There are a lot of very good advice on SEO tactics and strategies out there. But whether you’ve chosen to lend your ears out to the various voices on the internet or a self-professed expert, you need to be very sure of your source. How credible is this person and how relevant is the info they are offering you? Once you’ve established their authority on the topic, you will be able to dodge some truly terrible pearls of wisdom. To make life (and the dodging) a little easier for you, here are some SEO advice you should definitely not be following:
1. Just write quality content
If this was really true we would not need or be using technically skilled experts and professionals to handle some of our SEO tactics or even writing blog content. Unfortunately, SEO is much more complex than simply writing informative and entertaining content, it can become very technical writing content. Of course quality content is important; if the information you are providing is not up to par or you are putting readers to sleep by the second paragraph, you will have an extremely high bounce rate on your site and people will not be returning. But this is definitely not the ultimate defining SEO factor some would like you to believe. At the end of the day, it’s much easier to create great content than it is to create/establish an engaged community reading your content.
2. Just put in a lot of keywords
This is such a vague comment I wouldn’t even call this real advice, but it’s still dished out as such to many unsuspecting business men and women. This is where it’s always good to be reminded how technical writing content can be. Firstly, we are not in 1998 anymore. If you use a keyword twelve or more times in a 500 word article or when writing blog content, the odds of Google’s wrath coming down on you is much better than your site suddenly sky-rocketing to the top. Secondly, it’s not good enough to simply guess what would be a good keyword to use in terms of asking yourself: “what are people most likely to type when searching for the topic?” You need to start doing some in-depth and technical research.
3. Just SEO for traffic sake
There is nothing to gain from thousands rushing through your website portal gates, only to find they have absolutely nothing in common with your brand and have no interest in your services or products. A business grows by creating leads that generate into sales and then ultimately increases revenue. If you focus primarily on getting as many eyes as possible to view your site with an attitude of “the bigger the number of views, the better the odds of an interested party,” you have chosen a very risky and uncertain marketing path for the future of your business. Your SEO tactics need to be goal orientated and target market specific in order to gain the success you are searching for.
Picture by Brian