SEO No-No's | The Candidate

SEO is everything in the modern digital marketing world and it is constantly evolving! Sami Dabek is an experienced and talented Digital Marketer who has a wealth of expertise in the industry. She digs into the do’s don’ts of SEO, exposing some of her top SEO success secrets!

If you’re involved in the wonderful world of digital marketing you’ll probably know about SEO, a mysterious art form combining common sense, technical know-how and second-guessing what on earth Google will do next.

SEO is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. The term organic is often referred to as ‘free’ as you’re not paying a cost-per-click, however, the reality is there are costs involved in producing great quality content or hiring an agency to work on this for you if you don’t have the know-how or manpower in-house.

Organic traffic is typically better quality than paid search, in my experience delivering a higher conversion rate on retail sites, so is worth the investment – despite not delivering instant results.

SEO is also a paradise of abbreviations, SEO itself stands for search engine optimisation, while SERPs are your search engine results pages – in truth, it’s the position your ranking at, and not the page itself so to me that’s what the P stands for!

Here are 5 things to consider if you want to climb your way up those SERPs…

Don’t Ignore The Power of Mobile

The performance of your mobile site is becoming increasingly more and more important to good rankings, with the Google Algorithm rewarding those with easy-to-use and quick to navigate sites. Having a mobile-friendly site isn’t just a ‘good idea’ anymore, it’s literally imperative – customers expect it these days and are quick to head elsewhere if they get stuck or are waiting around for a page to load. Google provides its own speed test called PageSpeed Insights, where you can get basic feedback on the issues and suggested improvements for your site. You could also opt for an independent tool and you’ll find plenty of free ones online.

Don’t Bother with Meta Keywords

There’s just no need anymore, your keywords need to sit within the page content not in this field.

Don’t Think You Can Get Away With Minimal Content

Content is king is old news, right? Well, the same still applies, and your SEO rankings will thank you for being even more thorough than before. A good quality page will have somewhere in the region of 200-300 words on it. This text should explicitly explain what the page is about, include the keyword or keywords you wish to target naturally and be a source of information that either tell the customer how to do something or entertains them in some way. Don’t let this increased content jeopardise your UX though, you can tactically place this content in the right position on the page to suit the layout and style of your site – please don’t just chuck it all at the top – but, please do have a keyword before the fold!

Don’t Write Off Old Pages

Content doesn’t always have to be brand new, it’s worth reworking things from the past if you can make it valuable again. Take a look how you could update the content on these pages to bring it back up to date. If you’re not sure which pages these are, a good place to start is Google Analytics, looking at which areas of the site get the most page views through organic traffic.

It’s likely that you will have some old blog posts or pages on your site that need more than a few tweaks, perhaps a product is discontinued with no similar replacement, a partnership has ended, or an old page has very little content and cannot be salvaged. In these cases, it’s best practice to delete the pages, and 301 redirect to something related where possible to leverage the value the old page held. A good SEO agency can help you with this task.

Don’t Forget To Track Progress

Track where you’ve started your SEO journey and how your keywords progress month on month. Pull together a list of keywords and find yourself a free tool like whatsmyserp.com to get you started. Keywords don’t tend to move quickly (unless there’s been an algorithm update) but watching them climb over time is oh-so-satisfying!

In summary, a mobile-friendly site, lots of luscious content and constantly updating your site are crucial for success. SEO doesn’t deliver instant results like paid advertising, but is worth the investment early on, so you can ease of paid investments later down the line.

Author: Sami Dabek

Thank you to Sami Dabek for sharing your SEO insight, if you would like to be part of our blog, contact us today - [email protected].

Take a look at our North West Digital Research, here.

Read our latest blogs here.

Check out our digital jobs here.

Learn more about our marketing roles here.

If it’s creative roles that you are after, click here.

Fancy a new analytics challenge? Click here!

Progress your career with a brand new Contract role? Click here!

5 SEO No-No's by Sami Dabek

Share

Sign Up To Our Newsletter