5 Major SEO Tactics That Won’t Work Even In The Dinosaur Age

There are several old school seo tactics that we still believe to be the best for optimized results. However, the reality is that they need to retire

Have you ever heard about ‘dinosaur SEO tactics’? No? So, come let’s go back to the dinosaur age today, and talk about few old school SEO tricks that most of the SEOs still follow, but shouldn’t.

Although there are a number of tactics that need to retire in the present day, yet we’ll discuss about the top 5 strategies that even an SEO in the prehistoric era wouldn’t apply.

1. Subdomains for SERP Domination

Adding separate domains or sub domains for SERP domination is one of the major techniques that is used by most of the SEO experts. Classically, when you wanted to take over the top google search results for any type of unbranded or branded query, you would simply register separate domains or add subdomains to your website, in order to dominate the top 10 results.

Failure Reason: The basic reason behind its failure is that Google now gives priority to different subpages, hailing from a single domain in a single SERP.

New Strategy: You need to stop using this strategy and start using subfolder hosted content and barnacle SEO. Using this strategy, you will need not to put your content on separate subdomains. Also, barnacle SEO is becoming a hot topic these days, as google is giving much preference to websites that host content. So, you can generate profiles on Yelp, Zomato Yellow Pages etc., in order to attract huge traffic.

2. AdWords And Keyword Research Based On Keyword Planner

Performing keyword research through Keyword Planner and using AdWords is pretty common even today. Despite of several problems with the metrics, a number of seo experts and website owners vouch for this tactic even today.

Failure Reason: The reason for its failure is that a number of keywords, which are not commercially relevant as per the keyword planner or adwords, gets hidden. The result is thus, imprecise and inaccurate. Also, the keyword planner has multiple disadvantages, for example, lack of click-through rate percentage.

New Strategy: To get better results, you must use clickstream data driven tools, for example, Keyword Explorer, Ahrefs or SEMrush. You can also make use of Google Trends, related searches and Google Search Suggest.

3. Using ‘Only’ Link Building For Escalating Rankings

SEO is a mix of several strategies; you cannot simply rely on a single tactic, in order to rank higher in Google search results. However, many people are found to be using link building alone, for making it to the top.

Failure Reason: There is no such specific reason for its failure. However, since google has become more strict with its guidelines, you also need to diversify your efforts, so that your business ranks at the top naturally. Until 2011, whenever a customer used to search for, say website development services in India, your business ranked at number 10, 5, 20 or so, only through link building. However, after 2011, things got changed, and simply applying link building tactics began to be a big no-no.

New Strategy: As an online business owner or as an SEO, you must focus over improving the user experience, along with boosting your site rank. So, you must replace that old-school tactic with UX optimization, searcher task accomplishment, brand growth and content upgrades.
 

• UX optimization means to improve the format of the content
• Searcher task accomplishment involves optimizing content in a way that helps the user accomplish what he or she is trying to find out. The more your content will be optimized to solve the users’ query, the more google will push you upwards in ranking.
• Brand growth means making your brand more specific as per the keyword or the topic.
• Content upgrades is upgrading the page content.

4. Keyword Placement In Specific Areas Or Tags

Getting obsessed about placing the keyword in certain tags or areas is another SEO trick that should be taken a bit lightly these days. Being an SEO, you might want to make sure that the keyword is repeated few number of times in the content, H1 and H2 contain the keywords etc.

Failure Reason: You must note here that this strategy is not a complete failure. It do works at the present age. However, with passing time, you must make sure that the obsession of perfecting those tags should be minimized a bit.

New Strategy: Instead of keyword placement, you must be obsessed about using related topics or keywords that Google knows are used by users, when associating a specific topic.

5. Preference For Number One Rankings

Last but not the least; giving preference to number one rankings over all other techniques that drive huge traffic, is one of the most used dinosaur-age tactic. 10 to 20 years ago, some SEOs might have used this technique, and their predecessors still use this technique today.

Failure Reason: The number one position is not worth it, as it used to be in the past. This is because of the click-through rate are getting biased by SERP features.

New Strategy: This old strategy must be replaced with long-tail targeting and featured snippets. Featured snippet is getting very popular these days and the click-through rate is also higher. Not just this, it can help you rank from any number/ rank, like 3, 4, 5 etc.

Conclusion

Simply retire these obsolete tactics and replace them with the new ones. You will surely witness a huge improvement in the results. Also, keep yourself updated with the latest trends in the SEO world, so that you do not keep focusing your efforts on tactics that no longer work.