Which SEO Risks should I Take & Avoid?

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What is SEO?

“Search engine optimization is the process of affecting the online visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine's unpaid results—often referred to as "natural", "organic", or "earned" results”. - Wikipedia

Many organizations do not fully understand the effect of optimizing the search engine as it may take time to deliver outcomes. The greatest danger they could take, however, is to completely disregard SEO. Here are some valuable SEO risks to take and others that you should avoid.

Risks Worth Taking

Hiring a writer with no SEO experience

This is something that often trips people up, but we don’t believe that it should. Writing for SEO purposes or writing about SEO is different than what someone might have learned in journalism classes, and it might be more difficult than personal blogging, but that doesn’t mean a writer can’t do it. Take a chance on a good writer and give him/her good training. It could be well worth it in the end.

Make and test changes

The goal of SEO is to get your website to rank in the search results so people will click the link and go to your website. The more traffic your website gets, the more profit you can make from it. It is likely to take some trial and error to find out what works best to get you the most traffic. For example, you may have to experiment with using different keywords.

Use high-quality backlinks

Receiving good quality backlinks can help to establish authority and increase ranking. Providing links to other high-quality sites show search engines that you’re referencing reliable, authoritative sites. You will get penalized by search engines if you link to poor quality sites or have too many links to your site from such sites.

Use the right URL structure

A short, concise, URL that’s easy to remember is best. After you alter an old URL and 301 redirect traffic to a new one, you may initially see a dip in ranking and traffic. Doing it may be worth the risk, however, because a more streamlined URL could ultimately result in a better experience and higher rankings.

Update your website

After some time, a website may start to look outdated and need some updating. Making changes may affect your rankings and users for a short while. Rankings usually come up before long and users quickly become used to the changes, particularly if the changes improve their experience.

Risks not worth taking

Outsourcing SEO Copywriting

There are quite a few things that can go wrong with outsourcing SEO copywriting—improper English, plagiarism, double outsourcing, etc. Although you could get lucky and with the research you might be able to make it work, I generally recommend trying to hire in-house so that you have more control. Sometimes when it comes to outsourcing anything you have to sign into a contract, which can get messy if things go wrong.

Using doorway pages

Some people use doorway pages to target specific keywords and keyword groups because they are easy to create. Search engines do not like doorway pages and tend to penalize websites that use them.

Deleting pages

You may not think it’s a big deal to delete a page on your website, especially if it’s for a product you no longer sell. However, deleting the page also deletes keywords and other ranking factors. Consider rather leaving the page and redirecting visitors to another page with a similar product.

Condensing or merging pages

If you merge two pages into one, you will lose link juice and traffic if you don’t include 301 redirects on the old URLs.

Using exact match keywords in the anchor text

This practice was abused in the past by ‘black hat SEO’ and Google has cracked down on this practice. It’s better to look for more natural ways to link to your site.

Making too many SEO changes too often

Constantly fiddling with your website for SEO purposes is noticed by search engines and users. Google appreciates fresh, updated content but it doesn’t like the type of changes that interfere with good user experience.

If you wish to optimize your website for error and risk-free SEO services, we are here to help, contact us today.