While black hat tactics like keyword stuffing worked in the early 2000s, Search Engine optimization in the 2020s has become a whole new ball game. Search engines have now devised a ranking algorithm based on the resource value. It is now crucial for website owners to invest their efforts in quality content and ease of site navigation. To survive in this industry, you need to steer away from shady link-building practices and focus on establishing your business as a resource.
As an internet marketing agency, it is crucial to keep tabs on the evolution of SEO. You need to understand that, in 2021 and beyond, Search Engine Optimization operates on new rules. You’re looking at the need to adopt new tools to manage your tactics, and better efficiency to provide real-time solutions to organic problems. Essentially, it’s no longer about point solutions. If you want to be an industry leader, you will have to be predictive rather than reactive.
We’ve already mentioned two black hat tactics that don’t work in SEO anymore-keyword stuffing and questionable link building. These are the two easily detectable unethical practices companies use to try and cheat the Google algorithm. Note that these practices don’t do you any favors, if anything, they hurt your reputation and ruin your rankings. Here are a few other strategies that you should avoid if you want to maintain a favorable ranking on SERPs (Search Engine Research Pages)
Mistakes that hurt your rankings on Google
Not Tracking Your CRO Audit
SEO is not a quick fix. Most people who claim to have ways to bump up your rankings are either lying or using black hat tactics that mostly do more harm than good. An effective SEO strategy requires tracking your progress and, most importantly, auditing your Conversion Rate Optimization. A CRO audit gives you precise site usability, user-friendliness, and engagement metrics. Essentially, this process helps you understand the user experience on your website and how to improve the chances of conversion.
It’s an audit of what people do when they get to your site, what are their movements and experiences, what makes them stay or leave? All these are crucial questions that need answering if you want to improve site support.
Ignoring Mobile-Friendliness
Did you know that Google began demoting websites that were not mobile-friendly as far back as 2013?! This demotion was so severe that it affected misconfigured sites with faulty redirects and unplayable videos. What does this tell you? Another scary fact is that more than 50% of non-mobile-friendly sites dropped in Google rankings in 2015. Subsequent updates in the algorithm since 2016 have had varying results, but what is clear is that your site will not fair well on SERPs if it is not mobile-friendly.
Lack of an SEO Audit
As mentioned earlier, your Google rankings will consolidate many different levels of website capability, anything from site structure to misplaced links. A periodic SEO audit helps you evaluate your content, page speed, link strength, and meta descriptions. The main aim of an SEO audit is to identify any gaps in your strategy and help you differentiate–do better.
Ignoring User Intent Analysis
SEO has evolved, it’s no longer about choking content with hundreds of keyword variations to get ahead. Google ranks pages based on how well they understand user search semantics. Analysis of user intent will allow you to structure your content in a way that resolves user issues, a factor that will make your site a resource. In principle, understanding user intent boils down to determining how well your site can deliver content that satisfies the needs and interests of your audience.
Poor Quality
Quality here applies to very many elements in your website. It can be a poorly designed website, low-quality content, poor link building, inefficient target marketing, poor market research, and even a lack of strategy.
Bottom Line
As an internet marketing agency, you need to do your due diligence and ensure you do a quality analysis on every phase of the SEO strategy design. Google ranking is all about quality in 2021.
