Is SEO dying or expanding?

Is SEO dead?

Today’s search results are crowded with ads, question boxes, and featured snippets. Moreover, it takes a longer time to generate organic search traffic through search engine optimization, whereas, a successful PPC (pay per click) ad campaign can easily show your website on the first page of the search results. This may lead the website owners to believe that PPC is burying SEO. However, the idea that Google algorithm can be manipulated with paid ad campaigns to obtain greater brand visibility and higher rank is an utter misconception.

With 63,000 searches per second in Google (source: Junto), every website is competing to garner the same pool of online traffic. Amidst such a scenario, the relevance of SEO can never be entirely lost. Having said that, we must acknowledge that some traditional and black hat SEO tactics have become outdated, making people to think that SEO is dead.

In this blog, we will discuss the outdated SEO strategies that you should do away with and also mention the necessary way forward.

1. Creating numerous pages and posts Gone are the good old days of creating a vast number of pages and posts to increase the size and relevance of your website. Now, Google ranks individual web pages based on the merit of the page with respect to the search query or keyword.

Therefore, the focus should be to generate high-quality content that can adequately answer the user queries. It’s noteworthy that a lengthy and wellarticulated content with multiple keywords can rank for each of those keywords. Hence, there’s no point in making distinct pages targeting each keyword.

Further, quality content has the potential to reduce bounce rate and increase reader’s time spent on the site. Thus, it plays a crucial role in improving the on-page metrics.

At a glance: Targeting to enhance the user experience, and not only the

keywords is the latest SEO tactic. Generating valuable content can improve the popularity of your website and drive more traffic.

2. Not Modifying Anchor Text At one point in time, anchor text was a major ranking factor. For example, if you sought to rank for the keyword “web developer”, you had to acquire as many links as possible using web developer as the anchor text. With time, marketers started to abuse this strategy and Google had to intervene.

Consequently, several websites with excessively keyword-rich anchor text links got penalized for deviating from Google’s webmaster guidelines.

Therefore, it’s better to refrain from this manipulative practice and rather maintain a free flow of writing. The anchor text distribution for a natural link profile should display variety. Each link needs to be used in a different context that helps the readers to find relevant information. For example, an anchor text may mention “price”, another may contain nondescript text like “click here”.

At a glance: Search engines want the links to websites appear “organically”

or “naturally”. Using keyword-stuffed anchor text repeatedly may penalize your website. The anchor text should maintain contextuality and not look contrived in the context. According to the experts of any top SEO agency, the longer anchor text should flow freely into the content.

3. Over Optimizing a Post for Keyword Another traditional SEO strategy was to fully optimize a post for certain keywords. It used to affect the readability and user experience. To stop such practice of keyword stuffing, Google algorithm has come out with updates like May Day, Caffeine, Farmer, Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird, etc. In fact, the latest updates enable the search engine to determine the value of the content on a web page.

Now, Google aim is not simply to match the exact keywords but to realize the intent behind them. Posts will be ranked on the basis of providing quality answers and top-notch user experience.

Therefore, increasing the Click Through Rate (CTR) should be your primary concern. CTR is generally used to measure the effectiveness of an ad campaign but has a considerable impact on influencing the organic search rankings as well. You can adopt multiple strategies to meet this goal. For example, a catchy and descriptive headline, along with an informative meta description can draw the attention of the viewers. You can also modify the structure of your content to enhance its chances of being chosen for a featured snippet box.

At a glance: Enriching user experience and readability and striving to answer the users’ queries are more important than merely stuffing the content with keywords. The keywords should flow naturally, and not look forced.

4. Emphasizing Reciprocal Linking One of the common manipulative link building practices was reciprocal linking. It refers to the agreement between two website owners to provide a hyperlink of each other’s websites in their sites. The search engine considers this link to be a vote, and reciprocal linking is a way of exchanging votes.

Therefore, marketers started to blindly trade links, even from websites that had no relevance to theirs.

Worse yet, they didn’t even bother to embed the links within the content, and simply dumped hundreds of links in the “Useful Links” or “Resource Pages” section. These toxic links from random or spam websites carried no value to the visitors other than boosting the rank of the site. Also, promoting the link of your website on random blog posts or forums is a black hat link building strategy and cannot provide you with the much-desired link juice.

At a glance: The quality and relevance of the links are more important than mere quantity. Limit the number of backlinks and include links from relevant high authority sites only.

5. Creating Exact Match Domains For a while, Exact Match Domains (EMDs) were a silver bullet for SEO. With an EMD, the domain matches the exact target keyword. For example, personalizedcake, cheapcloth, etc. This tactic was preferable to many marketers as it could elevate the ranking of their sites in the search results.

As Google algorithm got smarter, such sites are often targeted as potentially spammy EMD websites. Further, EMD also affects brand identity. For example, if Flipkart used this technique and named their domain as “buyaproduct”, it might hamper brand awareness.

At a glance: Exact-match domains can be viewed as spam and less trustworthy by the Google algorithm. This can reduce brand visibility and conversion.

Conclusion When they say “SEO is dead”, they really mean the above-mentioned oldschool strategies. The SEO industry is rapidly evolving and being proactive to adapt to the latest trends will help your business survive. However, it’s easier said than done. Especially, if you don’t have much experience in SEO, you can always seek assistance from the experts at a reputed digital marketing services provider to avail an all-encompassing digital solution.

Source: https://ventsmagazine.com/2019/12/07/is-seo-dead/

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