SEO can play a big part in your digital marketing campaign. If you do things right and target the words that your potential clients or customers might be searching for on sites like Google, you could have a lot of success. But there are potential pitfalls that could turn your 2024 from a dream into a nightmare.
While you could possibly enroll in SEO classes to learn about what to do or not to do, here are some things to know beforehand.
Do Regularly Check Your Results
You need to see if your current SEO strategy is working, and the best way to do that is to use the free dashboard that Google gives you. If you want to use other types of analytic tools, you could hire someone to do that for.
Don’t Ignore Poor Reviews
While there are some times after you publish something on the Internet when it’s better to just ignore any critical comments, there are others when it’s better to engage with them. Yes, there may be people who leave bad reviews for no reason, but if you see any possible leeway to potentially talk with them and get a more in-depth explanation of their side of things, then you could turn a negative one into a second chance.
Do See What is Trending
Here’s another important strategy – see what kind of things are gaining attention at the time and see if you can incorporate them into your SEO. You need to do this with the awareness that trends can have a very short lifespan … Some of them can make fruit flies look long-lived. That’s why you need to be ready to pivot quickly, since using an old trend can make you look dated, like a parent using a catchphrase that went out of style several years before, much to the embarrassment of their children.
Don’t Copy Other People’s Content
This one goes all the way back to elementary school, where you learned that copying other people’s work is a bad idea. Don’t plagiarize in any form – it will make people not trust you if you’re caught. Work a little bit longer and be sure that your content is original, which will make the Google algorithm more likely to put your results higher up on the search rankings.
Do Regularly Publish New Content
You want to show that you’re an active site. That will get people to visit more often since they know that there will be something new on certain days of the week that they enjoy seeing. If you get regular visitors to your site, then Google or other search engines will see that, too and rank you accordingly.
Don’t Immediately Give Up On Underperforming Content
There may be times that you publish something that you think will grab people’s attention. The algorithm can be a fickle thing, though, and you might not get the SEO results that you want. That doesn’t mean you should jettison it – come back to it a while later, see what the statistics on the dashboard say and see if you can tweak it to give it a second chance.
Do Focus On Providing Information
It can be easy to get caught up in trying to put out the flashiest website out there. Yes, people might have their eye drawn to the site that has those fancy graphics, but if they find that their questions aren’t being answered, then they will leave and not come back. You want to be trustworthy, which means putting out information that is crrect and will answer questions about what it is tht your company does.
Don’t Try To Game The Algorithm
Oh, you think you can be clever and do things like to stuff your content with keywords, use hidden links, put keywords that aren’t even related to what you’re initially writing about, and even go as far as to put invisible text. This is known as blackhat SEO and while you might get some initially good results, the algorithm will quickly figure out what happened and punish you by putting you much farther down the search results in a few days later. Don’t be cute and try to get around the algorithm, since you and your business could wind up suffering.
If you are just starting out in SEO, it can feel like you’re in a dark forest. You can find the light to the correct path by paying attention to everything going on in your area and being willing to shift course if need be. These are just a few things that you should or shouldn’t do when it comes to SEO. Basically, you need to be able to quickly adapt to anything. If you do that, you should have a better chance of success.
From Visually.
