5 Deadly Sins of SEO and Online Marketing

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The Changing World Of SEO Marketing

The world of online marketing and SEO is not for the faint-hearted. Since your business is looking to take advantage of every opportunity to gain a competitive edge, you need to use the best SEO marketing strategies available.

However, SEO is a constantly changing industry and what was standard practice a few years ago is no longer a viable approach to grow your online presence. One wrong move could put all your efforts to waste, and even worse, you could be subject to penalties from Google.

Walking The Line Of SEO Marketing For Your Business

Many businesses rely on a large marketing budget and team to drive their online message. Most companies have a backlog of content stretching several years, have a marketing budget of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

What if you don’t have the budget to do something like that? Should you finally bid goodbye to your online marketing dream? Not really. As long as you’ll know what to avoid, there’s a huge possibility that you’ll stay on the right track. Here are the five deadly sins of SEO and online marketing that you should stay away from.

1. A Website That Is Outdated & Unprofessional

A website is essential for a business as it advertises what you have to offer 24/7 customer support and sales opportunities. This means that your business website is one of the most critical pieces of your company, and it could either make or break your company.

Ensuring that your business website looks professional and is updated in a consistent time frame means that you are set for success to grow your business and drive more sales. Having great website content is essential, but you also have to have a professionally designed website to meet the needs of your audience.

If your website looks unprofessional and takes forever to load, then there’s no doubt that this would leave a wrong impression on your visitors. Optimizing your site for SEO is more than keywords and Metadata because you also have to think about the devices and layout of your site based on how your content is being consumed. This means that your website needs to load quickly for mobile devices. Otherwise, a large part of your audience will leave your site before converting.

2. Not Optimizing Your Site For User Experience Or SEO

“If you build it, they will come” is an approach that will not work for your business website. There is just too much competition and too many variables to make your site struggle online. In the past, your business could succeed online if you just had a website, but today’s market is too competitive, so you need to optimize your site for search engines and people.

A lot of business owners have the misconception that all they have to do is get a website, and that’s it. If you had a website just a few years ago, you were ahead of the curve because many businesses did not have a company site launched.

Since all of your competitors have a website, you need to make sure that yours gets noticed by search crawlers and engages your target audience. This means you will need to invest time and resources to ensure that your site is optimized to rank high in search engines and converts your customers once they land on your site.

3. Wasting Money on Low-Quality SEO

We have already talked about the importance of SEO, but the truth is that not all SEO strategies are created equal. While proven SEO marketing strategies can help you rank higher in Google and drive a lot of traffic to your site, the goal of SEO is to drive qualified traffic to your site and have them convert.

Be wary of SEO marketing firms who promise to rank you on the first page of Google, or say they know the secrets of Google marketing. The only approach that works in SEO is to focus on the long-term goals and implement methodical steps to reach your goal.

There are no cheap or easy SEO tricks to help you rank, and if you use fly-by-night SEO agencies, then you will likely receive a penalty from Google. This means you will waste time and money, plus put your business at risk.

The only way to grow your online presence is to develop high content that addresses the questions and needs of your customers. You will need to spend time researching, optimizing, and publishing amazing content that your customers want to share. As a result, your business will attract more qualified leads, and close more sales through your optimized website.

4. Not Launching Your Site Updates Until Everything Is Perfect

While launching a site that is not complete or is unprofessional is a bad idea, delaying the launch of your site until it is perfect is just as bad for your business. This is because in reality your website will never be perfect, and you will need to constantly update, expand, and improve your content.

Your site is an asset for your business, much like the iPhone is an asset for Apple. The reality is that the iPhone is not perfect, and it receives continual updates. Apple did not wait to launch the iPhone until it was perfect, because they knew they needed to dominate the market and provide software updates on a regular basis.

You should think about your business site and optimization strategies in a similar fashion. Here are some basic ways to determine if your website is ready to launch:

  • Always start with an immediate solution: You have to ensure that your website could answer your visitors’ questions regarding the products and services you offer.
  • Build up from that: This is where you can utilize an autoresponder capable of solving some of the most common issues your visitors might have.
  • Creating and/or offering other products: Aside from that you already have, it can be a good idea to offer some add-ons or services that could make it greater.

5. Failure to Pay Attention to Your Competitors

Since your business is optimizing your content to drive more qualified leads, you should know what your competitors are doing in the market. This information will help you position your brand and value proposition in a stronger position to help you attract more customers in the future.

You need to be aware of what your competitors are doing, and how they rank against you– especially in the major search engines. If your competitors are ranking higher, this should be a wake up call and start looking for ways on how you can improve your website, and your business.

Fortunately, there are a lot of tools that would allow you to monitor your competitors, such as PPC advertising. Through this, you’ll know how they rank in search engines relating to both organic and paid keywords. Google Analytics can also be helpful when it comes to examining traffic.

Building A Strong SEO Marketing Strategy For Your Business

Now that you know the 5 deadly sins for SEO and online marketing, you can start to build a solid foundation for your online marketing strategy. Always focus on the needs of your customers and optimize to help your site get found in search engines with valuable content. Test out different approaches to grow your business and reach your goals today!

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