Taking risks is a part of business. As they say, higher the risk, greater the profit. Hence, taking risks is important to grow in the business industry. However, there are certain risks that are complete ‘no-nos.’ And for the health of your business, it is important to identify and avoid such risks.
Search engine optimization is a crucial function of every online business. It helps business websites rank high when a query with their targeted keywords is searched. However, there is a lot more to SEO than just keywords and all. And just like every other thing, it has certain ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’.
Knowing what not to do is as important as knowing what to do. Therefore, in this article, we will talk about some SEO risks you need to avoid.
When you optimize for search engines, you do a variety of things. And it involves a lot of experimenting and testing as well. In fact, being open to such trials is crucial to an extent. These are a part of the things that contribute to the true success of digital marketing.
However, there are certain risks you should simply avoid. Or else, it can be really detrimental to your business. The success of an SEO campaign greatly determines the success of an online business. Therefore, it is important to tread on this path with utter care.
Some SEO Risks to Avoid
#1. Doorway Pages
White hat SEO practitioners always advise avoiding this practice. Many webmasters use doorway pages to increase traffic on their websites. While it may be tempting to use them, doorway pages make search engines frown. If you are optimizing your website for Google, it is a ‘must avoid’ practice.
For those who don’t know what doorway pages are and how they are used—
Bridge pages, portal pages, jump pages, gateway pages, or entry pages—doorway pages are known by many names. It is basically a webpage created to deliberately manipulate the search engine indexes. In this, often a form of cloaking is used to redirect visitors without their knowledge. This comes under black-hat SEO. And search engines like Google have evolved enough to identify such patterns. As a result, such websites are heavily penalized by Google. Therefore, no matter how tempting it sounds; never use doorway pages for web traffic boost.
#2. Exact match keywords in anchor text
In past, it was considered a good practice to use the targeted keywords as the anchor text for a link to your site. However, that is no more the case now. In fact, it is now a thing that Search Engine Optimization experts will advise you to avoid.
So, what went wrong with using exact match keywords in anchor text?
With time, many black-hat SEOs started misusing this strategy to rank higher on the SERPs. To link to their website, they’d use great volumes of exact match keyword anchor-texts. And most of the time, these links didn’t come from the authoritative website.
Eventually, Google started to notice this pattern and began penalizing such sources. Hence, it gradually came to become an SEO practice to avoid.
Even if you practice this genuinely, there is still a lot of risk in it. A little suspicion and Google will end up penalizing your website—thus undoing your SEO efforts.
Related Articles: Updated SEO Keyword Research Guide for 2021
#3. Deleting pages
When a particular product is sold, many e-commerce sites may remove the product page itself. While you may think it’s better to do that, it is actually not. After the deletion of the page, you also lose the ranking keywords.
Therefore, deleting webpages is another SEO risk to avoid. Or else, you may end up harming your own search ranking. So, in case a product or service has been discontinued, you should still keep the webpage. You can simply redirect your visitors to some other page and suggest similar products.
In case of outdated information also, you can leave a note for your visitors redirecting them to the page with updated information. It is always better to do so than to delete the whole page.
#4. Neutral backlinks
You must be aware of how link-building plays a big role in search engine optimization. Backlinks/incoming links are doubtlessly very crucial when optimizing for search engines.
It’s common for businesses to think—the higher the number of links, the better. And hence, many websites just try to garner backlinks blindly.
However, for Google, it isn’t just about the number of your backlinks. Quality also plays a big role. I fact, in backlinks, quality supersedes quantity.
That being said, one of the things to avoid when building links is neutral backlinks. Such links only add to the numbers but not really help in rank boosting. Moreover, these links can increase the likelihood of your website getting penalized. Therefore, neutral backlinks are an SEO risk you must avoid.
I mean, of course, there is no point in taking risks for a thing that only is either ineffective or harmful.
#5. Making too many SEO changes
Refreshing your website from time to time is a good thing. However, the excess of it can undo your SEO.
SEO is a process requiring patience. Whatever changes you make or a new tactic you try, it will take some time for it to actually work out. Therefore, it is important to give things time in SEO. So, it is always best to avoid making too many SEO changes.
Moreover, if you make too many changes in SEO, Google may find your website suspicious. As a result, it may end up penalizing your website. Therefore, making too many small changes is an SEO risk best to avoid.
Key Takeaway
Just like everything else, there are dos and don’ts in SEO. Undoubtedly, it is important to take risks in business. However, some of them are just not worth it and can cause harm instead. Therefore, you should keep from taking these certain risks in SEO as mentioned above. Or you may end up harming your website’s ranking for good.
