With so many SEO companies out there promising the world, how can you know who you can trust and who should be give a wide berth?
Taking a look at some of the services on offer, provide an excellent and accurate insight into whether your SEO providers are likely to try and cut any corners or try to follow the ‘white-hat’ SEO path.
Below we take a look at 2 of the outdated SEO methods which you should seek to avoid.
Tactic No. 1 – Attempting to Use Press Releases to Improve Rankings
Google stated all the way back in 2012 that links from press releases will not help SEO rankings so there is no point in using these as part of an SEO 
campaign.
Factoring Press Releases into an SEO campaign is an old fashioned and outdated method of trying to obtain links back to your website.
The thought process behind this concept is to create a PR containing hypertext links back to your website. You would then use the services or a press release distribution company who would batch release your PR in the home that it would be syndicated by other news outlets who will then keep your contact fully intact (including your back link).
This is not to say sending out a PR will not benefit your business but it is important to understand the limits of those benefits.
Your content may well reach the eyes of bloggers, reporters and others, and if this is your goal it may succeed. However, Google says that they will not benefit your rankings and therefore they are ineffective as an SEO technique.
Tactic No. 2 – Submitting Guest Blogs To Irrelevant Websites
The concept of submitting guest articles to be posted on other random websites is now outdated and can even be harmful for your website.
As with many aspects of SEO, this concept is something that started out working well but begun to be abused and is now therefore considered to be 
black-hat.
Whilst submitting guest blogs can still have some positive impact, it is absolutely essential that your content is only posted on sites which are high quality, and relevant to your business.
For guest posts to have any chance of benefiting your website, you must ensure that your content is not over-optimised (i.e. too many links/poor anchor text either in your post or your author bio), and you must take steps to ensure that you include links to a variety of authoritative and well-respected sources.
If you would like any more information, please contact the Footprint team on Tel. No. 01883 372488 and we will be happy to answer any of your questions.
