Unfortunately, a lot of business owners do not understand the concepts of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). People understand the importance of attracting more traffic to their websites but don’t understand the intricacies of successful SEO.
I’ve met numerous clients who have some pre-set notions or thoughts about SEO. Here are the most common misconceptions regarding Search Engine Optimization that I have encountered.
SEO Is Easy – I Can Manage It Myself
This is one of the most common misconceptions regarding SEO. Most small business owners take this approach. They are tempted by the idea of saving money. In most cases, these business owners make a lot of mistakes and things can turn out terribly for them. Professional SEO agencies should handle your search engine optimization.
You Just Need to Build Links
This misconception is not only common, but also dangerous. Business owners building links are putting their businesses at risk. With the Penguin and Panda updates, it’s about “less is more”. These updates were specifically rolled out because website owners kept targeting keyword rich anchor text. Thus, it’s better to use high quality, fewer links to protect yourself from getting penalized.
Black Hat Practices Make Everything Easy
Unlike traditional advertising strategies and techniques, Search Engine Optimization is not about taking shortcuts. Black hat practices can get you penalized, or even worse, get your website banned on Google. It is important to build site rank, author rank, and trust to make the most of your efforts. You need to take an integrated approach toward your marketing campaign. Using good organic practices will get you good results.
You Just Need to Reach the Top of SERPs
It’s not just about reaching the first page in Google. Most business owners invest a huge sum of money trying to rank for specific keywords. Yes it is true that there are SEO agencies that will rank certain keywords, throw some backlinks and get you at the top of SERPs. These companies will take your money, and make you think that you’ve done well for yourself. However, Google will change the algorithm again, and you’ll be unable to see any results because you will be back on page 25 in Google. A good SEO agency will diversify your traffic sources. Another point to remember is that SEO agencies do not control Google or other search engines and can only use consistent and organic practices to keep your business ranking close to the top.
SEO Needs Only One Time Attention
Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing process. You can’t just optimize your website once, and forget about it. You need to make constant efforts to make sure everything on the website is updated. It is important to add new content on a regular basis. Most importantly, you need to promote the content constantly on various marketing channels. Social media is not something that you can do during your lunch break.
More Keywords are Better
Many business owners believe that a higher number of keywords means better chances of the website to be optimized. More keywords will just mean more hassles, and wasted money. You need to focus on specific keywords with the ability to make you money. For instance, if you sell computers, it will be pointless to rank for “laptops”. However, it would be better to rank for “buy laptop Florida”. These keywords are worth pursuing.
Expensive SEO Agencies Just Rip You Off
This is another common misconception that arises from other myths. People think that SEO is easy and straightforward and think that an SEO agency should not charge a lot of money. However, SEO is a very complex, time consuming and complicated process. A professional, experienced and skilled SEO agency will charge a good amount of money to provide the best services. These services include analyzing your business and determining what your business needs are in your industry, creating a strategy and executing this strategy, creating posts and the posting on social media accounts to following people, managing ad campaigns, keeping up with best social media practices and finding good content to curate. We provide these services and much more for our clients.
SEO is a long term commitment if you want to have a solid and stable presence online and should be considered an investment that will benefit your business in the long-run.
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