9 Bad SEO Practices That Damage Your Google Ranking

Intro

We all want a good Google Ranking, but some SEO techniques may be ruining it for us.

In this article, we will highlight some of the practices that are considered “black hats” that seem like really great ideas to boost your ranking, but can hurt you in the long run.

What is Bad SEO?

A lack of keywords, lack of backlinks, and irrelevant content can lead to bad SEO, which means that your ranking on Google is low.

The goal of SEO is to be seen, so a website with bad SEO won’t be seen by your targeted audience, mainly because it can’t be seen at all.

Common Bad SEO Practices that Damage Your Google Ranking

There are many practices to be used in order to be optimized, but good SEO vs bad SEO is something that must be kept in mind.

Good SEO is considered white-hat while bad SEO practice is considered black-hat.

This list has 9 bad SEO examples that may have once been used effectively, but are now considered outdated SEO practices.

Keyword Stuffing

Of course, you want keywords and keyword phrases on your site. It helps to find your targeted audience, and since it specifies your niche, is more likely to help you rank higher.

So you may say, “Well if keywords are that beneficial, why don’t I pump my website full of them?”

Sounds like a great idea, but there is a limit to the usage of keywords that will benefit you.

Google will be able to tell if your website is overusing keywords and phrases.

In fact, most SEO tools give you a range in which to use specific keywords for the most effective optimization results.

This does mean that there is a sweet spot for each keyword to be beneficial, and working outside of that may have harmful consequences so don’t just stuff your website with keywords.

Also, overusing keywords can make your writing come off as repetitive or even nonsensical. It’s bad from a ranking perspective and a user perspective.

Links from Bad/Low Quality Websites

Every site should be using backlinks, and outbound links to raise their ranking, but it’s crucial to audit your website regularly to ensure those links are still working properly.

Why? Well, when Google is assessing your website, they are sure to check the working order of all links. If there are links that are broken and will lead to a 404 page, or a link of low quality it will rank you lower.

This means two things; make sure to use links of good quality that load quickly and are reliable sites, and ensure that the links continue to work, by regularly checking in.

Automatically Generated Content

So the key word here is, original. Google loves original content and there is no better way to ruin that than with auto-generated content.

Automatically generated content usually comes from AI programs or code, which means it reviews work relating to your content and creates content. The issue is that originality is truly missing and a human touch.

This is considered black-hat SEO since it is used mainly to wedge the content into Google ranking.

Anything that is focused mostly on ranking and not reliable, original, or honest content is ranked lower by Google.

Invisible Text/Cloaking

One of the many outdated SEO practices is to place text in the background and match the color so it couldn’t be seen.

This was a common practice in the early 2000s and people would use these hidden chunks of text to place keywords.

At the time it helped to rank websites, but Google regularly updates its review process, and this practice is now recognized by Google as a black-hat technique and will quickly be flagged by the ranking system.

The best practice is to stick with the appropriate amount of keywords and keyword phrases to bring the proper audience to your website.

Filling the background with hidden text is not only dishonest, but it’s also not the proper way to bring the audience you are seeking to your website, and having steady, reliable traffic.

Duplicate Content

This can be a tough one to avoid, especially if you are writing reviews or dealing with product descriptions. Duplicate content can occur when you have blocks of text that are the same or very similar to other blocks of text from other sites or pages.

Duplicate content can come in one of two forms:

Internal Duplicate

This occurs within the domain. So you may have a page with a block of text and then another page with the same block of text or even the same links.

External Duplicate

This occurs from other sites so if you have copied text from another site, or if someone has copied text from you.

Duplicate content is a problem because when Google is reviewing your site and finds that it shares content with another site, Google doesn’t know what to rank higher. It doesn’t know which site originally had that text.

The best way to avoid this is by putting your website regularly through duplicate content detection sites. You never know when someone is stealing your work.

Buying Links

Backlinks are crucial to the health and ranking of a website, but the buying of links can lead to grave issues.

This is the practice of purchasing backlinks back to your website through other sites. The intention is to have more backlinks to your site, therefore, increasing your chances of traffic and of ranking.

The issue with this is that Google sees it as “illegal” activity. If you get caught by Google you could face some pretty grave penalties. Usually, they know if they’re paid links through the algorithm or by just general website reviews.

As a penalty, your ranking can be greatly reduced or your website may even be removed altogether.

Not using Google Webmaster Tools

The world of ranking is complicated, because Google is regularly updating how they rank and generally websites will follow that change to rank higher. There are also a lot of factors that go into ranking.

You may be wondering, what resource does Google provide to evaluate the SEO health of your website? Well, the best way to ensure your website is meeting the requirements is through Google Webmaster Tools.

Without a resource like this, you’re really just taking a shot in the dark. Even SEO experts use resources like this, because they compile a plethora of information surrounding keyword research, SERP research, and backlink relevance.

So if you don’t want to be left in the dark, definitely consider utilizing this tool.

Unavailable and Slow Websites

This is not only crucial when it comes to ranking but also when it comes to just regular traffic to your website. People’s attention span gets shorter and shorter and these days folks are only willing to wait an average of three seconds.

That is not very long, so you have to make sure your website is in the right condition to load quickly and thoroughly.

When reviewing your website, Google looks at the typical load time for your web pages and the longer it takes the lower your rank.

The other issue may be the availability of your website. If any of the pages of your site are unavailable Google will see it as essentially a dead link and will rank the site lower.

Both of these factors are frustrations from an internet user’s point of view anyway, and I think we can all attest to being annoyed with a long wait time or a webpage that doesn’t work.

Regular website audits can help you to figure out the health of your website.

Too Many Outgoing Links

Although outbound links are necessary for a good ranking, too many can be destructive. Think about it. You’re reading through an article and every couple of seconds is a link that sends you to another article or a video.

On one hand, it can result in an overwhelming mess and can lead visitors to your website to leave too soon, or too often increasing bounce rate. A lower bounce rate is crucial to Google ranking.

Bounce rate lets Google know if the content is actually valuable, relevant, and worth staying on the page for.

Also, when Google reviews webpages it evaluates your links and can usually tell if there is an abundance of them. This is a sign to Google that you are probably stuffing your website with links to get a higher ranking.

The other thing to keep in mind is ensuring your links are actually relevant. Google will review if there is relevance to the links you include in your website, and also you should be giving your readers links they are more likely to be interested in.

Conclusion

SEO is a constantly changing process, and requires website hosts to continually review and adjust their websites. These are some of the many practices that can lead to some problems for your website ranking.

Be organized, manage your resources and projects and use ethical ways in ranking your website to avoid violating Google’s guidelines.