Source: http://www.semrush.com/blog/10-seo-traps-to-avoid-google-downranking-in-2016/
Keep your site competitive by improving on your SEO strategy and increasing your traffic this coming 2016. Google updates are just around the corner and there is no surefire way in avoiding fluctuations once an update is rolled out. What’s good is that you can mitigate this by continuously improving on your SEO strategy.
Link Building
Buying links for the sake of increasing ranks is considered unnatural and gets your site penalized. This method of getting links is frowned upon by Google and still being used by some web owners in an attempt to increase their ranking positions in SERP. Link earning is a tactic that web owners use to get natural links. This is done by building trust, creating shareable infographics and adding unique and compelling content that your users would share and link to.
Anchor Text
Gone are the days that you can repetitively use the same anchor text over and over again to make your page rank for a particular keyword. This is considered a black hat technique that can get your site penalized. Counterproductive as it may seem, search engines are clever enough to read a page and decide to rank it based on user experience, backlinks, socials, relevancy and others, just to name a few factors.
Mobile design
The newest addition to Google’s ranking factors is having a mobile-friendly web design. Who would have known that mobile search would eventually reach desktop search in just a few years’ time? Statistics show that mobile apps are driving the most media consumption activity in the internet. And because of this, you need to optimize your site for it to be mobile-friendly to avoid missing out on opportunities.
Low quality content
As we all know, the Google Panda Update targets websites with low-quality or “thin” content lowering their rank on search engines. This goes hand in hand with user experience since a quality written content that is shareable would drive more traffic and conversions compared to low-quality content that doesn’t deserve a top spot on Google search engine.