As consumers, our lives are becoming ever more digitsed, with more and more reliance on online services and stores to provide us with everything from our banking to our groceries and digital products. As a new business, creating a dominant presence in the search engine results pages (SERPs) could be the thing to set your business apart from the rest. Search engine optimisation is a complex process though and the path to successful SEO is strewn with potential pitfalls and hurdles, so it pays to know what you’re doing or better still work with an experienced SEO company.
Here then are some SEO risks worth taking, as well as some that should be avoided at all costs…
Do Build a High-Quality Backlink Profile
Too many website owners are far too wary of the Google penalties associated with backlinks, especially as there is simply no way of avoiding the fact that sites with a healthy backlink profile consistently rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). So, acquiring high-quality links wherever possible is not something you should be avoiding.
Provided that you proceed with white hat backlink building techniques, which prioritise connecting with a human audience over appealing solely to search engines, Google should positively reward all efforts to ensure your backlink profile maintains a keen focus on quality over quantity. Black hat techniques aim to secure higher rankings more quickly by breaking or bending the rules and the guidelines set out by search engines themselves. Black hat strategies should be avoided as they come with a significant risk of being hit with a potentially damaging Google penalty.
Do Refine your URL Structure
Ensuring that your URLs are keyword friendly and as simple as possible can deliver benefits for your site and your business. In addition to simply being more memorable, short, keyword-friendly URLs are more immediately informative and make it far easier for potential visitors to see what the page is about before clicking through from SERPs.
If you plan to change the URL structure of your site, start by optimising a subset of your pages before carefully analysing the results of these changes. If your new structure is delivering meaningful results, you can continue to optimise the rest of your URLs but do it incrementally to avoid hurting your organic rankings.
Do Redesign and Refine Your User Experience
While it is true that site-wide redesigns can be time-consuming and costly, they can also transform the fortunes of your business, particularly if you focus on providing your visitors with the best possible user experience. In fact, user experience is arguably one of the most important ranking factors. To illustrate this claim, this study from Search Engine Journal explores how a relatively small player in the fashion industry managed to successfully compete with the big players with little more than a strong social media presence and a good Alexa rating.
Looking at key metrics such as bounce rate, time on page and visit duration will help you to identify underperforming pages and determine the best way to improve them. From outdated copy and a lack of engaging media to complex navigation menus and unclear calls-to-action (CTAs), there are a variety of ways in which your site may benefit from some TLC.
Avoid Disavowing Middle-Of-The-Road Backlinks
Disavowing low-quality backlinks is something many SEO professionals still do. Even though Google has noted that unless you have received a manual penalty, it’s not necessary many professionals extend this practice to also disavowing backlinks that are neither benefiting nor harming rankings, which isn’t recommended.
As Google recognises that it is not always possible to control the sites that are linking to yours, it now largely ignores them instead of dispensing immediate punishments. It actively rewards sites it deems ‘natural players’ focusing on delivering value to visitors over ‘obsessed players’ that are too focused on rankings to prioritise solving the needs of visitors. As such, being as conservative as possible with disavow lists is key and disavowing neutral backlinks could actually be more risky than beneficial.
Avoid Deleting Onsite Content
Deleting pages of content immediately jeopardies your site’s ability to continue to rank well for those keywords. Amending pages to say something along the lines of ‘This product is unavailable’ and recommending similar products that might be of interest will often be more beneficial than simply removing the page altogether.
If you need to consolidate multiple pages, make sure that your new page effectively integrates the keywords and phrases covered by each of the old pages and that all old URLs successfully redirect to the new URL.
Avoid Making too Many Tiny Alterations
It’s no secret that Google values fresh content but constantly making small changes for SEO gains just looks suspicious. In addition to receiving a penalty for abnormal activity, a program of consistent minor changes can also affect the way your visitors view your business.
Even the smallest alterations are often extremely noticeable, especially to regular visitors who might be forced to change the way they engage with your site. If you constantly make alterations with search engines in mind, you risk negatively impacting the intuitiveness and usability of your site which will ultimately drive away valuable visitors.
While certain tactics are largely best avoided, ignoring SEO completely can be a much riskier choice because a powerful SEO strategy is fundamental to securing meaningful success in the digital age.