Grab your coffee and let’s talk about lessons learned. That means understanding what mistakes you’ve made in your SEO and how to fix them. That’s what we’re going to talk about today.
Okay, class. Today, we’re going to talk about SEO do’s and don’ts. Get your pens out because we’re going to go through my top 5 reasons why SEO does not work and the key things to look out for if you are going to actually hire an SEO company.
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NEVER buy Links
Linking is essential, but we never want to pay or buy links.
The first thing that you should avoid is buying links. This will be my biggest No-No. Linking happens organically. So, if you get a link from a third party.
Let’s say you belong to a Chamber of Commerce, absolutely get a link from there. Maybe you get written up in one of the magazines. Make sure to ask that they link back to your website.
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DON’T duplicate content
It’s really tempting when you write one piece of content to use it in multiple different places. Well, the problem is is that Google timestamps that the first piece of content. Then if you use it somewhere else, it knows the original versus the duplicate.
Make sure that you’re being really careful about how you are creating content.
Now, maybe at this point, you are thinking of hiring a Content Writer. Anybody gives you a piece of content, you run it through Copyscape and he will tell you instantly if there’s been any plagiarism.
I mean they’ve taken it from something else and they’ve it is part of your content. Because you don’t want to get dated for duplicate content. You want to make sure that you’re getting original content.
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NON Responsive Website
We are never going to create a non-responsive website. We are aiming to create a Google-friendly website. Meaning, I can pull it this way, it looks great on a desktop, looks perfect on an iPad, and looks readable on a smartphone.
The problem is as business owners, we don’t ever experience that. You should be looking at your website on a desktop, on an iPad, and on a mobile device. It should be responsive.
Just like a rubber band. I can pull it big and I can make it go back to a small size. It still looks amazing. Very important to SEO that that thing be burned like a kitten. That when I come in there, Google has no reason not to rank you.
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DO NOT Create False Relevance
If you are thinking to outsmart Google then I’m telling you it’s not gonna happen. Google is always one step ahead of us that it actually knows where your business is heading. It can identify if you are doing something wrong.
The problem is that Google knows about every possible deceptive behavior. There are some smart people at Google. They know about the white text on the white background. They know about keyword stuffing in titles.
They know about everything you can think of that is deceptive has already been figured out by Google. There’s almost nothing that we could do to create false relevance. So, we think about what should we are doing that is a bad SEO mistake.
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Proprietary vs. Content Management Systems
Proprietary
In proprietary, there is the only person who could ever manage that website ever. That’s a problem because when you have a webmaster divorce or you decide not to use that company.
They’ve built all this code from scratch.
That means that you’re pretty much what we call in code jail. You can’t get away from that because they’re the ones who built it. In the long run, it will be hard for you and your business if you decide that fire this lone person.
Content Management Systems
This is an open-source provider like Wix, Squarespace, or WordPress. It has a system by which you can go in and easily add the SEO elements. Sometimes I talk to clients and they’re like well we sent a request to our webmaster 2 weeks ago to add metadata to add a title or a description.
Then we haven’t heard back. Just so you know that’s not a hard thing. If they’re going to take 2 weeks to get back to you and charge you $250 an hour, do you see how that’s not going to help you with your SEO strategy?
Make sure that you have a non-proprietary system that you can get access to and add those SEO features. Your title, your headline, your links, your images. You should feel comfortable in adding those elements which are so important.
My final mistake is proprietary code. Just say no. If it’s anything proprietary custom, custom-built. That should be your first red flag to say, “Uh-uh!” I want something that if I fire you, I can pick up somebody else in a heartbeat and it’s not going to stop my business.”
Do you think you need someone to go through your website and make an audit? Book a Call with me and together let’s jumpstart your business in 2021!