Avoid These SEO Penalties In 2016
Poor quality copywriting
There’s never been a better time for copywriters – at least those who are only interested in creating good quality, relevant content that really sells. With so much emphasis on customer engagement and the need to produce authoritative, useful writing to improve conversion, Google will be penalising low quality website content more seriously, and punishing those that fail to step up to the mark.
Using automated articles
This also includes ‘robotic’ articles that are created by computers gathering content from multiple sources, almost like article spinning software. Such a practice may have been commonplace a decade or so ago, but it won’t be immune from tough penalties in 2016. According to the founder of Polemic Digital, Barry Adams, content should also be more ‘attention-grabbing’, because the competition for consumer attention will continue to strengthen as social media and mobile optimisation play an increasingly important role in marketing
Poor keyword strategies
Businesses that use too many keywords – or too many versions of the same key phrase – also risk being penalised, as this content won’t look organic. For example, a restaurant chain specialising in Italian cuisine and based in the London area might wish to use phrases like ‘Italian restaurants London’, ‘London Italian restaurant’ a couple of times in an article, as well of other location-specific phrases such as ‘Soho Italian restaurant’ or ‘Italian restaurant Fulham’, if that’s where its restaurants are based.
Don’t ‘stuff’ your content
However, stuffing content with too many additional key phrases such as ‘London Italian cuisine’, ‘Italian food London’ and many other similar phrases will make the content look unnatural. The more keywords are in the text, the less space there is to create informative content, and the value of each key phrase will be significantly reduced.
Poor link building strategies
Spam link building – the peril of bad SEO
One of the most common techniques of the dangerous type of SEO known as Black Hat SEO, ‘spam’ link building can jeopardise your website’s search engine ranking. Buying large numbers of cheap links from other sources and creating hidden links to your website through security loopholes may increase your website ranking in the short term. However, in the long term, your website could disappear from the search engine altogether – without warning.
Good SEO
White Hat Seo, on the other hand, is the most effective strategy, because it emphasises quality over quantity. Over time, this form of SEO represents much better value for money, and it is the only way to ensure your website achieves a consistently good ranking and avoids penalties. A good content strategy is at the heart of a successful SEO campaign, so plan your content well.
Not Knowing your Data
The CEO of Beanstalk Internet Marketing, Dave Davies, believes 2016 will see a trend towards more data utilisation, as brands figure out how to maximise sales. With this data, owners will be able to make more informed decisions on how to improve their content strategy, but with so much information available, they will have to make sure this data are more structured, and this may involve a move to a more centralised platform, such as a data warehouse.
Danny Hall co-directs FSE Online, one of Essex’s leading SEO companies. Danny specialises in technical SEO supported by quality content and stylish design.
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