What NOT to Do in the SEO Industry

Learn What NOT to Do in the SEO Industry – The Digital Hype

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The secret to success online is Search Engine Optimization. With SEO you can optimize your website for a search engine to get a higher ranking in their search results, more traffic and potentially more customers.

The demands on SEO are growing daily and so are the opportunities. The search engine optimization services market is expected to reach $134.26 Billion by the year 2026 at a CAGR of 20.7% (source - visiongain reports ltd).

SEO has evolved over the past several years from a siloed approach to an important revenue channel. A channel that is increasingly embedded in content marketing practices and general digital strategies.

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SEO is unique by nature. From changing marketing conditions to changing search engines and changing customer priorities, marketers always need to stay abreast of many changes.

Consequently, SEO methods are constantly evolving due to search engine developments and changes in consumer behavior.

It is never easy to stay abreast of the most efficient optimization techniques. And when it is properly done, recovery can be challenging and even longer.

Here are some things not to do in the SEO industry with advice on how to avoid them.

Here are some things not to do in the SEO industry with advice on how to avoid them.

1. Not knowing your audience:

Your target audiences are current or potential customers who are using a search engine to find businesses like yours. You want visitors like these on your website. Understanding your target audience, which requires familiarity with your audience at large, is one of the core SEO principles

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Many marketers often think they know their audience but they fail to understand how customers behave in their market and the consumer needs. Customers also anticipate immediate answers to their inquiries as well as real-time outcomes. Neglecting the preference of search engines and consumers for a long-tail term is one of the most frequent mistakes made while choosing keywords. Even though you would characterize your goods and services in some way, it is more crucial to comprehend the terminology that your target buyers would employ.

Tips:-

  1. Try to comprehend the market where your target audience makes purchases. What are the macro trends?
  2. Study and analyze the behavioral change of consumers using historical and real-time data.
  3. Map out your finding about consumers' intent to your selection and strategy of keywords.
  4. Use the google keyword planning tool and other vendor tools at your disposal for gathering data and planning strategies.

2. Not having an SEO plan and roadmap

Success requires developing an SEO strategy and roadmap. Knowing everything there is to know about your audience and then acting indifferently or randomly to take advantage of the opportunities is pointless. It would be best if you had a proper strategy and roadmap to use the insights of your consumers.

analytics

Many organisations struggle to build or execute on strategy, whether small-scale or large.

only 36% of small businesses have an SEO strategy. Building a sustainable and efficient strategy relies on multiple elements like website, PR, product and engineering. If you don't have a road map you need to build one now. Look at where your website and results are and where you want them to be. Set specific objectives and adhere to them.

Tips:-

  1. Evaluate and understand your competition including keywords, content and performance.
  2. Assign tasks to actions and agree on objectives, responsibilities for content, site upgrades, digital alignments, and SEO best practices.
  3. Use tools and platforms that help you achieve your goals.

3. Creating the wrong type of content

In pursuit of ranking for a particular keyword, many fail to focus on the text of the topic and unintentionally produce content that is not actually about or relevant to the audience. Search engines like google want to serve their customers with the most relevant content and if your content does not answer the user's need it won't rank well. 

social media marketing

This error frequently happens because:

  • Attempting to cover several themes in one piece of information.
  • The practices of producing shoddy work merely include keywords.
  • Use several keywords in a single piece.

Your main objective should be to create content that actually addresses the queries and requirements of your target audience, taking into account the use of appropriate search phrases.

If your content matches the keyword you are optimizing for, search engines will be able to find it.

The top two errors made by marketers are:

  1. Neglecting to provide material for the appropriate audience.
  2. Not creating content based on knowledge, authority, and reliability.

Tips:-

  1. Ensuring content and SEO strategies are aligned as per SEO strategy and roadmap.
  2. Make sure the content answers the question people are searching for.
  3. Make a variety of content - videos, images, words, etc. - to suit various purposes and SERP layouts.
  4. Following Google's best practices on search quality and E-A-T.

4. Publishing derivative content

This point covers the topic of mistakes related to the quality of your content. While Copying text and content from other websites was a common practice earlier, today search engines penalise this approach by downranking your website.

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Copying and plagiarising content are considered spammy practices and this practice is highly discouraged in SEO practice. Making an investment in original and valuable content will improve your website's ranking and prevent it from falling further down the search results.

Tips -

  1. Create strong headlines that match the topic of your content so it doesn't mislead readers.
  2. Ensuring that the content has actionable information and provides answers to user queries.
  3. Be creative. Create stories to keep users engaged. Add images, videos and infographics to enhance the reader experience.

5. Skipping Title Tags & Meta Descriptions and not Providing Context with Schema

Including only targeted keywords doesn't end the optimization of content. A crucial step in the SEO process is the use of title tags and meta descriptions. Skipping their results in a significant loss of content potential. These optimization factors will improve your content's performance if done correctly.

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Many marketers forget to use schema which tells the search engines what their site is about. Without this search engine struggles to understand the context of your content which leads to a lower ranking in typical search and less relevance in specific queries.

The alt text used for the images included in your content is essential. Search bots cannot read the images but they read texts and adds the information to the search engine database.

Tips -

  1. Write a unique title tag for each page which is brief but descriptive.
  2. Avoid title tags that are too long and make them unique.
  3. Follow Google's best practices for creating good titles and snippets.

6. No back-linking or quality links

To get the best from SEO, content marketers should understand that the quality of external links matters more than their quantity. It is always better to make sure that you link relevant and well-ranking websites with a solid reputation and not just any website.

Link Building

Linking back to websites that have linked to you is usually beneficial because it drives traffic to your website.

Utilizing excellent anchor text is a crucial connecting technique. It explains what the link is about and how it helps with user queries for both readers and search engine bots. So avoid using "click here" as anchor text repetitively and use a variety of anchor texts as the same text can be seen as spammy.

Tips -

  1. Don't buy links- map out a link-building program and follow it accordingly.
  2. Monitor and check for broken links and fix them.
  3. Create content that naturally attracts links.
  4. Use tools and technologies to help monitor and build effective content.

7. Going Astray with Your Internal Links-

The most common mistake that many marketers do is that they will add links that do not match the topic. it is important to understand that if the content and link seem unnatural your work may not get appreciated by your targeted audience.

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Naturally, it's crucial to think about placing links to your top-performing content and giving it additional traction. But making sure to add links to a matching topic or the focus of the piece will help you save your content from being seen as a fraudulent practice.

Tips:-

  1. Group all the topic-related web pages with internal links
  2. Avoiding links from unrelated or irrelevant pages
  3. Audit internal links and check for any issues like slow pages or broken links and balance the usage of internal links.

8. Not Investing in a Fast & Mobile-Friendly Experience

As of 2022, there are approximately more than 6.6 billion smartphone users around the world. People are not always in front of a desktop but they carry their mobile most of the time. Search engines are optimising their algorithm to serve best to mobile users.

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Everything is getting faster and faster in today's time. SEO is not just about keywords and content, it's also about the quality of your website, particularly how better it works on mobile. To avoid getting a lower ranking on search engines consider a smooth mobile experience for your users.

The following mistakes come under mobile SEO -

  • Slow site speed
  • Not investing in responsive web design
  • Slow-loading images and videos
  • Poor local information

Tips-

  • Improving site load time helps avoid people bouncing.
  • Responsive design helps users browse your website easily.
  • Optimizing and creating content aiming at giving users a better mobile experience.

9. Lack of knowledge of how SEO operates across digital channels

SEO has become an integral part of digital marketing and it's essential not to overlook how it works with another channel to maximise its potential.

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Not targeting your SEO with other digital channels can lead to missing out on measuring its full impact. And you may struggle to elevate SEO success internally and externally.

Social emails paid ads and pr is also part of modern-day SEO.

Tips-

  1. Ensuring that your SEO strategy takes input from all the digital channels.
  2. Keep constant track of all your digital counterparts
  3. Ensuring everyone in the digital team is aware of and part of your SEO strategy and roadmap.

10. Not Utilising Analytics & Using the Wrong Tools & Technology:-

Setting up and reviewing analytics is an integral and essential part of optimization results. The only way to know if your SEO strategy is working is to keep track of its progress. Numerous tools are available on Google, including Google Analytics and Google Search Console that marketers can use to overview and measure your website's performance. These can help you see how your optimization works and you can change your strategies accordingly.

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Some Other tools and platforms can help you not do the things which are listed in this article.

Tips -

  1. Find a tool or a platform which serves your SEO needs better and more efficiently.
  2. Tools which can help to make certain decisions and improve your SEO strategy.

11. Not changing content strategy over the period

When content is not significant or pertinent to the target audience, it fails for the most fundamental of reasons. When content is exclusively written in the context of what you know and what's essential to you, it won't perform as I mentioned above.

The majority of businesses are quickly switching to content marketing as their main lead generation strategy. The purpose of developing the content in the first place is negated if it cannot be used to generate revenue. There's no need to be concerned if you discover that your content isn't converting. Simply revise your plan of action.

Summary

Today, Search engine optimization has become a crucial part of any content marketing strategy.

Even the most talented individuals are prone to common SEO blunders.

It's best to become well-versed in the difficulties others have encountered and steer clear of them in your marketing initiatives.

You may like to read:

SEO Fundamentals: The Complete Beginner's Guide 2023 - The Digital Hype

10 Compelling Reasons Why You Need SEO

Founder and head of growth at The Digital Hype. I am a curious individual, a human observer, a Website designer, Digital Marketer and a passionate UX designer with the goal to create delightful experiences for Users and drive business impact..

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