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The Don’ts of SEO Strategy

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donts of SEO

The Don’ts of SEO Strategy

When it comes to building your SEO strategy, we’ve got nothing but tips to give you. It’s our specialty, after all! In addition to giving you a wealth of our knowledge here on our blog, we also wanted to round up a few of our LEAST favorite SEO practices for you to keep in mind.

Don’t Pick Your Own Keywords

Here’s some shocking news: just because you’re a landscaper in the Los Angeles area, does not mean that “landscaper los angeles” should be your focus keywords. A few moments of keyword research will show how absolutely saturated those keywords are. This means that you will be spending a heck of a lot of time and money trying to get to the top of that search results page (especially if your company is brand new).

Think of it this way: people living in Los Angeles don’t search for things in Los Angeles; they search for things in their specific area of Los Angeles. Instead of being so broad, do some keyword research to find something more local – such as “landscaper woodland hills” – and go for that. You can even use multiple areas of Los Angeles as well, which will prove to be much more effective and cost-efficient for you. Once you’ve built those keyphrases up nice and strong, you can eventually try to tackle “landscaper los angeles”.

Don’t Neglect Bing

Yes, Google is very important. However, it is not the end-all search engine. Bing is of equal importance, and could eventually eclipse Google. This is because Bing is used on almost all voice search devices, such as Siri, Alexa, Cortana and more. Voice search is on the rise, and it is predicted that 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020. That said, make sure you are just as optimized on Bing as you are on Google.

Don’t Be Unnatural

Search engines work to give the user exactly what they want. They do this by finding the most relevant search results possible. Just because you have tons of keywords on your page and links plugged into tons of directories and link farms does not mean you will come up as the #1 search result. In fact, it could actually hurt you. Search engines know when you’re trying to unnaturally climb the ranks, and they might actually punish you for it. When weaving keywords into your copy, be as natural and conversational as possible and only submit your link to directories that make sense for your business.

Don’t Neglect Your Website’s Quality

Many people seem to think that as long as they’ve got their keywords on their website that they are good to go. Neglecting your website’s metadata and having a long loading time can hurt you in the search rankings, too. Make sure your website is on WordPress (the most search engine friendly platform available) and that you’ve got all your metadata, ALT tags, headers and more plugged in.

Still need some more SEO tips? Give us a call! We can help you out.

Armed with over 10 years of experience in digital marketing, Jaclyn Uloth started her career at a full-service digital marketing firm for five years, guiding many websites to completion as well as developing and executing sophisticated marketing strategies for countless brands. More recently, she was in charge of digital, social media, and paid advertising efforts for well-known multinational franchise operations. Currently, she is using her years of experience and writing abilities to write marketing copy and blogs to boost the online presence of the brands she works with.