In the past, businesses could get their web pages listed high on search engine results pages by using a number of techniques that have become outdated. Not only will they no longer work, thanks to Google updates like Penguin and Hummingbird, sites who use them could actually get punished and fail to rank at all. Over the last couple of years, the digital marketplace has drastically changed and grown, and so too has the SEO industry. As a result, there are several basic SEO techniques that might have worked in 2012 but need to be avoided today.
Packing Keywords
Keyword density used to be one of the most basic SEO techniques that website operators would use to get their sites listed on Google. In fact, it was a vital part of virtually every campaign as little as a year ago. But keyword-heavy articles will be a red flag for Google algorithms and do more harm than good.
Spinning
Essentially, article spinning is the process of taking one article and simply rewording it to form another one that offers nothing new. In the past, it was one of the best SEO techniques because it made it easy for businesses to upload new content and add keywords and links to their sites. Now, Google places an emphasis on quality and will likely punish sites that feature duplicate content.
Cloaking
Cloaking is one of the most advanced SEO techniques that websites used to use to get more links on search engine results pages. It occurs when crawlers are shown different content than what users see. For instance, a company that sells cars might show blogs about tires to crawlers in an effort to bring a wider range of people to their site. That will likely get websites banned nowadays.
Link Farming
Tough there is still some emphasis on building links in some of the latest SEO techniques, link farming is frowned upon. Businesses or site owners used to build clusters of websites that all offered little value to web users just to build links. Today, that won’t work to build higher rankings because the links are such low quality.

For the most part, all of the basic SEO techniques that marketers use today rely on creating useful content and building strong links. At the most basic level, it is a quality over quantity approach that is now emphasized, which is vastly different than what used to work. Though that change might make it harder for sites to earn high rankings, it makes the web a better place for users and means that the outdated methods that used to work are no longer a good option. More like this.