SEO has changed over the years, and what worked once doesn’t necessarily work now. Some of the old...

1. 7 Obsolete SEO Tactics You’re Wasting Your Time On
SEO has changed over the years, and what worked once doesn’t necessarily work now. Some
of the old tactics you are using not only will keep your traffic stagnant, but they may actually cause
your traffic to drop.
What should you do?
You should stop using the tactics I discuss below and start using the new solutions I’ve
outlined for you:
Obsolete tactic #1: More links means higher rankings
According to Search Metrics, the 3rd most determining factor in your rankings is the number of
backlinks you have.
Although more backlinks used to mean higher rankings, it’s not necessarily the case
anymore. These days, you’ll notice seo for business new sites with only a handful of links
outranking old authoritative sites.
Why?
Because their backlinks are more relevant. With Google’s Penguin algorithm update,
relevancy of the links is more important than their quantity.
Just look at the example below. I Googled the phrase “business credit cards.” As you
can see, Nerd Wallet outranks Chase and American Express sites.

2. The Nerd Wallet URL in the first position has 176 backlinks from 136 referring domains,
according to Ahrefs. The Chase URL has 293 backlinks from 69 referring domains, and the American
Express page has 90,000 backlinks from 343 referring domains.
If you look at the root domain names, both Chase and American Express have more links from more
unique domains than Nerd Wallet.
According to Google PageRank, Nerd Wallet is at 6, while Chase and American Express are at 7.
This just shows that you don’t need to focus on backlink quantity. Instead, you need to focus
on quality links, which is what Nerd Wallet did.
When it comes to your website, don’t try to go after quantity in link building. Focus on
building highly relevant links that are topical to the content on your website.
Obsolete tactic #2: SEO is about writing keyword-rich content
If you want to rank for a term like “business credit cards,” you would need that phrase
on your web page, right? That used to be the case, but Google’s algorithm uses latent
semantic indexing.
Latent semantic indexing (LSI) is an indexing and retrieval method that uses a mathematical
technique called singular value decomposition to identify patterns in the relationships between the
terms and concepts contained in an unstructured collection of text. LSI is based on the principle that
words that are used in the same contexts tend to have similar meanings.
In other words, Google sees the phrase “corporate credit card” as being similar to
“business credit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization cards.” That
means if you use the word “corporate” instead of “business,” you
would still rank for both terms.
Instead of trying to write keyword-rich content, write content that is user-friendly. If you put
your users first and you write what’s best for them, Google will naturally figure out what
terms you should rank for and will place you there.
Plus, no one wants to read keyword-rich content. If I mentioned the word “SEO” 100

3. times within this post because I want to rank for SEO, you’d get tired of reading Quick
Sprout and probably stop linking to the site, which would hurt my rankings.
Avoid writing keyword-rich content as it doesn’t help with rankings anymore.
Obsolete tactic #3: SEO is just links, code, and content
That’s what SEO used to be 5 years ago. The sites with mediocre content, tons of links, and
good on-page optimization used to rank well.
That’s not the case anymore. These days the sites that do well tend to also have a large social
following.
Whether you believe or not that social media has a direct or indirect impact on rankings, it does
impact rankings.
Why?
The more popular your site is on the social web, the more eyeballs you will draw to it. And the more
people see it, the more backlinks it’ll get.
Plus, social media is a great way to seed content and get the initial traction you are looking for.
If you want better rankings, don’t just focus on link building. Also focus on building up your
social profiles. Check out this guide to get you started.
Obsolete tactic #4: Tracking rankings
I used to track my rankings religiously. When I had an SEO agency, I used to track them for clients
as well.
But that’s the old way of doing things.
Rankings are irrelevant. Sure you want better rankings, but search has changed into a long tail
game. Just look at the data: search volume for head terms is down by 8%, and sites are starting
to see the majority of their traffic coming from long tail phrases.

4. And if that isn’t convincing enough, consider this: 90% of my traffic on KISSmetrics and
Quick Sprout comes from long tail phrases, which also account for 87% of the conversions from
search.
Instead of trying to manipulate your rankings for head terms, which has become very difficult after
the Panda and Penguin update, you should focus on long tail traffic.
The beautiful part about this is that you no longer have to track your rankings. Instead, you need to
focus on creating a long tail strategy by using content marketing, which I break down in this guide.
Obsolete tactic #5: More pages means more traffic
Wikipedia is a great example of a content rich site that gets more traffic. So, if you want more traffic
you should create more pages, right?
If the pages aren’t high in quality, you won’t rank well. Instead of actually
helping you, adding too much content, especially mediocre content, can hurt you.
Google released an update called Panda, which targeted sites with low quality content. Such sites
got penalized, and their search traffic dropped.
A good example of this is Wise Geek. They once dominated the rankings due to their large
quantity of content, but they got hit hard by Google’s Panda update due to low quality
content.
Don’t create sites with thousands of pages. Focus on creating high quality content.
KISSmetrics and Quick Sprout are great examples of this. Both blogs can generate well over a half a
million visitors a month, and neither of them have thousands of blog posts.
Obsolete tactic #6: You need a lot of text to rank well
Data has shown that you need to write 2,000 words on each web page if you really want to rank well.
But Upworthy has proven the data wrong.

5. It’s one of the fastest growing content sites on the web, and it’s beaten out
Huffington Post and Buzz Feed in growth rate. Yet, it has very little content per page.
Just look at this page on tattoos:
That’s literally all the text the page has. Yet, it ranks at the top of page 2 for the keyword
“tattoos”.
And that’s not the only keyword the website ranks for. According to SEMrush, it gets
up to 750,000 visitors a month from search engines.
This shows that text isn’t the only form of valuable content. Videos and images also do well in
the rankings, which is what Upworthy typically uses within its posts.

6. If you want high rankings, use different types of content to reach this goal. From podcasts to videos
and quizzes, the possibilities are endless.
Obsolete tactic #7: Higher rankings means more traffic
There is a big misconception in the SEO industry that higher rankings mean more search traffic.
Sure, more people will see your listing, but it doesn’t mean you will get more clicks.
Why? Because the keywords you are targeting may not get much search volume. Or your meta tags
may not be appealing, which will cause people to not click on your listings.
You can solve this by doing two things:
You need to start using the Keyword Planner tool by Google to find the right keywords to go after.
You need to follow the steps in this post to optimize your click-through rates.
Conclusion
Stop wasting your time on obsolete SEO tactics, and start focusing your energy on strategies that
will boost your traffic.
If you follow my 7 solutions above, you should start increasing your search traffic within 30 to 60
days. It’s not rocket science. It’s actually really simple as long as you are willing to
give it the attention it needs.
So, what other obsolete SEO tactics are
people still using?
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Quicksp
rout/~3/2ol76BVIRFw/