The world of digital marketing is complex. Growing competition and the demands of the online world make it move faster, leaving behind some marketing rules and tactics that once seemed to work and bring high benefits.
The growing number of digital marketing agencies and new strong trends of marketing experts make the online marketplace more competitive, challenging and innovative. So, these marketing changes leave behind some old techniques. Using them will be ineffective and will never bring you the leads, sales, and revenue you expect. There are even cases that can harm your business performance and SEO ranking.
So, let us dive into some outdated marketing rules that you need to avoid while running a marketing campaign.
- Overuse of Keywords
Years before, keyword stuffing could bring your business a competitive advantage. Marketers used different techniques to persuade search engines that their website was worth ranking.
Since the search engines were not as smart as today, it was considered a working tactic.
Nowadays, the overuse of keywords will destroy your website’s success. So auditing them will be a good solution to avoid Google Penalty.
- Link and Article Directories
Anyone who has practiced in the online industry will know about the massive use of link and article directories. However, according to Matt Cutt’s speech, these directories are no longer effective to use for your marketing campaign.
One of the reasons is that the content included in these directories does not have high quality and includes spam, which can harm your website performance.
- An Exact-match Domain and Anchor Text
There was a time when an exact match domain and anchor text were precious. They considered to be relevant for a search query and ranked well, bringing much traffic. Here Google as well has made changes that have transformed the whole picture.
Your domain and anchor text optimization choice should be made based on the latest marketing trends and demands.
- Article Spinning
Relevancy and quality are the number one tactics that you need to keep in today’s market. Looking at the statistics of content marketing use, it becomes vital that content still dominates.
Nowadays, content spinning is equal to plagiarism and copying, which can harm your ranking and impact on UX. It produces low-quality content, which itself fails to educate and give relevant information to your audience.
- Bad Content Use
Since the competition was not at such a high level and search engines were not as powerful as today, using bad content could easily rank and bring success. However, nowadays, every detail matters when speaking about content marketing since it is tightly intertwined with UX and SEO ranking: the quality, the relevancy, customer orientation, etc.
There are great tools to easily research and fix all types of errors in your content and check how well it works.
- Blogging Without Promotion
Why do people need to choose your product or service?
They will hardly put much effort into finding out if you yourself do not promote it. Among must-have business tactics, promotion is essential for exposing your audience and getting traffic and sales. It is all about reaching the right audience at the right time and place.
- Printing Physical Advertising Material
Reaching your audience through posters, brochures, and other physical material seemed to be the must-have tactic before the massive use of the internet. However, this tactic is no longer effective since the number of internet users continues to grow, reaching over 4.54 billion.
Is there a need to waste time instead of planning great strategies to reach the same material online? It not only will be more effective but also will make your audience make a quick buying decision.
- Black Hat SEO
Although Black Hat SEO continues to attract several marketers, you need to know all about its bad consequences and results. It can bring your website much harm, including:
- Low Business Reputation
- SEO Ranking Drop
- Loss of Traffic
- Website Penalty
It may seem to be a fast and effective way to reach customers; however, its results can never last long. Recovering your website performance will take you more time and effort than creating a good SEO plan keeping all the greatest strategies and tactics.
Conclusion
As a marketer, you work hard to bring success to your business, have high profits and quality traffic. The online marketplace is all about good marketing; if not, all your efforts and tactics will work against you.
Effective strategies demand continual research, updates, and integration of new trends. However, if you are not sure about the success of your tactics, some common signs will inform you about your errors:
- Your website does not rank in SERPs
- You do not see sales and revenue
- The high rate of bounce rate and low conversion rate
- Your business does not provide value
- You do not measure your results.
Author
Tigran | CEO at Smarkets
Tigran Mirzoyan is the CEO at Smarketa and also loves to share his experience and expertise in blogs. Since 2010, the year Smarketa was founded, Tigran has worked tirelessly to grow eCommerce businesses, and now he can share his experience with those in need of professional advice.
