5 SEO Strategies that are Hurting your Business!

Rumors say Google tweaks its filters up to 400 times a month, every month. Of course, most of these changes are just fine adjustments to Google's almighty search mechanism. They only affect a small number of websites, so you don't have to hit the panic button for now. However, about 2 or 3 times per year, Google does something that every digital marketing fears: it rolls out a massive update to its search algorithm. These updates can really shake up SERPs or change your website's ranking in a matter of seconds.

SEO, the art of knowing how to rank organically a website and reach the top position in SERPs is changing constantly, but these important Google updates completely change whole strategies and campaigns. Link building strategies that worked in March 2017, may not work in November of the same year. The same goes for multiple other important indicators in SEO – what you know is working as we speak, may not work a couple of months from now. What's worse, it can even hurt your ranking, and consequently, your business.

Let's see some SEO strategies that may hurt your business in the months to come:

At least not all of them. It's only natural to gather links to your website... right? All that juicy SEO power linked directly to your .com should work wonders for your ranking... It may seem right, but thanks to recent algorithm changes, it's a strategy that may do more wrong than good. In fact, linking only to your homepage is consistently ranked as one of the most common SEO myths out there. Simply put: the homepage shouldn't be the receiver of all links, especially your top phrases.

What you'll need to do, is create good, content-rich subpages and link these to your backlinking strategy. You'll end up with tons of backlinks to your important subpages, all seen differently by Google's eyes. Your website will seem professional, filled with high quality content and trustworthy.

Contrary to popular opinion, nofollow links are not bad. They are nofollow because Google sees them as possible advertisements and they are not used in its search algorithm. However, having nofollow links means that your business does what normal businesses do: it uses advertisements. Real businesses have always used advertisements and Google likes to see that your business is built like a real one. In other words, how can Google see if your business is real if there are no nofollow links to it?

You shouldn't target all key phrases just for your homepage. Instead, use the homepage to build brand awareness, make your slogan known, add a description or general information for your customers. The majority of your anchors should come for related content on your website, not just from the homepage. According to research done on keyword anchor texts, only about 3 percent* of your links should have an exact match as an anchor text. Also, use anchor texts that have no key phrase at all, others with the URL as anchor, and others with your brand as anchor. The key is to diversify: use any anchor text related to your business or niche!

Excellent content is the core of your website and it should be your #1 priority. Good content is easy to distinguish: it gets shared and linked over and over again by readers. Good, in-depth content is what Google loves, and it's what people love. And when people love something, they like to share it and react to it... Try to have articles which bring a new story, challenge facts, or offer a different view on a subject. Bring something that inspire, educate and cultivate your readers.

Most website owners have no link building plan whatsoever. They simply focus on “doing things right”, creating tons of content, guest blog posts and so on. They hope that just by doing these things, somehow people will find out about their content and everything will happen naturally. Sure, this thing does happen, but these situations are few and far between. Quite frankly, this vague SEO strategy shouldn't be employed at all. Instead, you should try constantly to share your content, get people to know and see your new article and build a following. Simply put, your new content should be everywhere, your website should be visible wherever visitors are.