If you’re choosing to grow your business online, you won’t do so without an effective SEO strategy. After all, your business needs all the exposure it can get to generate customers. Without having an SEO plan in place, you won’t be able to secure the numbers you need to impact your business.
Still, SEO shouldn’t be a hit-or-miss approach. Either you’re doing it right or you’re doing it wrong. There’s nothing else to it. You only need to follow the right strategies in order to realize the goals you have set.
Otherwise, you will have to know what you got wrong. Mistakes are almost forgivable in the world of digital marketing. But if you’re seeing a consistent drop in your metrics, you will need to find what keeps holding your business down.
Let’s look at the five things you’re probably doing wrong with your SEO efforts.
Cutting content length
There’s no doubt that “content is king,” but it’s effective content that makes all the difference. For this, we can only look at how word count and length impacts your SEO. Since content volume is a determiner of SEO quality, marketers are arguing whether to keep the word count as brief as possible or create long-form content.
If you’re thinking that shorter is better, since visitors won’t have the luxury of time to read a lengthy blog post, then you may as well reevaluate your content strategy. Search engine algorithms prioritize long-form content on account of the value it provides.
Blogs that are beyond 300 words are more likely the first page in the search results. That being said, you’re main is to focus on carefully structured long-form content. This way, visitors are bound to stay a long time on your site.
Duplicating content
Sure, we all know that the more content you have, the more your site has SEO value. But duplicating content isn’t exactly a helpful way to improve your Google search rankings.
Uniqueness is something you wouldn’t want to push to the sidelines, so it’s obvious that duplicating content in your website is bad practice, a waste of resources, and a waste of opportunities.
Using long-tail keywords sloppily
Who doesn’t like long-tail keywords? Apparently, they are the best ingredients for a successful SEO campaign. But as much as you want to include three or even four-word phrases to your content, it’s still important to write them properly and naturally. Bad writing is just as bad as a poor keyword list, so make sure you get professional content writers to help you craft effective content.
Taking shortcuts
If you are an SEO company that has to deliver the best results to a local business, you may be tempted to take shortcuts using “black hat” tactics like article spinning and, worse, bypassing a content and SEO audit of your client’s website.
Instead of taking the easier route, you may as well get extra help from a company that is selling white label SEO and marketing to your clients. That way, you can ensure quality services in terms of link-building and getting expert recommendations from a capable SEO agency.