The most common complaint I get from audit clients and bloggers is the inability to “know which SEO tip to follow”.

Unlike search engines that can rank, re-rank, or penalize information or practices that are unethical or unscrupulous in nature, the same cannot be achieved with the average blogger who churns out various courses, gurus, or podcasts.

Unfortunately, 2022 has taken things to a whole new level.

The amount of emails and instant messages I got from bloggers asking me, “Is this true?” or “I was told to do this, what do you think?” it cannot be quantified other than to say, “It was a lot.”

Executing a correct and competent SEO strategy has never been more difficult, especially in light of the explosion of new websites launched during the pandemic.

As such, understanding which advice is worthwhile and which is complete and utter rubbish has never been more important.

To that end, I present some of the worst SEO tips I was asked in 2022, hoping the answers will help you decide what no do.

The #1 Worst SEO Tip 1: “I should never remove content from my website.”

The benefits of removing old content from an existing site have been known and practiced for years.

Think of your site as a garden. All the traffic generating content, links and regular social signals are your flowers. Everything it isn’t? These are your weeds. Just like in a real garden, you can kill your flowers if you don’t pull these weeds.

Leaving outdated, low-quality, or thin content on your site can lead to a myriad of bad SEO results, including:

Decrease in overall crawl budget. Reduction of general site authority. Creating page and keyword cannibalization issues. Reduced on-page UX and time-on-site metrics. Decrease in sitewide revenue per thousand impressions (RPM) for advertising revenue.

It has been too well documented for John Mueller of Google that low-quality content on one part of a site can negatively affect the search rankings of the entire site.

bottom line

If you can update and improve existing content, please do!

But if not, erase this, and move on. to think quality with the content of your site, no amount.

The #1 Worst SEO Tip 2: “All I need to do is write longer content to rank better.”

It has been repeatedly stated that word count is not a ranking factor with Google. However, every day I encounter clients who have been instructed to write a longer resource as their primary method of “recapturing” a lost ranking or improving existing visibility.

When asked about the word count, Mueller said“just blindly adding content to a page won’t make it (rank) better.”

What does Helping a resource is adding content that is useful to the public

For example, no one wants to read a 2,000+ word treatise on artichoke hearts. Therefore, understanding what your audience is looking for and what is considered “useful” can still be confusing for the average site owner.

bottom line

A content update or rewrite must have a clear purpose and an understanding of why your page isn’t ranking in the first place.

Is there an intent incompatibility with your query? Does the page have technical deficiencies? Are you competing against much bigger sites?

These are just a few questions to answer before you decide to “just write a longer resource” to consider ranking.

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The #1 Worst SEO Tip 3: “I should include my focus keyword in every page heading.”

During the “good old days” of SEO, it was very common to optimize a page around a focus keyword by including the focus keyword in the title, meta description, URL, and all page headings .

For example, just a few years ago, a typical recipe post trying to rank for “banana cream pie” might look like this:

The best banana cream pie

Why this banana cream pie is the best

Banana cream ingredients

Step by step to make banana cream pie

Banana Cream Pie Questions and Answers

Related Banana Cream Pie Recipes

Banana Cream Pie (recipe card)

Unfortunately, after Google’s November 2019 updates, and subsequently announced core updates in January and May 2020, a clear pattern emerged whereby bloggers who had been over-optimizing their headings (among other issues) suffer from decimated rankings and traffic drops.

The pattern was incredibly easy to see in audits and online Facebook groups and was soon supported by one Food Blogger Studio by SEO firm Top Hat Rank published in February 2020.

In the study, food blogs saw a 60% drop in direct traffic from Google search engines to recipes and posts that had engaged in excessive headline keyword optimization.

Fortunately, bloggers who went back to their site and started deoptimizing their headings ended up with recoveries in the May 2020 core update, or much later when Google made its next update announced in December.

bottom line

Any recommendation to stuff your headlines with keywords is not only outdated advice, but potentially dangerous for the average site in today’s algorithmic climate.

Referring to your keyword naturally in the H1 and one or two other H2s looks good. More than that, it will look like spam and should be avoided!

The #1 Worst SEO Tip 4: “Alt text should be used for SEO keywords.”

Alternative text, or alternative text, is one of the most important i misunderstood topics in all SEO and accessibility. Having good and correct alt text for images is not just a simple SEO practice, it is essential for visually impaired visitors to the site.

Alt text exists primarily to describe the image to someone who cannot see it. The focus is on those accessing the site with screen readers who cannot see the image and therefore need to have them read the images for descriptive purposes.

Nothing annoys visually impaired users more than visiting a site and seeing every image read as “keyword – keyword – keyword”.

And yet, even today, with so much literature that exists on the correct use of alt text, this still happens more than it should!

bottom line

Remove keywords and describe what’s in the photo to someone who can’t see it.

Don’t say “image of” or “photo of” in your alt text. Be brief but descriptive.

Finally, add a “period” at the end as a cue to let screen readers know that the alt text has been completed.

The #1 Worst SEO Tip 5: “Semrush says I have toxic links and need to submit a disavow file.”

Oh Semrush, you never disappoint!

While the Semrush toolkit is generally a quality investment for both users and SEOs, this is by far its biggest drawback. In this particular example, the tool fails miserably!

I have yet to run a crawl for a client with Semrush and not have the tool spit out a big “Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!” warning when reviewing a link profile.

Semrush identifies random links as toxic and then recommends that the user submit a disavow file. The problem with this recommendation is that it is unnecessary and completely arbitrary.

Google is very clear that:

Indeed, Google it doesn’t even have a concept of toxic domainsand blindly following a tool that says “another way” should always be avoided.

bottom line

Unless you have a manual action or know you’ve built bad links, a disavow file is a total waste of time for the average site owner.

Ignore the tools and move on to something else that will actually help you move your site.

Final thoughts

You’ve heard that SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. As with any marathon, it’s all about training and preparation.

Don’t derail your SEO marathon by succumbing to poor advice that’s embedded in a course, podcast, or guru trying to sell you their latest tool.

Instead, use some common sense and reject advice that “may” seem questionable when given. The place you save can be yours. Good luck here!

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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About the author

Casey Markee is the owner of Internet Consulting Media Wyse. SEO for over two decades, she has been working exclusively with food and lifestyle bloggers since 2015. During that time she has worked with thousands of bloggers in every recipe niche imaginable. He likes long walks to the fridge and back and thinks bacon and corn are gourmet foods.

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