Because of that SEO marketers tend to fall into one of two categories: those who continue to do what they’ve always done and begin to see their website’s fall, and those who embrace new techniques and flourish.

This post is aimed at the die-hards who believe that the old techniques are the best even if they are no longer working.

Here are 4 old techniques that should be shown the door. So if you’re still doing any of these, stop right now.

1. Keyword density

Wash your mouth out with soap.

All your content should be written naturally and with the reader in mind – not the search engines.

It’s hard to believe that there are still people out there fixated by the number of times a word or phrase should be repeated within their content. If you’re writing about a specific subject, the keyword (i.e. the topic) will be naturally introduced into your writing without you being obsessed by inserting it into every nook and cranny you can find.

As soon as you start to think about search engines you lose the ability to write naturally so cast them from your mind and forget about keyword density.

2. Press releases

Another firm favourite is writing press releases for absolutely everything and blasting them out to umpteen online outlets.

On the face of it you may think that’s fine, as it will generate loads of backlinks for you. But the problem is that the press releases aren’t newsworthy and can damage your reputation just as a poorly written piece of content can.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t write press releases, just make sure you only issue them for a real news story.

3. Spinning

Once upon a time, marketers thought it a great idea to write one article and then stick it through some spinning software to generate umpteen versions of it that were then blasted across numerous article sites.

The result was a lot of very bad articles.

Although that type of article marketing is a no-no, you can still write great, unique content and publish it to grow your reputation as an expert in your field.

4. Meta Tags

In this instance I’m talking about keyword Meta tags. They are meaningless and about as much use as a chocolate teapot, so don’t use them.

If you are using any of these ‘techniques’ stop right now.

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Visitor Growth
The number of visitors to a site will probably fluctuate month to month, especially if the product or service offered is a seasonal one. However, if an SEO campaign is working, there should be a gradual upward trend in visitors as the campaign moves along. It may take six months to see this trend, or it may take a year or more. SEO is a process that is built for the long term so you need to be willing to look at the trend over a significant amount of time. There are two visitor reports in Google Analytics to pull on a monthly basis:

• The “All Visitor” report tells you where every visitor came from. If you are building links in the right places, the referring sites should reflect that. You might also be able to find a site that could provide additional opportunities.
• The “Organic Visitor” report will tell you how many visitors came from organic search and will include information from all of the search engines. Typically Google is number one. This is perhaps the most significant metric to pay attention to in order to measure SEO success.

Entrance Keywords
Analytics data includes a complete listing of all of the keywords that people searched for that ultimately brought them to your site. You can look at the site as a whole, or sort by each individual page of the site–which is useful when evaluating the keyword research and selection. Most website owners will find that the top keywords that deliver traffic to the site are branded keywords. But while branded keywords are important, for SEO purposes you want to see an improvement in unbranded keywords that deliver traffic. Over time, more keywords should deliver traffic as the content attracts users that search using long-tail keywords.

Conversions
Analytics also allows you to set up conversion tracking by adding code to a conversion page. For example, if you are tracking visitors that fill out a lead form, the tracking code will be included on the “thank you” page that someone sees after filling out the form. By sorting, you are able to see the number and percentage of conversions that came from organic search visitors. If the SEO program is performing well, it should be bringing the correct traffic to the site, and improve conversion rates.

If you’ve been shying away from using analytics for your SEO, the time to start is yesterday.

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1. Pay adequate attention on page title. Google may use it in search results, so describe your content in concise, informative manner.  Choose descriptive and easy-to-read domain name and subpages as these are important part of Google’s search results. Write unique, interesting meta descriptions as well.
2. Images are another important part of SEO. Give descriptive file names to the images and use ‘alt’ attribute to describe the image. Write a short, informative caption for each image.
3. Keep updating your site content. Coming up with new information will keep visitors engaged and also bring for you SEO benefit.

Download here the PDF and distribute it in your staff.

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I”m not sure what the exact character count is, but I tried pasting in a paragraph of text, and it worked fine. Two paragraphs, however, were too much.

Why would you want to search for such a long query? Well, it is a good way to see all of the other sites who are scraping an article or straight up plagiarizing it.

It doesn’t appear to make a difference in what international Google site you use. The error occurs regardless.

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The previous Google PageRank update happened in November 2012.

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I am currently performing SEO work for my father’s business, which is in a tough niche to acquire natural links. I had a few content ideas for his website that didn’t really pan out, so I was stuck with ways to acquire real high-quality links for his business website. I eventually found an article from the early 2000′s that had been down since 2006, according to the Wayback Archives. This page had built up a number of links and authority before it was taken down, the content was related to his business, so I rewrote the article (the original author gave permission in his article that anyone could do this) and put it up on his site.

The next day I started emailing all the webmasters who had linked to the original article long ago. I wasn’t extremely confident; it looked like many of these pages were from 1999 and hadn’t been touched in over a decade. But I was just hoping for one very quality link – that surely could be attainable, right?

According to Open Site Explorer stats, the number one page linking to the original article was a PR5 .edu page from a very well respected institution. The page authority was 69 and the domain authority was a 92, so I put a lot of time into constructing an email to that webmaster, knowing very well how much it could pay off.

Click the image to see Brian’s email full size:

That same day I checked my inbox and saw that the person had responded. I quickly clicked it and gazed at the screen, “Thanks for your email, we have updated our page with the new link.” Score!

My father’s business website now has an incredibly valuable link pointing to it, search traffic went up immediately, and I was hooked on broken link building. If you are sick of sending out boring guest posts that probably give you a very low ROI, I cannot recommend broken link building enough. With broken pages all over the Internet, there will never be a shortage of opportunities to re-create some content for your site and capture those great links.

Author: Brian Klemm is the President of Northbound Digital, an SEO and inbound marketing firm in Chicago Lakeview specializing in helping small businesses in the area acquire more traffic and revenue through increased search traffic. Follow on Twitter @NorthbndDigital.”

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There is less competition
Broad keywords have a high search volume, but also are extremely competitive. Think about the number of sites that will rank for something as broad as “shoes”. If you operate a small local shoe shop you are never going to rank for “shoes” due to competition from well established retailers like Zappos, DSW, or Macy’s. In order to niche it down to a more specific (long tail) keyword, think about your specialty. Do you sell red rock climbing shoes? “Red rock climbing shoes” may have a lower search volume, but there’s also less competition.

There is a higher conversion rate
When someone searches using a long tail keyword it usually means that they have already spent some time doing their research and are narrowing their search by looking for something more specific. When people search using a broad keyword it often means that the searcher is still in research mode and therefore those searches don’t convert as well. If someone already knows that they want “red rock climbing shoes” and you offer high quality red rock climbing shoes at a reasonable price, there’s a good chance that that searcher will convert.

It keeps the campaign natural
In order to succeed in SEO it’s important to create and share content that includes the keywords that you are targeting. If you continually use the same keywords and keyword anchor text links over and over it could indicate to the search engines that you are a spammer trying to game the system. Using different long tail variations throughout content and as anchor text helps to keep things natural.

It is less expensive for PPC
SEO is extremely important, but it’s a long term process. If you are looking for results that are more immediate it’s recommended to also run a PPC campaign. PPC can be very expensive, especially if you are going after very competitive keywords. To help avoid these high fees, you can go after long tail keywords. There may not be as much traffic, but they will still bring targeted visitors to your site.

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