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5 SEO Don’ts You Should Heed

Let’s face it. Most people won’t find your website if you’re not on the first page of a search engine results page (SERPs). So if you’re a business owner and don’t get as much organic traffic, conversions, and sales on your website, you need to look closely at improving your search engine optimization (SEO).

Don’t have any dedicated person with SEO skills who can implement a sound strategy? Hire someone or a team like Traffv proven to deliver results.

SEO has become paramount to many business owners. This is especially true at this time when there are plenty of startups, small businesses, and medium enterprises fighting for exposure.

Revenue results from visibility. But this is only possible if you can reach more people. This is why you need SEO to help increase your brand visibility.

Since it’s common to hear SEO, many assume it’s easy to accomplish. However, many businesses fall into the trap of believing this.

Collaborating with the wrong agency or executing a not-so-well-laid-out SEO plan can be disastrous for your time and pocket. The worst thing that can also happen is getting the boot from search engines.

Don’t wait for that to happen. Read up and avoid the five most common SEO mistakes you should avoid.

1. Don’t DIY your SEO.

It’s not entirely wrong to do SEO on your own. But it’s only advisable to do so if you’re aptly knowledgeable on how to do it properly. Otherwise, you’re only going to waste time, money, and effort.

You should avoid SEO on your own because search engine algorithms constantly improve to provide the most error-free results. Another reason is that it’s hard to be objective when executing your action plan. As a business owner, you can get too personal with your strategies. Before you know it, you’re already letting your emotions run the campaign. Thirdly, investing your time in other value-adding tasks, such as improving operational efficiency, will bring more results to your company.

2. Don’t fall for sweet words.

Beware of companies that promise to give you results too fast. If they promise to help you bring your website to the top page of the SERPs in no time, you should know they’re all words.

SEO takes time. So don’t be easily swayed by these hollow promises. Do take a step back if they promise to optimize your website overnight. It just won’t happen. Go for a company that will be upfront with you and your expectations.

3. Don’t use the black hat technique to make a quick buck.

You can sometimes make a quick buck using black hat SEO. But since this uses unethical tactics to optimize websites, it can be risky to employ. Search engines run audits and can impose penalties, resulting in outright bans on websites that practice them.

Here are some black hat techniques you should avoid:

Keyword stuffing: Repeatedly using words and phrases in content in an attempt to manipulate search rankings

Paid-link building: Paying a third-party domain for a followed backlink that points back to their pages.

Link exchanges: Arranging to cross-link each others’ content to increase search engine rankings mutually.

Hidden text and links: Hiding text (too many keywords) in different ways, e.g., by making use of white text on a white background

Blog comment spamming: Leaving comments that appear as ad placement or a random link to another website

4. Don’t get stuck in the past.

A search engine’s constant goal is to keep changing its algorithms to continually improve the standard of searches and fight against those who would circumvent the system. Google has made many updates and changes through the years, affecting how websites are ranked. Business owners should stay abreast of all these changes. If you do not move with the flow, your website might hit a plateau and eventually tank.

5. Don’t settle for low-quality content.

Search engines want to make life easier. They help users find the most valuable and pertinent information in the least amount of time. The biggest mistake you can make is to settle for poor-quality content when your rival’s content is exceptional. Your content should always give superior information, educational and, at the same time, entertaining.

As their lead specialist, Jaden Oh, shared, “We don’t focus on rankings. We focus on building a great brand and driving relevant, qualified organic traffic to your website. Rankings are just a by-product of building a great brand.”

So keep these SEO no-nos in mind and let the experts handle the work.

Why content is important for SEO and how to optimize it

Content is crucial for SEO; without it, search engines will be unable to properly crawl your pages and assist you in ranking. In other words, it means your website’s content will never be discovered or circulated.

SEO material cannot just be any information; it must be of good quality and beneficial to the reader. The user experience is a big aspect of how Google selects which material should be at the top of the search results. To produce SEO content, you will need to understand a few basics.

Thus, let’s jump right into how to optimize it.

Target audience

Identify and communicate to the key audience that will be viewing your articles, regardless of what sector your website tackles. Identifying who your readers are and what you expect them to do after reading your article will aid in the development of your website approach.

Keyword research

Before you start writing blog posts, perform some keyword analysis on your offerings to see what your clients are looking for and what queries they have. Make sure you write content that revolves around those keyword phrases, and that the content is optimized for specific terms and expressions. You can achieve this by including the specific keywords in your article’s title, headings, meta description, and throughout the text.

Internal backlinking

One of the most significant SEO tactics is internal linking. It makes it easier for search bots to identify and evaluate your websites and allows human visitors to maneuver through your website, which improves retention and online experience.

Compile a list of similar content you already have for each new piece that could help you reinforce your thoughts or allow your viewers to investigate further. For example, if you already have an article about managing a monthly budget, linking it to another personal finance piece would be a sensible move.

Create high-quality content

The era of keyword stuffing helping you to rank well on Google’s first results page is pretty much gone. Nowadays, creative content is key, and if you want to reach your SEO objectives, you must publish high-quality entries.

The real concern now is how to continue producing high-quality content day after day. If you adopt the optimization concepts we outlined earlier, the process should be smoother, but there is still a bunch of work to be done. In essence, you should make sure that each piece helps your readers fix issues and is engaging overall.

All in all, if you want your site to show in search rankings and have more incoming traffic, you will need to ensure highly optimized material is published. Search engines don’t have enough data to effectively index and position your website pages if you don’t have enough proper content. So if you want your material to be seen online, have an SEO content plan in place.

In today’s competitive business environment, it is extremely important for all businesses, whether big or small, to have the edge over their competitors. And this can only be done by providing your customers with a memorable and hassle-free experience that will force them to come back to do more business with you. Whether you are selling a product or any services, the kind of user experience you provide to your customers decides the success of your business. And this is especially true for small businesses. Unlike bigger brands that can rely on popularity, a loyal customer base, and high investments to attract more customers, small businesses only have a superior customer experience to rely on to succeed. This is why CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is important for small businesses.

CRM is software that enables small businesses to efficiently handle operational challenges that include tackling sales decline, maintaining high-client retention, creating a strong brand image, and aligning sales and targets. And if you are a small business owner, then having a CRM in place will provide several benefits.

Benefits of CRM for small business

The one thing that all customers look for while doing business is how delightful their experience is while interacting with you. In this competitive business world, it is important to capitalize on building a loyal customer base and improve customer engagement rate. And realizing the importance of CRM, most businesses are now implementing this software for their benefit.

Client management

Businesses deal with a large amount of data. Whether it’s customer’s contact information, past purchases, their buying patterns, handling purchases and returns, etc., there is a lot of information that is difficult to manage manually. This is where CRM for small businesses can help you get organized. CRM software helps in digging out information about past clients with just a click of a button, and you don’t have to depend on any single employee to keep track of it all. CRM software stores all this data in one place, and it can be accessed by anyone giving businesses more operational freedom.

Tracking the profits

Keeping track of the finances is a stressful job. And as your business grows, the task becomes even more challenging. But a CRM system can organize all the financial information and make it easily available when needed. From orders, payments, profits, and overall business expenditure can all be managed and accessed easily. This not only saves time but also minimizes errors.

Order tracking and useful data generation

One of the most significant benefits of a CRM system is that it provides useful insights into your sales process. Through this information, you can analyze which areas in your sales process need improvement, where the workflow is getting weaker depending on call drops or order attrition. This way, the CRM system can help any potential sales from dropping off by indicating the areas that need improvement.

Strategic planning

CRM software is capable of doing a lot more than what is perceived of it. And one of the biggest benefits of CRM software is that it provides insightful data about sale trends, customer behaviour predicts lulls and high-sale periods depending on various factors, and even provides details about customer demographics. Depending on all this important information available, businesses can then make sales and marketing campaign strategies to boost business.

Improve productivity

Research has shown that CRM software increases productivity by 34 percent, which is a great boost to any business. By providing useful data, customer behaviour, and other details, businesses can focus on what needs to be done at any given point in time rather than trying different strategies all at once. CRM software also automates a lot of time-consuming, mundane tasks resulting in faster delivery of services. Automation means that your team members have more time in hand to focus on other important areas.

Maintaining compliance

Compliance is one of the most important aspects of any business, and CRM software can make this tedious process very simple. There are several CRM solutions for small businesses that provide in-built compliance features that can be used to ensure that your business is well within the federal or state laws.

Better customer services

Today’s customers demand a quick and accurate response from businesses, which can be a huge challenge, especially if you are doing business in different time zones. But a CRM software can solve this issue as it can analyze complaints and queries and generate responses to them. It can also create reports on the problem areas that can be further handled by the team members.

Lead generation

With CRM systems able to analyse customer demographics and buying patterns, businesses can convert this information into targeted lead generation. By utilizing the data available, businesses can target customers through direct or indirect marketing campaigns.

Increased customer retention

With quick, responsive, and targeted customer services, CRM software helps in creating a memorable experience for the clients. This helps in forming an increased customer retention rate, an area that businesses always stretch themselves to master.

So, it is clear that there are several benefits of CRM for small businesses. This software not only guarantees better services but also provides businesses with a chance to grow profusely. All you need is an efficient CRM software provider who can integrate all the right features that fulfil your business needs.

How Can An SEO Agency Help Your Business Out

You will have heard of SEO or Search Engine Optimization. It is very important that needs to be focused on. When it comes to the internet marketing industry, this can be rather ambiguous sometimes partly because of the ever-increasing amount of buzzwords as well as acronyms. It can be tough handling this. An SEO agency can help here. The following tells what SEO work involves allowing you to know what this agency may be able to do.

Handle on-page as well as off-page SEO

SEO agencies may talk about on-page and also off-page SEO. When looking at on-page SEO it deals with elements of the website which you possess direct control over, such as linking structures, the right use of header, formatting, etc.

Off-page SEO includes stuff link building, outreach, along with those things which you cannot directly handle via the website.

Usually, an overlap exists between both these concepts. An agency will look at this for you.

Considers technical SEO

The architecture of a website is referred to mostly as technical SEO. This encompasses stuff such as a clean linking structure, correct employment of header tags, carefully implemented 301 redirects, being mobile-friendly, the page load speed.

The elements mentioned are really basic and should be set up right allowing you to create your SEO strategy having a strong foundation. Some of them can be handled when an initial site audit occurs.

Pursue keyword research

Keyword research is important and has to be done correctly. It is the procedure of figuring out the top search queries to target for a particular business. It can seem like it is simple, but keyword research done right needs much work put into it. Certain factors are present which determine whether a precise keyword is good or not.

Good SEOs consider search volume, amount of competition, user intent, etc. when pursuing keyword research.

It is important to know which keywords are trending and how to add them properly.

Link building and outreach

This is a work-intensive part of SEO. A website’s reputation within Google’s eyes tends to be mostly based upon its backlink profile. The more good quality links from top websites which go to your website, then it is more likely that Google as well as other search engines will recommend your pages to users.

Different link-building strategies are present which most SEOs use. It includes pitching good quality content to other websites, letting your website be a part of reputable directories, making wonderful content that gets linked to naturally.

With link building, it is vital to know about the process. Google does not like websites that use unnatural link profiles.

Different SEO agencies may provide different services. You can search in the area you are interested in like SEO agency Singapore for instance. Search for a good one that will be able to help your website and business out. Research for a reputable one if you do not want to be faced with problems.

Employ SEO and SEM to rake in more revenue for your business

If you’re involved in the business field, there’s a likelihood you’ve heard of SEO and SEM. These terminologies are commonly tossed around, but what do they mean exactly? Is there a difference between the two?

Although the distinction can be minimal, if you understand how to execute them effectively and correctly, they can lead the organisation to extremely high traffic and growth.

Let’s look at the difference between SEO and SEM and how they can be game-changers for your company. Ready for results? Let’s plunge into this integral part of marketing for your business.

An overview before we begin

Image Credits: Inc. Magazine

The average person will most definitely click on the top few links in a typical search on Google, right?

That’s why the first page on Google search is where you want your website to appear. These days, human attention is short, and it’s essential to be the first few to grab your target customers’ attention before your rivals do. Here’s where SEO and SEM come to play.

They’re ways to promote the company so that your potential customers can access them on search engines, such as Google or Bing. If your company has a website rival, SEO and SEM are essential for more traffic to be guided to your domain.

Let’s explore their primary purposes to grasp these promotional tools better.

SEO otherwise referred to as search engine optimisation, is a concept that lets you organically appear in search results. While SEM, known as search engine marketing, depends on paid strategies to get you ranked on search engines.

Here’s a more insightful look into both approaches.

The four parts of SEO

Technical SEO – This focuses on improving your website’s technical aspects and constructing it to provide a fantastic user experience. It’s also part of on-page SEO.
On-page SEO – Involves tweaking the web pages themselves so that search engines can understand your title tags, content, internal links, and URLs.
Content SEO – Your content needs to match what the searcher intends to find. This is one of Google’s most important factors for its rankings. Consider these: keyword strategy, site structure, and copywriting.
Off-page SEO – Connect your website to other trustworthy and high-authority webpages through hyperlinks, PR, or different strategies, and the search engines will push you up the ranks over time.

Now, moving on to SEM.

SEM and PPC

SEM includes PPC ads instead of organic growth. PPC is also better known as pay-per-click. In the form of embedded advertisements, Google or other search engines can showcase your website and display them to your prospective customers.

Not all campaigns, however, are expected to yield results. To make your advertising stand out so that you get the best bang for your buck, you will have to see what your rivals are doing and choose your keywords wisely.

SEO vs SEM

Image Credits: Matchcraft

With every click your SEM ad gets, you have to pay.
In the form of clicks, SEM usually has immediate effects, while SEO takes much longer.
SEM advertisements give you more control over how they appear. This doesn’t apply much for SEO.
SEM provides you with data specifics so that you can quickly tweak your advertising for instant results. When it comes to SEO, that’s a bit more challenging.
Over time, SEO visibility expands, so the impact snowballs as you progress. With SEM, exposure comes to a halt as soon as you disable your advertisements.

Is one better than the other?

There is no straightforward answer as it falls on how your organisation is structured and what priorities you have at hand. But here are a few pointers to note:

What is your objective? You want to go for SEM if it’s a short-term one.
How is your current SEO health? SEM can be a great backer if it is already substantial.
Go with SEM if you expect that your company would have a higher consumer lifetime value. SEO could be ideal if it’s the opposite.
Did you have your sales and profits assessed? See if making a profit from SEM is practical for you. Go with SEO if it’s not urgent.

When it comes to driving traffic, either SEO or SEM is useful for your company. But why not use both? Most of the time, having the financial capacity to combine them will allow you to reap the benefits of both.

Here are some of the benefits of implementing both strategies:

Do you recall how we mentioned data was available only for SEM but not for SEO? Well, now you can use SEM as a tester for your SEO strategy.
Through incorporating remarketing strategies within your SEM plan, you will make your SEO efforts go the distance to convert those who didn’t buy before into paying customers in the future.

Final thoughts

Now that you know what SEO and SEM are all about, you can use your new-found insights to refine your competition strategy and make the best of both worlds to conquer the organic and paid regions. All the best in ranking your company site at the top of search engines!