You Need SEO Now More Than Ever – Here’s How
2020 has been a rough year, and we’re not the first to notice! If you’re a business owner and...
In other words, what you don’t realize about SEO is hurting your business. We understand! After all, SEO is always changing. What was true 10 years ago is NOT true now. Also, what was true two years ago may not be true now!
Here are some SEO mistakes you may be making:
- Stuffing a list of cities in the footer of your website. This is an oldie, but a goodie, because I still see this happen. You might even see this on websites for very large corporations. Just because a huge brand is doing it doesn’t mean it’s right or that it works.
- Hiring a company to set you up with links to your site. Ack! Please don’t do this. Many of these companies use PBNs or Private Blog Networks to link to you. These links are going to hurt you more than help.
- Writing 300-word blog posts. Stop churning out junk. Google is telling us that those posts you can write in your sleep don’t make one bit of difference. Instead, start brainstorming some actually useful, long-form content and publish that.
- Stuffing your content with your keywords. If you overstuff, you may lose rankings! Google’s algorithms are getting smarter, so just put a few of your keywords in there.
- Not making regular changes to your website. Publishing regular new content is part of this, but you can also tweak other parts of your website. Switch out a photo once in a while. Update some text.
- Not keeping an eye on old links. Clean up your links, because many will break over time. You don’t want to link to a dead website.
- Not thinking of SEO as holistic. You can’t just do one thing to make a difference with SEO. We mention this a lot because people sometimes want to hire us to “just do SEO”, however, we aren’t solely an SEO company. Here’s the thing: your ranking on search results is going to be determined by so many factors. Think of it as a puzzle. You can put some of the pieces together, but you’re not going to get the whole picture without all of them. (The same is true for marketing in general, by the way!) So don’t hire a person or company to “do your SEO” for $250 a month. You’re throwing away your money. Your SEO is your marketing. It includes:
- Posting to social media
- Creating (quality) content
- Creating a stellar website that is designed first for mobile devices
- Making sure that the website’s page speed is good
- Updating that website regularly
- Paying for Pay Per Click or social media advertising
- And much more!
We know SEO is confusing. Remember, no one should ever guarantee you the No. 1 spot on Google. If they do, run the other way. If you have questions about the right way to optimize your business online, contact us, as we continue to set the tone of web design in Raleigh.