Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of those industries that can either present magnificent results or deliver a plethora of never-ending head pounding penalties and possible de-indexing of your website from Google’s search results. Here are the top 6 reasons you might be experiencing the latter of the two results.
1. Your website content was written for the search engines.
An SEO expert walked into a bar, pub, tavern, lounge, beer hall and orders a drink. This is called keyword stuffing and is an old tactic that use to work with the search engines, but not anymore. Your website content needs to be written to flow naturally. Also, write for real people, not the search engines.
2. You’re buying links to spammy sites.
Having a great link profile to your site is incredibly important. It’s the search engine version of being in a great networking group. This site trusts this site so we can trust them. If you buy links on Fiverr, you are linking yourself to the equivalent of a drug dealer.
3. You’re using SEO tactics from the late 90s.
If you are using an SEO agency that has not stayed up to date in their field, chances are you will be decreasing in rank and eventually dropping off the face of the Google planet. Google changes their algorithms often and drastically so that old SEO tactics don’t work anymore.
4. Your website is not optimized properly.
Think of a newspaper. You have the title of the paper, the first headline and the beginning of the story and then secondary and tertiary headlines and stories that take you deeper into the newspaper. Those titles, headlines and stories are incredibly important to grab your attention. They need to have certain keywords and direction in them. Same goes for your website.
5. You’re not tracking your website performance.
If you are not using Google Analytics or some sort of tracking software like MOZ, then how will you ever know the five “w’s”? Who has come to your site, what they were looking for, when they came to your site, where they came to your site from and why they came to your site. You need to know what actions people are taking on your site so that you can optimize it properly for them, otherwise its just a big guessing game.
6. You aren’t incorporating social media.
In case you didn’t know, social media is necessary for businesses today. We live in a world where you are vetted before engaged with. You want to be there to engage with your audience when they are looking for you. You want to showcase that you are available in more ways than one. If you aren’t incorporating your social media pages into your website and vice versa, you are losing out with your customers and the search engines.
There are literally thousands of things you should be doing with your online marketing and you need to know who to trust with these incredibly important decisions. Unfortunately there are an abundance of “SEO experts” who are willing to do the old bait and switch and take your money and run. If you have come across this and chances are that you have if you have answered your phone at least once during the week, then give us a call or email and we can walk you through building the right online strategy for your business.
There’s a word of mouth out there about quick fixes for SEO and social media traffic from black hat organizations.
Too often instead of improving SEO, I’m working with new clients to undo the sandboxing penalties they earned for using those cheats. This often reflects badly on me and other SEMs being expected to make similarly quick fixes
SEO is a marathon not a sprint
I keep having clients wanting me to do the spammy links for them. No! I tell them. Just not worth it.
Good job Andy. Thank you for standing for what is right and ethical in this crazy SEO industry. We have seen so many people burned by bad SEO, that it is nice to meet fellow legit SEO experts.