What in SEO can be considered normal and working, and that - obsolete

Part 1
What exactly will not help to take the "iron throne"

1. The magic of dead search engine optimization methods

At the dawn of SEO, people blindly believed that keywords were power. And the more of them, the better. Many optimized texts sinned with such a dense keyword that it made them literally unreadable, but very attractive for search engine robots. Today, Yandex and especially Google recommend using only a few keywords per page, thus making the texts readable primarily for people, Otherwise, sanctions.

Another example is links to the main page. Previously, we tried to get as many links as possible to the main page, which helped the general position of the site, as well as increased the TCI and PR. Now such a tactic is more dangerous than attractive. For example, Wikipedia appears on the first page on almost any request. At the same time, an incredible amount of external links leads to the internal pages of the resource.
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2. Nontraditional methods

They are good as experiments, but they will not replace the classical basis. Non-traditional promotion methods include, for example, social media campaigns. They say that social signals are gaining more and more power in search engine algorithms. All this is true, but so far there is no clear evidence for this. Matt Cutts himself recently stated that Google+ has no direct effect on ranking. Many bloggers and SEO experts, however, continue to find evidence to the contrary. So, on the Webmasters.ru website, the author cites a number of examples where, in his opinion, just social factors influence the ranking results.

3. Aggressive methods of work

For example, obsession with links. Links are still one of the main ranking factors. However, first, the link is a link, and thanks to one link you will rise into the SERP, and the other will instantly disappear from the Search Engines Index. Secondly, if you receive links aggressively, every month and 100-200 pieces at a time, then this situation threatens you with a so-called reference explosion, when search engines begin to doubt the naturalness of the links received and, as a result, impose sanctions.

American SEO-specialist Marcus Taylor decided to conduct an experiment to prove that a reference explosion could cause a penalty from Google, and also look at the nature of possible sanctions. To this end, he took one domain, published content and in 24 hours received 10,000 links to it. Of course, 99% of them were of very poor quality. As a result, the site hit the first place in the SERP by the promoted keyword (quite competitive) and lasted there for three weeks. However, then he did not just lose his position, but flew far beyond the limits of visibility even by brand inquiries, and this, as you understand, was a very bad sign.

4. Excessive honesty, correctness and nobility

SEO books only teach white techniques. Step left, step right - and you flew out of the SERP, like a cork. However, in the real world, partly you have to cheat, keep your nose to the wind and be in the general trend. Not only the strongest but also the smartest survives on the market of goods and services, who knows where, how and what to do to achieve a result without getting sanctions from the search engines.
So, Kommersant has published a list of the most popular online stores . Did you know that 70% of them buy links from link brokers? But this not only does not prevent them, but also, apparently, helps to be the most successful projects in their field.

5. Drastic changes in strategy

Suppose you dramatically changed the strategy of resource use. At one of the sites, the blog history is described, which, due to a drastic change in the strategy of the 200 originally indexed pages, eventually left only 9. The new owner bought a promising blog with worthy 200 articles, good PR and TCI indicators. However, he decided to achieve quick success, and instead of publishing quality posts, he began to publish small texts with links, which often were a collection of words. In addition, these texts were not related in any way to the site. As a result, the blog almost completely flew out of the Yandex Index, and then Google.

6. Failure to hold high positions

The situation when the site has achieved excellent positions in the SERP, and then flew far beyond the limits of visibility, is quite common. And the point here is not necessarily the use of black tactics, but the fact that, acting “white”, you optimized the site, brought it to the top positions in the SERP, were delighted ... and gave up. In SEO, it is important not only the promotion itself, but also the support of the achieved positions. And this requires regular updating of content, fresh links, adding new pages. You must submit at least some signs of life to search engines so that they do not exclude you from the game.

On the Nomina website you can find a huge number of abandoned domains: reference donors, blog moneymakers and other resources. If you also pay attention to the indicators for the CY, PR, site traffic, you can understand their fate: were they created simply as donors, were they optimized, were they supported?

7. If you think you have nothing to lose, the most unsightly things can happen.

Sometimes site owners act according to the “what do we lose” principle, creating a resource and applying all the tactics without parsing in order to achieve quick and tangible success. These are mainly companies that do not really value their reputation and who, if they don’t work with one site, immediately launch the next one.

So, some time ago, the British company Citadel Insurance launched its website. Long before the first paragraph of the text was published on the site, the resource began to actively buy up links. As a result, literally 3 days after registration, the site appeared on the first page, overtaking even ten-year resources with published content. The site has purchased about 130,000 links, and used only 7 variations of the anchor. As expected, after some time the site fell a few pages, and then completely disappeared from sight. However, its owners, without thinking twice, launched another resource. And they began to promote it on the same principle.

Part 2.
What can help

1. happy occasion

Believe it or not, some just get lucky. Here you can look for patterns, compare with other sites, analyze the action plan, but in the end it turns out that they do not shine in anything against the background of competitive resources, but they live, rejoice and occupy excellent positions in the SERP. The only pattern that can be derived here with relative accuracy is that “fat” sites with useful topics and, in general, useful social missions, can lead with greater probability than their antipodes.

An example is the American website Doctor360 , which helps people improve their credit score. When the resource was just launched, its developers were not very concerned about competent SEO. They just received 13 external links with anchors "Doctor 360", "Read here", "Here", "My site", "Click here", "Doctor360.com" - that's all. As a result, 54 days after launch, the resource hit the top 4 for some of the keywords. This success is nothing but “lucky” to explain.

2. Secret weapon

SEO is considered one of the most opaque industries on the Internet. Almost every successful site has its own secret weapon: a tool, a scheme or an algorithm — however, very few people will reveal their cards to you. Even if the company writes in its blog about a very successful case that has provided excellent positions in the SERP, or about some miracle method, do not believe it. Most likely, the real weapon will remain secret.

Richard Marriott increased traffic to his website by 348% in just 7 days. What was his secret weapon? He prepared excellent material about the best link building tools and began to actively promote it in search engines, social networks, and then using email. As a result, in addition to organic traffic, he received about 3,500 visitors from blogs, Facebook and other resources.

3. Promotion in several search engines

From 60% to 70% of people use Yandex, the remaining percentages go to Google, and only a small “piece” of the audience falls on Rambler. All this is so. However, you should not concentrate on only one search engine.

There are two reasons for this:

• if Yandex (Google or Rambler) changes the algorithm and you disappear from the first pages, you will have “back up plan” in the form of other search engines where you will still hold your positions quite firmly;
• Your path to the first pages in other search engines may be significantly shorter, since perhaps there is less competition and the search engines themselves are more friendly towards your site initially.

OnlineGuru , offering a variety of online games, wrote on the Google forum. The site complained that earlier traffic from Google was about 40%, and now - no more than 10%. At the same time, SEO specialists cleaned all the links, fixed the errors indicated on Google Webmaster Tools, uploaded decent content to the site. While OnlineGuru doesn’t appear on Google even on the first 5 pages of the on-line “on-line game” request, Yandex acquires the site on the second position on the first page on this request.

4. Own brains

You do not deduct any super secrets on the forums. Those who get to the bottom of the truth are unlikely to share it with you. The only way is to experiment yourself. Depending on what exactly the essence of the experiments is, conduct them at intervals of 3-6 months and look at the results. It is not recommended to conduct tests more often, since you cannot accurately determine which of your experiments affected the positions in the SERP, traffic, PR site, TCI, traffic, etc.

You can find many examples of tireless experimenters in American popular blogs, for example, MOZ. So, its authors conducted experiments to find out how much tweets influence the ranking results and what role does the site speed have in Google’s algorithm
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5. Noble methods of work, up to charity

White optimization methods will not only achieve top positions in the SERP, but also hold onto them. Do not pollute the portfolio of your links with links from sites with dubious reputations, do not buy them in hundreds, do not litter the site with advertising, regularly publish high-quality content that they will read and share with friends - and then success is assured. Remember, it is much easier to initially play fair and let you slowly but surely move towards your goal than to correct mistakes and clean up your damaged reputation in search engines.

In America, there is literally a boom for TOMS shoes . And not only because it is very light and comfortable, but also because when you buy a pair of TOMS shoes, one pair goes to Africa for poor children. A few years ago, TOMS hired an SEO company to help them increase traffic to the site. One of the cunning tactics of the company was the badging. The company tried to build relationships with various shows, influential fashion bloggers, and many sites to post there is not just a link, but a badge with the words "I love my TOMS". This helped not only in terms of SEO, but also increased brand awareness. Since the company donates shoes to the needy, many sites have agreed to place the badge for free. As a result, thanks to the badge and a generally well-planned link building campaign, as well as positive reviews, the traffic to the site increased by 1 100%.

6. Most advanced tools

Sure, you always need to find and put into practice new tools for website promotion. They appear quite often: all sorts of plugins, modules, metrics and so on. But rarely does something appear that is fundamentally “other”, giving really great opportunities. Of the latest innovations, SeoPult is an automated article promotion module that uses the power of the WebArtex exchange. The main problem that this module can solve, or the WebArtex exchange itself, is to break the deadlock faced by optimizers moving forward with articles and constantly confronted with poor-quality, spammed, non-working donors. This is indeed a nontrivial task - to find a good, reliable pool of donors for you and organize simple, convenient work with them. Hence, the second value of the new exchange is that the work in it is fully automated: both the institution of the project in two clicks, and the convenient selection of donors by filters, and the writing of unique texts, and reports on the positions of promoted requests. Article promotion of this format is great for young sites.

Here you can familiarize yourself with an inspiring example of how a young Internet site in 3-4 months came to attendance of 40,000 people a day using the article promotion method. The whole secret is in regular work and that quality articles on high-quality donors are the right formula for the natural buildup of reference mass.

7. Promotional budgets

This is just the difference between SEO and advertising in textbooks: in the case of Google AdWords and contextual advertising on Yandex, you pay to get to the first pages, and in the case of SEO, you get there for free. In practice, website promotion without a budget is very sad. The more budget you have, the higher the chances of success.

Judge for yourself:

• to create great content, you need a good copywriter, and perhaps also a designer, and their work is worth the money;
• post or link to a famous blog you are unlikely to get for free;
• Costs may also include paid SEO analytics tools, links purchasing, etc.

In theory, it is possible that financial positions do not affect your position in the SERP, but in practice - no doubt, they will help you very well.
You know blogs like Theme , Sergey Share or Exler. Everything that their authors undertake, if it does not turn into gold, then at least one sure step brings them closer to success. The price for posting material on one of these blogs varies from 50,000 to 300,000 rubles. For quality links on sites with high PR and TCI, be prepared to pay from a couple of hundred to several thousand rubles a piece. Of course, you can try to do without such costs. But how do you think, will your competitors who have the appropriate budget do the same?