5 Ways To Waste Your Time On SEO
With consumers spending more and more time on computers and mobile devices, while using Google as a primary tool to find products or services that they need or want, having a prominent position in search engines is an increasingly important part of effective marketing for small businesses.
While hiring an SEO firm is often a desired luxury, most small businesses choose to learn and do SEO on their own.
There are an abundance of free resources that provide instruction on how to plan and execute effective SEO like SEOMoz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO and blogs like Search Engine Land.
However, this do it yourself approach can lead to many mistakes by small business owners who do not have a full understanding of the latest updates by Google which can make an effective tactic obsolete overnight. Here are some of the biggest time wasters in SEO that produce small or no improvements to your site’s rankings.
1. Commenting On Blogs
While commenting on relevant blogs can be a good way to build relationships with blog owners, it is a horrible way to improve your SEO. From a pure traffic standpoint, very few people tend to click on your comment link.
From a linkbuilding perspective, you are getting a minuscule to zero link juice going back to your site. Since 99% of blogs automatically no-follow comment links, they send zero link juice to your site. No-follow communicates to Google that the site owner does not endorse the link and therefore it does not count as a vote for your site.
If you can find blogs that take no-follow off their comment links, it can pass a small amount of value. But typically there are tons of comments and your link juice gets divided between the other links on the page.
2. Manual Link Requests
This is equivalent to a brute force attempt to solve the link acquisition problem. Some site owners think that if they email tons of sites, that they will get a few of those people to send a link their way. However, linking usually doesn’t work that way.
People link to content that they find very interesting or compelling. They typically don’t link to something just to help out a random person who emails them. Most site owners are too busy to even read these emails and often times there is not a compelling reason given for why they should take the time to add a link to their site. Why not spend the time that you would have spent emailing a hundred people and create a piece of content that will be incredibly helpful or fascinating?
3. Submitting your site to Numerous Directories
Submitting your site to directories is extremely easy. Often times you just have to fill out a form and you’re done. However, most directories send so little link juice to your site that they are not even worth 5 minutes of your time.
There are a few good directories like Yahoo directory, Business.com, and Best of the Web that are known to send you good value and also cost hundreds of dollars per year. Local directories can also be a good value if their editors are careful on who they allow in. But most smaller directories allow anyone to be included, even poor quality spam sites and have little SEO authority to share.
4. Requesting link exchanges
The SEO community believes that link exchanges are devalued by Google, even to the point where they don’t count. So emailing a lot of site owners offering to link to their site in exchange for a link back can be an extraordinary waste of time.
The exception is if you are exchanging links to similar sites in your industry. Google views it as natural for sites within the same niche to link to eachother, so there is likely to be link juice passed in these cases. However, exchanging links indiscriminately probably adds little value since this is considered an attempt to manipulate the engines.
5. Building another site and linking to yourself
At first this may seem like a brilliant idea. If you create a blog with some quality content and maybe a few links, you can send links directly to your main site and even control the keywords used in the links.
However it often takes a huge amount of time to build a separate site and fill it with content. Additionally Google recognizes when sites are linking to other sites you own. Even if you host the site on a different server in another state, Google can often determine when networks of sites are just linking to eachother by detecting unnatural linking patterns and sometimes checking the domain registration data.
Additionally, Google considers domain diversity, or the number of different domains that link to you as an important signal. Therefore it is much better to have several different sites link to you than to get a lot of links from a single site. If you already have different sites, it is okay to link them together, but it is not recommended to build a site just to get links from it.
About the Author: Charles Sipe is an online marketing manager at Criminal Justice Degree Schools, a resource for students seeking information on justice degrees, schools, and careers in criminal justice.
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Really helpful article, thank you. I have tried most of these strategies that you reveal as “juiceless” – and even though they didn’t help before, I was considering trying some again. Having a clear, concise guide to what works now will save me lots of wasted time.
Boyd Blackwood´s last blog ..Suburban Myths- Sunny Day Watering
I think the blog commenting is still pretty powerful if you do it on right blogs. E.g. look at blogs with commentluv plugin. They give you a full dofollow link. Same thing with top commentator plugin.
Similarly with directories, top directories cost money and not every one can manage a 299$ review fees at startup. I understand its easy for business but for an individual blogger the directories fees may reach over a couple of thousand dollars. Not a good advice.. Going out for smaller directories that are ready to offer you good placement for few dollars is also a considerably good option.
Having other sites that link to your own site also works to some extent, look at those powerful declared probloggers, they have their sites linking to each other and often their startup sites get a lot of traffic as well as search engine juice just because of authority sites. I do accept that creating very small sites just to pass juice is useless. But having multiple sites that link to each other naturally is good!
Commenting on relevant blogs may not improve your SEO. But it certainly is the best way not only to build relationships to other bloggers but to get you a lot of hits on Google. Who cares about no-follow? If you think about building up a reputation or creating a personal brand commenting on blogs is an excellent way to achieve these targets. And it’s fun, too.
Helge Weinberg´s last blog ..Die IT-Branche ist das zukünftige Testfeld für Employer Branding
You make some great points. While an SEO firm can be costly is it better to let the professionals do it than to take the time to learn it yourself. I guess you need to look at how much your time is worth an hour and if you have the time to free up.
brian speer´s last blog ..Search Advertising
I worry about the techniques that SEO companies employ to ‘get your site to the top.’ I’d be curious to know what your stance is about 301 redirects – the idea that http:// should auto-redirect to http://www. as otherwise google will count only half the links. It’s another topic I’ve found hotly debated online and can’t work out where I stand on it.
Michael @ Email marketing software´s last blog ..Gmail Priority Inbox encourages Digital Rapport in Email Marketing
People still do manual link requests these days? I can understand if there was a business venture between two sites where the links between them are necessary, but I definitely wouldn’t waste my time sending out e-mails blindly, hoping for a response for a sub-par link.
SEO is easy when you know how to do it the right way, so thank you for listing the ways that are less than stellar.
Well let me just disagree on number 1 and 5. Posting comments is a great way to build backlinks. You just need to post on dofollow blogs. And there a lot of them.
Also making a site and linking to your other site is also pretty good, as long as you do it right. You need to have different domain data, different hosting, not include your site in google webmaster tools or other google service. This way google will never know that it is yours. And you will make a one way link, not exchange. And also link to other sites too, no only yours.
Regards.
Derek´s last blog ..How To Write Good
Your article really have a good point of this. But that is all a SEO basic that until now people believe it can help. And you explain that is all waste way to do SEO. Well it depend on people who want to waste time or not. I agree with Derek, Number 1 and 5 can help for SEO improvement if you do it right.
Best regards,
Andi Faizal´s last blog ..You-Cubez can give you High Traffic and Cash
I think Google tends to give less link juice for recip links now. Thinking they are stopping mini network sites.
SEO optimization is an elusive mystery to so many, including myself. But I noticed your blog is a dofollow blog. So while you may not believe the link backs are that valuable, you are still willing to create a nicely ranked blog that allows for such links. Very cool of you.
Deborah Gamble´s last blog ..Faceoff Over Facebook Trademark
These are the commonly and most widely used techniques. If anyone can share trends other then this. Thanks.
Just taking the time, to read, smallbizbee articles, and let the author’s know we appreciate their articles, has helped my website.
Unfortunately, many of the suggestions in this article are no longer effective or they do not provide an adequate return for the time and effort needed. Finding effective ways of developing links is what takes up much of my day. The “no follow” rule has made SEO quite difficult.
Automotive SEO´s last blog ..Automotive SEO – Your Site Is Only Half The Problem
Great article. I’ve always felt like link exchanges were a total waste unless you’re getting a link from a higher PR site. As far as most link directories not being worthwhile.. I do agree but if you’ve got software to submit your links then I say go for it. You can only get so many high quality links before finding more because damn near impossible and you’ve got to take what you can get. Then again I don’t believe there are “bad links” besides those from malicious websites. If there were “bad links” from ordinary websites then it would be all too easy to sink your competition.
Wes @ Used Towers´s last blog ..Used Shelters Cellxion 10×20
@Automotive
This article is how to “waste your time” on SEO, or what not to do. It is not meant to be suggestions as to what works best, or how best to utilize your SEO time. Developing effective links as you mention is still a preferred method.
Matt
search engine 101..really love your concepts..i really push hard in achieving a better PR so that my websites can at least appear the third or fourth pages of the search machines..
kippy´s last blog ..Android May Soon Have the Upper Hand
I disagree with point one. Commenting on blogs is a very useful means of attracting both traffic and link juice. While the link juice may be diluted, every single DoFollow link does help. If you have a new site then you need to proactively promote it, and providing insight comments on other people’s blogs can help you to achieve this. One of the best methods of understand what is really working for your site is to use Google Analytics. Mine tells me that a great deal of traffic, with low bounce rate, arrives at my site via comments I have posted on other people’s blogs.
I think yahoo is the best directory where you can submit your site
bikram´s last blog ..1200 Calorie Diet and Meal Plan for Weight Loss
I think the best seo technique out there is article marketing and my second favorite technique is social bookmarking.
Paul´s last blog ..How to Earn Money Online Being a Premium Blogger
Thanks it will helped me alot now next time i will take these guidelines seriously.
Nick´s last blog ..Google’s Self-Driving Car Spotted On The Highway Almost A Year Ago Video
I’ve been testing commenting on IT relevant blogs and have seen traffic increases from individuals that drill down on my company info…so it can’t be all bad.
Brett Miller
http://www.customsoftwarebypreston.com
I think, blog commenting on the right blogs (niche related blogs, PR1+ pages) is still a great way to improve your SE rankings. The only problem is, blog commenting is time consuming and you need a relatively larg number of blog comment backlinks to improve your rankings.