, thus the term ‘bad SEO’. While SEO is about optimizing your website for search engines, bad SEO can generate the opposite results.
So, what techniques can hurt your rankings, and most importantly, what should you do to avoid them?
10 Bad SEO Practices To Avoid
- Duplicate Content
- Keyword Stuffing
- Guest Posting For Links
- Accepting Low-Quality Guest Posts
- Cloaking/Invisible Text
- Too Many Ads Above The Fold
- Paid Links
- Not using Google Search Console
- Having a Lot of Outgoing Links
- Slow or Unavailable Websites
1. Duplicate Content
Last week, I wrote a post about writing SEO-friendly content, and the first tip was to ensure your content is unique and original. In the case of bad SEO, you need to avoid publishing duplicate content on your website.
Non-unique content is not good for SEO. The main reason is that if search engines already have the same content in their index, there is absolutely no reason to index your web page since it has nothing new to offer.
If you need to have duplicate content on your website because it is useful for your readers or because of the nature of your business, you should “no index and no follow” those pages so that they do not hurt your SEO.
2. Keyword Stuffing
Repeating the same keywords over and over again, not because they are helpful in the text but because you are supposed to optimize your copy, is a very bad SEO practice.
Not only it will discourage your visitors from interacting or reading the content, but it is also a signal for search engines that you are trying to manipulate (trick) their algorithms.
Mentioning your keywords in the title, description, opening paragraph, and a few more times naturally in the text is enough.
3. Guest Posting For Links
Many insist that guest posting is a secure way to get your website backlinks. While guest posting can be a great way to do that, it can damage your rankings if done cheaply and wrongly.
You can guest post on high-quality websites related to your niche, not to get a link but for more exposure and recognition.
4. Accepting Low-Quality Guest Posts
You can feature new writers on your website and publish content written by others, provided it is original, relevant, and useful for your audience. If the above rules are not met, then it’s better not to publish anything.
Publishing new content regularly is a good SEO practice, but it is also important to balance content produced from the website and content offered to the website in exchange for a link in the author bio.
5. Cloaking/Invisible Text
Cloaking (hiding the real destination of a link) and showing different page versions to crawlers and users was a common practice in the past, but not anymore. Using such techniques now is actually a very bad practice.
You should only keep one version of a page for both search engine crawlers and users and ensure that users can differentiate between website content and ads.
6. Too Many Ads Above The Fold
Yes, that’s bad SEO since Google punishes websites with many ads above the part of a page that is visible without scrolling (above the fold).
If you suddenly see a decrease in traffic, then you should check if you were affected by the page layout algorithm.
7. Paid Links
Building a successful website or blog requires time patience, and hard work to create the content and get those valuable natural backlinks. If you prefer to take shortcuts instead of doing that, you may see temporary success at the beginning and, soon enough, huge failure.
Buying links of any kind is a bad practice and something that Google will find out (sooner or later), and most probably, you will end up losing your rankings and will need to try even harder to achieve something good online.
8. Not using Google Search Console
Google developed the webmaster tools to establish better communication with webmasters. You can get a ton of information about your website and a lot of tools to help you understand how to improve your SEO and rankings in Google.
You can check for bad links, crawl errors, duplicate titles and descriptions, and more.
9. Having a Lot of Outgoing Links
It’s not only the incoming links that can damage your website but also the outgoing links. Websites with many outgoing links without using the ‘nofollow’ tag can be considered link farms or paid directories.
In general, you should ‘nofollow’ any links in ads, comments, and websites you don’t fully trust.
10. Slow or Unavailable Websites
Your website should load in less than 3-4 seconds and should be available 24/7 all the time. I consider anything that does not comply with the above rules to be bad SEO practice.
A good hosting provider is very important for having 24/7 availability, and modern software (like WordPress) can help you build fast websites that load within the accepted range.
Conclusion
What is more important for website success these days is to follow good ethical SEO practices based on Google standards and be up to date with the latest developments in ranking algorithms.
Practices of the past, such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, massive link building, and banner stuffing, are things of the past and should be avoided.
Emily Leo says
Great post Alex
Thank you for your Valuable article.
Harry Andrew says
Hi Alex !
Really, Your Article About ” 10 Bad SEO practices that will destroy your Google Rankings” is very interesting and very knowledgeable for doing SEO work. I heads-off you for this awesome Article.
Alex says
Hi Harry
Thanks a lot!
Alex
Xaif says
Hey I read the post of yours it was pretty amazing. I would like to know that deleting any post is also bad seo practice?
Alex says
Hi Xaif
Not, deleting posts is not a bad seo practice. If it’s not a good post, you can delete it or you can redirect it to some other related post on your website.
Hope this helps
Alex
Keenan Garvey says
love this Article, straight to the point! I have been in SEO for 4 years and every year I hear the same old people say “SEO is dead”….ummm well those people aren’t actually anything to do with SEO and have no idea the power it holds!
SEO is one of the most credible ways to get your website seen and to generate third-phase customers, the ones READY to buy! Any business owner who overlooks this are playing with fire, simple.
Alex says
Hi Keenan
I wouldn’t agree with you more! SEO was and it still is one of the most important tools of Digital Marketing.
Thanks
Alex
paminos says
such great article, thanks 🙂
Jakob Boman says
Well written and easy to understand. I love that as too many try to make SEO too complicated.
Thanks for sharing.-)
Ben says
Thanks for sharing the blog. It is very important to get the quality backlinks for your website. Spam backlinks will automatically decrease the ranking and authority of website in search engines. SEO done in right way always brings good ROI. So its good for webmasters to avoid the 10 bad SEO practice that will destroy Google ranking. Keep sharing your blog for further more interesting updates.
Alex says
Hi Ben
True, you need good quality backlinks but you need to get them the proper way (natural links) and not otherwise.
Thanks
Alex
Stefanos says
Very good article. Thanks!
Steve Williams says
Our website is being punished by Google (not a Manual Action) and I’m trying to cleanse our backlink profile. I found links to Links2go and it seems it’s a paid site. although they have great UR & DR (according to AHREFS).
Should I have it removed? There are 34 links pointing to us, which seems excessive for a directory :/
Alex says
Hi Steve
To be on the safe site, my suggestion is to remove them. By the name if the domain, you can tell it’s purpose.
Thanks
Steve Williams says
Thanks for that, Alex!
Elbert says
Here I found what mistakes I have done in seo and why my website ranking destroyed. Now I’ll consider all these factors and again starting seo of website.
Alok says
Hi Alex,
Excellent post on bad SEO practices, I really like it as I m newbie in SEO field. Today I know how to improve my self in form of white SEO
Kapil verma says
Your Blog Post is informative ,Updated my knowledge regarding artificial Intelligence used by google , I have subscribed to your blog updates , your blog seems like a great SEO Guide -Easy to understand and follow.
Andrew Josh says
Hi Alex. How about a new blog, how to get it achieve the good position for the targeted keyword, having a new blog is a frustrating job for impatient guy like me, do you have tips to help me?
Eagle says
Interesting Article about Seo . Negative seo or doing bad practicing to get higher google ranking will lost ranking in search result . Thanks for Sharing .
Aayush says
Love this Article, straight to the point!Thanx For sharing.
Eric Ben says
thanks.. I know many things about good and bad seo from your nice blog post. thanks sharing such a good blog. now I definitely remember this when i seo my site. thanks again
Arindam Basu says
I wonder, how to handle content like a block of disclaimer text, which is exactly same content for every pages. Will it destroy SEO? If it does, what should we do to tackle this problem?
Alex Chris says
Hi Arindam
That should not be an issue at all. You can keep you disclaimer text in your pages.
Hope this helps
Alex
Aim Bizcon says
Great article and very accurate for all the points. Strongly believe in the motto content is king, and excellent content should be held as key to any SEO campaign.
Richard says
Hi Alex,
Great article and point 6 is very important. User experience is now a major part of keeping rankings once you have them, and to many ads above the fold is not good. Whatever the searcher is looking for should be in clear view without the need to scroll.
Danish Maniyar says
Straight to the point. Great article!
SEO plays an important role in Digital marketing.
Alex Chris says
Hi Danish
Thanks a lot!
Alex
Minakshi Srivastava says
Hi Alex,
Bad SEO practices are not something new.Many people tend to follow some wrong SEO strategies and end up losing their potential clients.By the way great job on the article.
Alex Chris says
Hi
Thanks!
Alex
Harpreet says
I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned today with this post.
I had last year an issue with keyword cannibalization and I found the fix on your blog.
A million thanks to you buddy.
Alex Chris says
Hi Harpreet
I’m glad I could help!
All the best
Alex