The website isn’t ranking anymore.
The organic traffic has decreased.
I can’t seem to increase traffic or visibility.
Are these all statements that you know too well? Well, don’t worry, you are not alone. As an agency, working with a breadth of different clients in all sectors we get asked these questions frequently.
The spook of the changing Google Algorithm
SERPs is an ever changing format, and what once worked last year may not work as well this year. With Google Algorithm ruling the roost of the best practices, it is now more important than ever to stay up to date with the best practices.
As an industry, we talk a lot about what to do in order to boost visibility and traffic, but what is often neglected is what NOT to do. In light of this (and Halloween of course), this blog discovers the 4 deadly SEO sins to avoid in order to ensure your visibility, traffic and revenue increases in 2021 and beyond!
Sin 1: Don’t be a lazy bones with your keyword strategy
The number one felony that we see far too often is keyword stuffing. We have all felt the temptation – you find the best keyword, and this best keyword has great search volume because it is your best keyword and it makes sense to put this best keyword in the content as many times as possible as it is your best keyword. RIGHT?
Well unfortunately, I am here to tell you to please stop! As tempting as this is, it can be more detrimental to your SEO efforts. Search engine algorithms are “trained” to read just like a human does and therefore – your content needs to sound genuine and natural.
If when crawling your website, search engines pick up that you are over using keywords, you will be penalised AKA sent to the back of the queue on Google, at Page 10.
Sin 2 : Letting your content collect cobwebs
Firstly, producing engaging, SEO optimised content is a spook that many businesses get once they understand how SEO works.
As we discussed in sin number 1, the pivotal tactic to SEO success is to keep learning and adapting strategies based on new algorithm updates, and this includes content. Content writing takes time, knowledge and dedication in order to leverage results. The payoff is worth it, so it is important to take this time. As a key ranking factor, relevant and fresh content will be prioritised with a higher ranking over an outdated piece.
Once you have written the content and it is live, it is important to know that content is no longer a thing that you can stuff with keywords, post – ready to never think about again. Now best practices is to regularly update content in line with new updates, new products or new industry findings. We are looking to provide the best user experience to our visitors – and that entails ensuring they have relevant, up to date content.
Sin 3: Allowing technical SEO to give you the spook
Technical SEO for me has always been a lever of SEO that frightened the life out of me. As someone who specialises in content marketing, it always seemed like another language.
So I understand the temptation to stick with what you know and avoid technical. However as someone who was in the same position – and now working alongside Seed’s Technical SEO genius it isn’t as scary as it once was, it’s actually pretty cool!
Technical SEO is a crucial part of SEO success. In a nutshell it consists of multiple technical elements to improve your ranking on a search engine. Technical SEO deals with the crawl, index and rank model – which in short is how a search engine reads your site.
Technical SEO should be the backbone of any SEO strategy. You might have the best, most optimised content in the world but if it can’t be indexed then it is redundant!
Sin 4: Not killing toxic links
Another area of SEO that can often be overlooked is link building. More specifically, ensuring you have a clean backlink profile. Recently there have been multiple Google Algorithm updates (enter penguin) that focus on your website’s backlink profile, something that Harry from the Link building team at Seed has been educating us all on!
So, you have acquired 10K backlinks, what now, surely your rankings should shoot up? Unfortunately, not quite! It really is quality over quantity with backlinks, and it is imperative that your website’s backlink profile is not considered “toxic”.
Any toxic backlinks can hinder your SEO efforts, and impact ranking capabilities, so it is important to disavow these, so that they aren’t considered when Google is ranking your website.
Solving your SEO sins with Seed
As the SEO landscape changes and involves based on user behaviours and updates, it is crucial that you stay ahead of the curve and follow best practices.
At Seed we have a whole team of SEO experts who are just itching for the project to solves any SEO sins that may be harming your website. From link building, content to SEO strategy – we have it all covered.
If you would like more information about how we can help – please get in touch with one of our friendly SEO team members.
