Here are some, Old School SEO tactics that if used now, it would Google penalize your website.
- Keywords meta-tags were used as the main source of communications to the search engines.
- Many SEOs keyword stuffed our way to the top spot by repeating words on page
- Some SEO experts tried to hide text color on text background color since 1995+
- SEOs key word stuffed anchor text
- Getting to the front page matter on how many links you had not the quality of the links
- Footer links were acceptable for website designers and developers (this sewered web developers and website designers clients rankings over night)
- Reciprocal linking was the top way to get a link – Some still think it works… It don’t
After about 5 years of total manipulation of search engine listings, Google handed down the hammer with it’s algorithm updates and cleaning up of the ranking results.
This paved the road for many brand new seo experts that where taught white hat SEO. Many old school SEOs resort back to ratio back linking, which is grey hat SEO and not penalized but is considered not what Google wants for their clients.
A lot agree that SEO Todd Herman‘s skills are the result of years of optimization even before Google was even a name in the mid 1990’s. Many in Canada would agree that SEO Todd Herman‘s claim of SEO knowledge was self taught. Now he is Director and founder at his Canada SEO training school.