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Investing in SEO or, more specifically, teaming up with an SEO agency is one of the best ways to improve your company’s visibility in the digital world. This boosts your reputation, your traffic, and even your conversion rate. As a result, all of this transfers to a sizable revenue boost. While this sounds ideal, it’s only true if your SEO is done right.
With this in mind, can SEO be done badly? In fact, can it be done so poorly that it hurts your brand more than it helps it? Absolutely! So, here are seven ways in which your SEO “specialist” may hurt your business. By learning about these hazards, you’ll learn how to recognize these signs in time and prevent a disaster.
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Spelling and grammar errors
A spelling and grammar error is quite easy to spot by the algorithm and it may diminish your content’s rank. It’s also a mistake that has nothing to do with the technical prowess of your team but only with their effort (or lack of effort).
Now, this happens to everyone but if it starts happening consistently, it’s probably a much bigger problem. Other than being an issue over which your content will get penalized, it also shows the level of effort that they’re putting into their work. There’s either no proofreading or their content isn’t checked by multiple people before being uploaded.
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Not returning to your old content
Your content has a lifelong after you upload it, however, some SEO marketers quickly forget about these posts. So, what happens if the high DA link that you’ve inserted into the article suddenly gets broken? How long will it take you to notice and delete it? Experts, from what some argue to be the best SEO agency from Sydney, argue that this is a huge problem, seeing as how it lowers your SEO rating quite drastically.
Then, there’s the matter of recycling old content. As you’ll see a bit later on, producing new content takes time. Therefore, a chance to reuse old content (update new statistics or link to it in order to provide historical comparison) is a perfect example of the optimization of resources.
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Too technical
Technical SEO is incredibly important but one of the mistakes (that usually comes from the lack of experience) lies in assuming that everything you do needs to be SEO-focused. Keyword research is essential for your success but sticking to the result without trying to make the kw more natural (more digestible for the reader) will give you poor results.
Sure, your content and all your pages need to be SEO optimized but you need to remember that you’re writing for two audiences – human and robot. You can’t afford to neglect your actual readers in order to appease the algorithm. The other way around would be a bad idea, as well, so you always need to find a compromise.
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Too hard to read
There’s a lot of content-related SEO knowledge that creators sometimes overlook. As a result, they lose the audience rather quickly, which is a negative metric known as bounce rate. Remember, while your content needs to be well-written, it’s a blog post and not a literary work. There’s nothing wrong with long sentences but numerous research has shown that they diminish the readability of the text. Passive voice, huge paragraphs, lack of subheadings, etc. are just some of the factors that have a similar effect.
Also, it’s really important to understand who you’re writing for. Using too many technical terms is definitely a bad idea but, then again, oversimplifying your professional jargon may make you lose credibility and authority on the subject matter. You need to know who you’re writing for.
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Mass-production of content
According to one survey, it took roughly 4 hours and 1 minute to produce a blog post in 2021. This means that if your SEO agency is simply swarming your blog with new posts on a daily basis, you might want to take a closer look at the quality of these posts. Sheer numbers alone will indicate that a certain content input is impossible (while maintaining quality standards).
Then again, even the best piece of content will be of limited use if your output is not great enough. When posting on a regular basis (a good editorial schedule), you have a chance of making regular readers. Some of them may even routinely visit your page/blog to look for new content.
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Not showing your personality
While some would say that we live in a cancel culture, the truth is that some people believe that even a single controversy can ruin their brand. This makes some marketers too careful, which creates problems of their own. Namely, from the standpoint of the business, it’s better to be loved by 100 people and hated by 100 than to have 200 people indifferent towards your brand.
In order to overcome this problem, you shouldn’t be afraid to take a stance. Be open about your ideas, principles, and objectives. When it counts (it’s industry-relevant), don’t be afraid to take a controversial (even contrarian) stance.
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Focusing on more than just Google
The second-biggest search engine in the world is YouTube. Therefore familiarizing with YouTube metrics might be a good idea for those who plan to work on their video marketing. Moreover, every single search engine functions as a search engine on its own.
Therefore, you need to develop a micro-strategy for each of these search engines, as well as do market research on which of these platforms are favored by your audience. The last thing you want is to spend countless hours on the platform that barely any member of your target demographics uses.
In conclusion
In the end, your digital marketing is an active effort and, as such, it changes things (for better or worse). With every step you take, you’re moving either right or wrong direction and the only way to figure this out is to measure your distance from your goal. So, you need to read reports, check their content output, and even read the content that is published in your name (from time to time). This is the only way to be sure.
