Big SEO Killers That Must Be Avoided in 2013

Posted by ADMAX on Dec 19, 2012 in Da Blog! | 1 comment

There’s much discussion of Google killing SEO through the recent Panda and Penguin algorithms, which continue to ensnare more and more websites with every new update. Recurringly, announcements of the death of SEO are increasingly frequent.  Many webmasters have seen their hard-earned organic search traffic collapse in the cae of ever frequent search algorithm updates.

But Really: Is SEO Dead?

“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
-Mark Twain

Analytics data showing losses of over 50% of Google organic traffic is not uncommon for afflicted websites, and traffic that used to increase over time, suddenly took a huge dip. These patterns certainly make it look as if SEO could be dead.

But Is SEO Really Dead? (From Jill Whalen at SiteProNews) –

In order to answer that question I went back through the multitude of lost traffic site audit reports I’ve been doing since early 2011. I looked for website problems that were consistent through many of the sites I reviewed.

It didn’t take long for me to conclude that, while SEO was certainly not dead, SEO tricks and shortcuts were definitely on life support – if not already completely dead.

So if you relied on tricks and shortcuts, then yes, for you SEO is dead.

In fact, it’s likely that the very things that helped you before are the ones that are hurting you now. But even for those of us who have always used best SEO practices, some things have changed.

Today, and for the foreseeable future, SEO is much less about optimizing for specific keywords, and much more about technical issues, social signals, and the overall trustworthiness of a company and its website.

When I went through my lost traffic website audits, I found no less than 18 specific problems that had likely contributed to the huge losses of organic Google traffic and the subsequent loss in conversions and sales that so many companies have been facing.

Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Duplicate content

2. Keyword stuffing

3. Doorways

4. Footer links

5. Auto anchor text

6. Spammy comments

7. Low-quality pages

8. Poor presentation

9. Content below fold

10. Technical problems

11. Poor writing

12. No content

13. Splitting link pop

14. Merry-go-rounds

15. Unnatural links

16. Semi-hidden text

17. Rich snippet abuse

18. Trustworthiness

While some of the above were deliberately done to or for the websites in order to increase organic website traffic (back in the day), others were more inadvertent – with some issues overlapping others.

For instance, duplicate content can be caused by technical issues, but it can also be done deliberately as an easy way to add more content to a website. And keyword stuffing is often done in conjunction with having content below the fold, but not always.

For the most part, the issues can be broken down into a few overall categories:

>> Read more at SiteProNews