3 Useless Traffic Building Tactics

As the web evolves, certain traffic-building tactics are going to drop by the wayside, while others will rise to prominence. Yet many webmasters will still continue to apply old tactics even once they stop working. Why, because Google doesn't announce when they change their algorithm.

Here, are three previously accepted traffic-building tactics that are now dead. If you're using any of these tactics, it's time to take a different approach and start over.

==> Marketing with Low Quality Articles

Article marketing used to be one of the most common tactics on the internet.

Webmasters would write articles on just about any topic, whether they had knowledge or not, and hope they could get that article to rank.

Once the article was ranked, they'd point a link to their website and get traffic from people who click through.

This tactic is no longer works today. Sites like EzineArticles and Article Alley have taken massive hits in traffic since the Panda update. Even eHow.com, a relatively high quality website, took a hit.

If you must use this tactic, switch to higher quality content directories like Squidoo or HubPages that have community verification of content quality.

==> Link Wheels, Linking Schemes and Structures

Linking schemes have existed ever since Google introduced PageRank. It started out with pure reciprocal linking, where webmasters linked to one another to boost rankings. Then it moved to three-way linking and quickly into the fully-fledged link wheels.

Today, Google has pretty much shut down all these linking schemes. Even the most complicated linking structures involving multiple layers of link juice flows simply are not going to do the job.

Google has implemented sophisticated detection technologies that make this method more or less invalid.

==> Directory Submissions

In the past, getting your website into various internet directories could be an easy way to improve PageRank and increase rankings. Today this approach doesn't work at all.

There are still a few directories that can pull some weight. The DMOZ community sourced directory and the Yahoo directory can still supply you some link juice.

That said, the amount of effort and money it takes to get into a quality index just isn't worth the effort. The same time and money could be put into other tactics that result in a much higher ROI.

==> Basically...

The search engine strategy is changing. Low quality links are being phased out more and more, to the point where they have virtually no effect.

The best way to get your name/product out there online today is to put out high quality content, then build links using connections with real people.

This takes longer than using instant gratification tactics, but it's what works. It's been said that in business, the one who wins, is the person who's willing to do what his competitors aren't willing to do.

In SEO, creating high quality content with high quality backlinks is what it takes. If you spend your time and energy doing this while your competitors are searching for shortcuts, you'll come out ahead in the end.