Search Engine Optimization

While there is no set “right way” to run an SEO campaign, as each site will approach it differently based on their needs and goals, there is a wrong way to manage SEO. Are you guilty of one or more of these 5 things? It may mean that you are mishandling your SEO campaign.

1. All you can focus on is ranking number 1 in Google.
There are dozens of reports that will explain what percentage of clicks the first listing in Google gets compared to the second listing, so I’m not going to say it doesn’t matter where your site ranks. Obviously the higher you rank in the SERPs the better. What I am saying is that you shouldn’t only worry about rank position. The search engines are trying to personalize search, and that means that results will sometimes vary person by person based on search history, location and other factors you can’t account for. Rank is important, but don’t pigeonhole your vision so it’s the only thing you care about.

2. Your blog is dead in the water.
If you launched a business blog and haven’t written a new post in 6 months, it’s time to reevaluate your SEO. SEO thrives on the consistent production of great content that strives to connect with, engage and educate your target audience. A stagnant blog will only hinder the overall success of your SEO.

3. You treat your social profiles like ad space.
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (the Big 3 of social networking sites) are not new places for you to advertise. If you want any real value coming out of your social profiles and social media marketing, you have got to start building relationships with your customers and creating an online community for your brand. Use your social profiles to promote and share content, address customer service issues, engage in conversations with your target audience and more. Don’t just turn your Facebook page into a static ad for your products, no one cares and you’ll never see much value from it.

4. Any link is a good link no matter where it comes from.
Links are the bread and butter of SEO, but not all links are created equal. Don’t compromise the integrity of your site and overall SEO campaign by engaging in black hat link building tactics like link exchanges or blog comment spamming. 10,000 links from low-quality, spammy sites aren’t nearly as valuable in the long run as 1,000 links from high-quality, relevant sites. Quality over quantity it what matters when it comes to link building. Sometime the easy way to build links will land you in hot water with the search engines.

5. You think SEO is free.
“Free” is relative. If you are handling your SEO in-house, how many man hours are being put into your SEO? Does that employee have to sacrifice some of their other daily activities in order to handle your SEO? Did you spend money to send them to a workshop or training webinar? Did you purchase SEO software to help streamline the process and automate some tasks? If you’re outsourcing your SEO you obviously have to pay your new SEO provider to do the heavy lifting for you. SEO isn’t free once you really think it, even if it doesn’t cost anything to build a social profile or launch a free WordPress blog.

Someone recently asked me about “reverse SEO” and whether or not I thought it was a good SEO tactic. I had to be honest and tell them that reverse SEO was not a term I was familiar with (12 years in the Internet marketing and SEO industry and I’m still learning new things!) but that I would look into it and get back to them. Something in my gut was telling me that reverse SEO was probably a grey hat, if not outright black hat, SEO technique.

After doing a little research, the way I came to understand reverse SEO is that it’s the process of analyzing the search results (usually done with an SEO software tool) in Google and Bing and then breaking it down to find out why one site ranks over another. Basically, reverse SEO is trying to quantify SEO; if you get X links from certain sites and write X pages of content and focus on X keywords your site will catapult to the top of the SERPs overnight.

As the owner of a strictly white hat SEO company called Brick Marketing, this is not a process I would ever recommend to any of our full service SEO clients.

1. It’s all speculative
There is no formula to SEO that guarantees success. If it were as simple as that then site owners wouldn’t need SEO consultants like me to help guide them through the process. They would just go down the checklist and POOF! find themselves ranking number one. I wish SEO were that simple (and oftentimes people are over thinking it), but it’s not a campaign where you can just plug and play.

2. There are unknown factors
Google has over 200 factors in their ranking algorithm. Some of these we can control (webpage content) and some of them we can’t (age of site). We aren’t even 100% sure of all 200 factors! Google and Bing know that black hat SEO practitioners and spammers are looking for ways to “crack the code” and they aren’t about to let it happen.

I’ve also seen reverse SEO defined as doing everything you can to negatively impact your competition. Instead of trying to build your site up you work to bring other sites down. I actually came across this quote in my research, “To less do we have to make huge spam competitor site with many links to other sites. So Google thinks this site tries to obtain classified by massive spam and if the site is and disappear just the search engines altogether.” Maybe not the most well-written sentence ever, but I took it to mean that this forum member was recommending that site owners create a spam site and link to their competitor’s sites in order to make Google think their competitors where using black hat link building tactics.

However you want to define reverse SEO, either as creating a plug-and-play formula for SEO success OR as trying to sabotage the competition’s own SEO efforts, I would recommend that you steer clear.

It’s happened to me dozens of times, and it will probably happen a dozen times more. I’ll be pitching a potential client who I think is a good fit, only to have them go with another SEO company that is offering the same services for the low, low price of $99.99 a month! I understand that companies in any industry will try to underbid each other in order to win a client (especially when the economy is as unstable as it is right now), but if I’ve learned anything in my 12+ years as an SEO consultant, it’s that you get what you pay for.

More often than not, if you come across an SEO company promising everything under the sun for an unbelievable price, they are probably a black hat SEO company.

I do my best to convince the prospective client that they are about to head into dangerous territory, but such a low price point can be pretty convincing. However, I’ve also learned over the years that the potential client almost always comes back once they’ve been burned by the black hat company. Only instead of handling their SEO, they need me to fix the problems created by the other firm!

When you stick to white hat SEO , you don’t need to be worry about algorithm updates or the ever-changing will of the search engines. Every tactic employed by a white hat SEO company is soundly within the guidelines of the search engines, so you can rest assured knowing that your brand isn’t about to get flagged or penalized.

Black hat SEO can be very tempting for site owners, especially when it looks like the competition is getting away with it and succeeding. Don’t get caught up in the short gains that black hat SEO brings! The search engines are well aware that spammers are trying to game the system and rig the SERP for their benefit, and they have many ways of identifying such sites. I’ve seen sites get flagged by the search engines for black hat SEO and get completely de-indexed! If potential customers can’t find your site in the search engines, you might as well not exist.

Your online reputation is the most valuable asset your brand has. It takes a long time to position your company well and gain the trust of the search engines. But all the effort is for naught if your site gets caught trying to beat the system with black hat SEO. You aren’t just back to square one, you’re somewhere in the negatives. Now you have to go back to that white hat SEO company (the one that was a little more costly) and have them repair the damage. Imagine how much farther ahead your SEO would be in they had been handling it in the first place, as opposed to playing catch-up and trying to pick up the pieces.

The search engines don’t take kindly to sites that try to manipulate the search results in their favor. Black hat SEO firms and spammers are constantly looking for new ways to twist the ranking factors. For instance, having a lot of links pointing to your site is important for SEO, so spammers get links from low quality, spammy sites to boost their link number. Never mind that these links are coming from spam blogs, they choose quantity over quality.

1. Throwaway domains
Google specifically warns against throwaway domains in their SEO Webmaster Guidelines. A throwaway domain is a domain that has very little real value, and is just used to build link popularity to a second site. Many black hat SEO firms will use throwaway domains to build up links to one client’s site, only to redirect those same links to a new client’s side when they lose the first account.

2. Doorway pages
A doorway page is built to make one site more relevant for numerous search queries by stuffing it with keywords. This page is not part of the site’s navigation (meaning no visitor could find it), but it is built into the site structure so the search spiders can crawl it. Sites that use doorway pages to make it look like they are more relevant are often de-indexed once the search engines realize what they are doing.

3. Keyword stuffing
Repeating the same keyword a hundred times on one page of content may make it appear more relevant to the search engines, but it absolutely kills the user-experience. The search engines aren’t looking for a magic number when it comes to keywords. Stuffing your content will only hurt you in the long run.

4. Duplicate content
Some duplicate content was created on purpose (stealing another site’s article and claiming it as your one) and some duplicate content is an accident (homepage.com and homepagedefault.com). Either way, duplicate content can get you in a lot of trouble with the search engines.

5. Dead links
Nothing is more frustrating for a visitor then running into dead pages all over a site. The search spiders will also discover these links and flag them.

The people behind the search engine algorithms are some of the best in their field. They know that the spammers are just waiting to exploit a loophole in the system for their benefit. That is why they are constantly updating and tweaking the algorithm to make it better and, in a sense, smarter.

I’ve spoken with numerous site owners who don’t understand why their competitor (who is employing black hat SEO techniques) is outperforming them in the SERP. I have to keep reminding them that success gained from spamming is short lived. Sooner or later the search engines catch on to what they are doing, and the site will suffer because of it.

When I say that everything you do both online and offline can be leveraged for SEO, I mean it! Recently, the company that owns the office building where my SEO firm has its office told us we had to move out to another property several towns over. We had 30 days left in our old office. Naturally I balked at being moved, especially on such short notice. I had meetings with clients, both current and potential, employees (myself included) were taking long scheduled vacation days, deadlines were coming up—all the nonnegotiable things that come with running a business. Surely they couldn’t really make me move in 30 days?

As it turns out, they could. In the lease I had signed, one of terms stated that the leasing company had the right to move me and my business to a comparable office space with 30 days notice and I couldn’t do anything about it. I had signed a contract and was stuck with the terms as they were.

So what does this have to do with SEO?

There are a lot of black hat SEO firms out there looking to take advantage of an unsuspecting site/business owner. They can tell when you don’t know what you are doing and are going to exploit your inexperience to their advantage. They might just take your money and disappear into the online void; they might overcharge and under-deliver; they may flat out lie to get your business. Site owners—pay close attention to who you are working with!

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Ask colleagues about the SEO agencies they’ve worked with. Check out online reviews of potential SEO partners to make sure no red flags pop up. Do a Google search on any SEO firm you are looking to hire. What kind of information is in the SERP? Keep in mind that an SEO firm with no online presence is probably just as suspect as one with a negative online presence. An SEO company that doesn’t know how to get their own site ranking well in the search engines? What can they possibly do for your site?

As the situation with the building landlord developed, I took my own advice and dig a little digging. Turns out I was not the first small business owner that had run into the same situation! I jumped the gun too quickly and didn’t pay close enough attention to the fine print of the lease I had signed, and so now I’m dealing with the fallout.

Don’t let the same thing happen to you when it comes to SEO! You shouldn’t hire any SEO company or consultant without making sure they are a legitimate, white hat company that is actually going to do good work for your business. Otherwise, you might end up having to hire a new SEO agency to clean up the mess left behind from the first one.