The Warning Signs of Bad SEO
Has the phone stopped ringing? Are your sales down? Are the inquiries not where they were this time last year… Or the year before…. Or the year before that?
Often the first indicator to a business that their Online Marketing is failing is the fact that their bottom line income is not where it was and continues to drop. Or their sales and inquiries suffer and THEN they start to ask questions… Sadly this is often left so late that the business is at the point of no return.
It does not need to be this way. Recognising the symptoms early may be the difference between your business thriving or going under… Take a moment to read the warning signs below: If you can relate then start asking questions!
But I’m Paying an SEO Company!
Sadly, there are a lot of companies out there who are more than happy to take your money and run. They’ll sign you up and you’ll either see no improvement or worse still: a fall in traffic and sales. If you’re working with a company make sure they are providing monthly reports and keeping you updated on progress. It’s your right to ask questions and you should see notable improvements.
Not Updating the Website with New Content
Search engines love fresh content. Active blogs and relevant changes should help you see a benefit with website traffic. Quality content builds your domain authority, establishes you as an expert in your industry, increases the keywords you rank for and ultimately should bring you the traffic from search engines
Expectation, Reservation & Depreciation
Managing your expectations can save you pain further down the line. Don’t expect to rank for highly competitive, broad terms quickly and know that SEO is an ongoing process.Your competitors will not stop working on their online marketing when they hit those all important page one positions so know that you have to do your SEO more effectively to get there. If you have reservations that your SEO is being done correctly and effectively then take action. Another six months of improper SEO will see a depreciation in your rankings and this is not acceptable.
False Promises
Many SEO companies tend to promise the world before you agree to work with them and then fail to deliver. You may be signed up to a contract that means you’re stuck with them for some time. Ensure that you do a background check before you sign up. Check review sites. Are they on the Recommended Agencies Register? Are they Google Certified? If you’re already committed and having doubts then shop around and get some opinions from agencies that meet the above criteria.
Guaranteed Results
Any SEO company that guarantees success is a liar: Plain and simple. It is impossible to say that you’ll be in a page one position for a certain term in a set amount of time. Question any agency or SEO management company that promises results as to how they will achieve this: It probably is not legitimate and can destroy your online business.
Paid For Links
Panic: This is the fast track to initial rankings and then a penalty that will see your business drop off a cliff and disappear from Search engine listings. Links must be earned not bought and if you’ve paid a company to create links then it is a matter of time before you are penalised. You need to act now as the longer you leave this and the more paid for links you have, the harder it will be to work back from.
Google Penalties
The ‘Google Zoo’ of algorithms have changed the landscape of search results in favour of websites that are doing their SEO effectively and not taking short cuts. Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird are the three big algorithms that will affect you the most and you should be aware of them. To keep things brief, the bottom line is you’ll lose rankings if you take action that violates the Google Guidelines (Eventually) and these algorithms are the first step to a manual penalty which can be very hard to fight back from.
Over-Optimisation
One mistake a lot of web masters make is ‘trying too hard’ to rank for a set of terms they feel will bring them traffic. They ‘keyword spam’ a page with repeated instances of a term or variations of that term to the point where the page is hard to understand by humans: It’s clearly written for search engines and this will earn you an algorithmic penalty eventually. Remember that Google will not buy your product or make the enquiry: People will. Keep that in mind when creating content.
How Can You ‘Fix’ This
Work with an agency that understands how Google and Search engines work:
They should:
- Work within Google Guidelines
- Offer no quick fixes
- Explain that to ultimately rank, bring in the inquiries / sales you need to build your domain authority
- Help establish your website as an authority in your industry
- Create good quality content
- Follow the best practices (In line with the Google Guidelines)
- Understand this is not going to be a quick process
Most inquiries we receive are from companies who have already been penalised and have waited so long to react that they are in a very bad position.
As soon as you have doubts you should look at a reputable SEO company to audit your website and create a report with relevant statistics highlighting factors including your back links, onsite content, blogs, traffic and the terms bringing that traffic.
“Rankings might not be the be all and end all:
You’re better off ranking for thousands of terms sending relevant traffic that will convert, rather than broad terms that could send a lot of traffic but never
result in a sale or enquiry. “
If any of the above symptoms seem familiar then you need to react now. The longer you leave it, the harder it will be to make a come back. Contact us today and ensure a bright future for your online business.
