Remove These Outdated SEO Tactics From Your Webinar Marketing Plan

SEO marketers have certainly had a rough ride over the last few years with all manner of Google algorithmic updates that have wreaked havoc and destruction in their wake. So if your webinar business depends on SEO marketing and Google rankings to drive traffic to your webinar events, then take heed and avoid these 8 old-school SEO strategies, courtesy of Rand Fishkin at Moz.com.

8 Old School SEO Practices That Are No Longer Effective

i. Keywords Before Clicks

[The use of a title for your article like] "..Pipes, Tobacco Pipes, Pipe Smoking, Wooden Pipes, this is not going to draw anyone's click.

You might think, "But it's good SEO, Rand. It's good to have all my keywords in my title element. I know that's an important part of SEO."

Not anymore. It really is not anymore an important . . . well, let's put it this way. It's an important part of SEO, which is subsumed by wanting to draw the clicks. The user is searching, they're looking at the page, and what are they going to think when they see pipes tobacco, pipes, pipe smoking, wooden pipes? They have associations with that — spammy, sketchy, I don't want to click it — and we know, as SEOs, that Google is using click signals to help documents rank over time and to help websites rank over time."

Google will always give you some SEO credit if you add your target keyword to the title of your post as this is tells Google what your post is about. However, that being said, if your title and meta description as displayed in the search results don't invoke an emotional response from searchers, they are not going to click through to your post it's as simple as that.

So make sure you craft your title and description is such a way as to create curiosity and a desire for a visitor to click through.

ii. Heavy Use of Anchor Text On Internal Links

"This used to be a practice that could have positive impacts on rankings. But what we've seen lately, especially the last few years, is that Google has discounted this and has actually even punished it where they feel like it's inappropriate or spammy, manipulative, overdone."

Unnatural anchor texts and any sign of trying to game Google with keyword stuffing in your post is old news that will cause your site to sink in the SERP results quicker than a brick in water.

The simple rule is, if the link is helpful to a visitor that it adds value, is not unnatural looking and the link is relevant to the topic of discussion, then use it. Just take look how Wikipedia links to internal pages for good practice interlinking.

iii. Pages For Every Keyword Variant

"So the idea was basically if I have any variation of a keyword, I want a single page to target that because keyword targeting is such a precise art and technical science that I want to have the maximum capacity to target each keyword individually, even if it's only slightly different from another one. This still worked even up to four or five years ago, and in some cases, people were sacrificing usability because they saw it still worked."

The idea of creating a single page for every keyword that you wanted to target was an old but effective tactic 5-6 years ago, but Google has cracked down on this viewing such practices are providing poor quality user experience as the theme of the pages were all too similar, which has a diluting effect as you will spread your content and SEO juice over too many individual pages.

Best practice is to produce lengthier, say one thousand plus word articles, that are more authoritative on the subject of discussion, than many smaller articles.

iv. Directories, Paid Links, Etc.

"Every single one of these link building, link acquisition techniques that I'm about to mention has either been directly penalized by Google or penalized as part of an update, or we've seen sites get hit hard for doing it. This is dangerous stuff, and you want to stay away from all of these at this point.

Directories, well, generic directories and SEO directories for sure. Article links, especially article blasts where you can push an article in and there's no editorial review. Guest content, depending on the editorial practices, the board might be a little different. Press releases, Google you saw penalized some press release websites. Well, it didn't penalize the press release website. Google said, "You know what? Your links don't count anymore, or we're going to discount them. We're not going to treat them the same."

Comment links, for obvious reasons, reciprocal link pages, those got penalized many years ago. Article spinners. Private link networks. You see private and network, or you see network, you should just generally run away. Private blog networks. Paid link networks. Fiverr or forum link buys."

This is what white hat SEOers describe as linking to "bad neighbourhood". Avoid this at all costs or suffer the consequences.

v. Multiple Microsites, Separate Domains, Or Separate Domains With The Same Audience Or Topic Target

"So this again used to be a very common SEO practice, where folks would say, "Hey, I'm going to split these up because I can get very micro targeted with my individual websites." 

They were often keyword-rich domain names like woodenpipes.com, and I've got handmadepipes.net, and I've got pipesofmexico.co versus I just have artofpiping.com, not that "piping" is necessarily the right word. Then it includes all of the content from all of these. The benefit here is that this is going to gain domain authority much faster and much better, and in a far greater fashion than any of these will."

The problem?

"These would rank about a third as well as all the content would on here, which means the content on handmadepipes.net is not benefitting from the links and content on woodenpipes.com, and that sucks."

In my opinion there is nothing wrong with setting up niche specific sites, but this tactic would not make any sense in small markets where there is not a great deal of traffic. Doing so would, as mentioned, dilute the potential authority of a bigger less niche specific website.

However, if the market you are operating in is big (e.g. dogs, fitness, etc) and extremely competitive, it makes complete sense to niche down, even down to a sub-sub niche where competition is less fierce and you are more likely to rank within a reasonable timeframe. Use some common sense is all I'm saying.

vi. Exact And Partial Keyword Match Domain Names In General

"It's the case like if I'm a consumer and I'm looking at domain names like woodenpipes.com, handmadepipes.net, uniquepipes.shop, hand-carved-pipes.co, the problem is that over time, over the last 15, 20 years of the Web, those types of domain names that don't sound like real brands, that are not in our memories and don't have positive associations with them, they're going to draw clicks away from you and towards your competitors who sound more credible, more competent, and more branded. For that reason alone, you should avoid them."

I'm not entirely in agreement on this point as there is undoubtedly SEO value in having at least part of your domain name with your target keyword. But have in mind that for branding purposes and recognition in your market, choose a domain name that is memorable and recognisable.

vii. Using CPC Or Adwords' "Competition" To Determine The Difficulty of Ranking In Organic Or Non-Paid Results

"A lot of folks, when they're doing keyword research, for some reason still have this idea that using cost per click or AdWords as competition scores can help determine the difficulty of ranking in organic, non-paid results. This is totally wrong."

That some folk are even using Google Adwords competition scores to draw an inference of competition in the organic search results is a surprise me. Google organic search and paid search are entirely different platforms and use entirely different metrics. If you are guilty of drawing an inference to heed.

viii. Unfocused, Non-strategic "Linkbait"

"Many SEOs still invest in what I call "nonstrategic and unfocused link bait." The idea being if I can draw links to my website, it doesn't really matter if the content doesn't make people very happy or if it doesn't match and gel well with what's on my site. So you see a lot of these types of practices on sites that have nothing to do with it. Like, "Here are seven actors who one time wore too little clothing." That's an extreme example, but you get the idea if you ever look at the bottom ads for a lot of content stuff. It feels like pretty much all of them say that.

Versus on topic link bait or what I'd call high quality content that is likely to draw in links and attention, and create a positive branding association like, "Here's the popularity of pipes, cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, and cigars in the U.S. from 1950 to today."

This final point is to do with the relevancy of the content pointing to your site in respect of what your site is all about.

Google no longer pays much attention to links from content that is not relevant to what your site is all about and if you get links from "bad neighbourhoods" you're going to get yourself into Google's bad books.

In addition, if you are hijacking web traffic from content that has little to do with your website, your site will most likely suffer from higher bounce rates as visitors jump off your site as soon as they arrive because it's not relevant to their search. So its best to avoid this practice in your marketing of your webinars unless you know what you are doing.

[To read the complete Moz articl ego here]

 

For more resources, strategies and tactics on promoting and marketing your webinar events go here.

Here's the Original Source Article