{"id":548,"date":"2012-09-12T14:08:26","date_gmt":"2012-09-12T14:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/?p=548"},"modified":"2016-12-09T14:49:24","modified_gmt":"2016-12-09T12:49:24","slug":"seo-tactics-to-avoid-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/548\/seo-tactics-to-avoid-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"7 SEO tactics to avoid in 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are many SEO tactics that could negatively influence a sites’ ranking. The tactics presented in this article are <\/span>7 of the most important ones<\/em><\/strong><\/span>, that I consider you should avoid, as to the 2012 events (Penguin\/Panda\/other Google updates)<\/em>. They are both onsite and offsite tactics. (Note: LQ = Low Quality)<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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1. Directories (LQ)<\/h3>\n

This is one of those “Post\u00a0Penguin” tactics to avoid. Of course there are still, great human-edited directories that will give you quality links (even if paid). botw.org<\/a> is one of the oldest and still high standing human-edited directories online.<\/p>\n

The ones that you should avoid are the ones that are fitting some of the below patterns:<\/p>\n

– they ask for a link exchange<\/p>\n

– totally automatic (NO human review exists)<\/p>\n

– tons of links on each category page.<\/p>\n

– is not to be found in the Google index. Just do a site:directorysite.com <\/strong><\/em>to find out. Google started a de-indexation campaign post penguin and they started removing<\/a> low quality web-directories from their index.<\/p>\n

2. Paid Links<\/h3>\n

This is one of the oldest tactics used in SEO. It still works.<\/strong> Though, if you want a 99% safe flight you should avoid it. Google got better and better at detecting paid links.<\/p>\n

If you still want to do it you should focus on finding sites that don’t normally sell links (so no patterns exist)<\/p>\n

– avoid blogrolls ( and any other types of groups of links)<\/p>\n

– avoid sites that sell a high number of blog posts and do not disclose that.<\/p>\n

– avoid footer links<\/p>\n

3. Guest Posts (LQ)<\/h3>\n

Don’t jump just yet. This is only about Low Quality Content<\/strong><\/em>. Well written “guest posts” are a one of the best tactics to achieve both customers and links.<\/p>\n

This tactic has been abused in particular cases, and this is what you should avoid when writing guest posts and searching for sites to post them on:<\/p>\n

– avoid low quality sites. Double-check their content quality and Google indexation.<\/p>\n

– double-check your post for duplicate content issues. You can easily use copyscape<\/a>.<\/p>\n

– don’t write for search engines first or all. Optimize for SEO, after you wrote the content from a human perspective. Do not over optimize or keyword stuff.<\/p>\n

4. Over-optimization<\/h3>\n

When building links to your site don’t always use keyword rich anchor text. Doesn’t look natural to the Google Algorithm. Instead use variations of brand, navigational queries (click here etc<\/em>) and money keywords.<\/p>\n

In the end you should get a natural looking anchor text cloud<\/a><\/em><\/strong> like this one.<\/p>\n

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5. Spammy Links<\/h3>\n

That is mostly about the Penguin update. These low quality links<\/a> would fit in one of the below categories:<\/p>\n

– massive blog commenting\u00a0with the sole intention of getting baclinks.<\/p>\n

– massive forum posting with the same reason as above.<\/p>\n

– automatically generating links using link networks or any similar concept.<\/p>\n

– easily patternable link scenarios ( multiple links from the footer of various pages\/sites, multiple blogrolls … etc)<\/p>\n

6. Low Quality Content<\/h3>\n

Similar to what we have in the Guest Posts section, but this refers to content on your own site.<\/p>\n

– double-check for duplicate content issues.<\/p>\n

– don’t write for search engine, first of all. Optimize for SEO, after you wrote the content from a human perspective. Do not over optimize or keyword stuff.<\/p>\n

7. Ad Stuffed Content<\/h3>\n

This is “Post-Panda” advice. As “Panda” is mostly focused on User Experience we should avoid annoying the visitor. This could influence your rankings, if the “Panda” or any other similar update would hit our site.<\/p>\n

– do not stuff your page with Ads.<\/p>\n

– have enough content to sustain the Ads on the page.<\/p>\n

– do not put too many Ads above the fold.<\/p>\n

Do you know any other SEO tactics that could fit in these spots ?<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n
*\u00a0Photo Credits<\/a><\/em><\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are many SEO tactics that could negatively influence a sites’ ranking. The tactics presented in this article are 7 of the most important ones, that I consider you should avoid, as to the 2012 events (Penguin\/Panda\/other Google updates). They are both onsite and offsite tactics. (Note: LQ = Low Quality) 1. Directories (LQ) This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cognitiveseo","category-link-building","category-seo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}