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In an age where technology is the driving force behind every company’s marketing strategy, it’s important to have a strong search engine optimization strategy in place. Unfortunately, not many companies have a thorough understanding of SEO and what it takes to make a successful strategy, which results in a lack of success and searchability.
If you truly want your company to be found online and outrank all of your competitors, you need to have a solid and diverse SEO strategy. If you don’t, you will fail. If you’re unsure as to whether or not your SEO strategy is working, the following are six telltale signs that your search engine optimization strategies are failing.
1. You only have one SEO tactic.
The problem with SEO is that most companies seem to believe that the use of keywords is the only way to find success. While keywords are important to your SEO strategy, it’s not the only tactic you can implement. But if you are only relying on the use of keywords to help your SEO strategy find success, you’re going to be highly disappointed by the outcome.
Instead of focusing on one tactic, you need to implement multiple tactics. Add some backlinks to your site that lead to valuable sources. Be sure to use multiple Internet channels, such as a website, blog, social media and even review sites. Change out your content on a regular basis. Don’t copy and paste content from another website onto your own site. Using a variety of SEO tactics will help to make your SEO strategy a success.
2. You don’t research keywords regularly.
In order to choose the best keywords for your website, you need to use keyword tools such as SpyFu or Google’s Keyword Tool to help you learn what keywords are the most popular for your industry. Using these tools is most effective when you use them regularly. Just because you used the most popular keywords in your content one month doesn’t mean that those same keywords are going to be as useful the next month. For example, trending keywords tend to change with seasons, so the keywords you used in the summer months may not be relevant during the holiday season.
If you don’t want your SEO to fail, you need to be sure to use these tools on a regular basis and be willing to change your content to accommodate these keywords.
3. You backlink too much.
Adding backlinks to your website is a great SEO tool, but it will be ineffective if you overdo it. Backlinking is most beneficial when you are selective with your links and only choose to backlink to valuable and reputable websites. Linking every other word or phrase of your content to random websites is not going to help boost your SEO, so it’s very important that you are more selective with your linking choices and only choose those that will be the most beneficial to your content.
4. You don’t use long tail keywords.
The word “keyword” is deceptive. It makes people believe that they have to choose one or two little words to use to entice search engine crawlers to their site. This is not true. Long tail keywords, which tend to be much longer and much more specific, are also extremely valuable to your SEO strategy. By adding long tail keywords to your content, you will help boost your SEO success.
5. You’re not tracking your success.
The only true way you’re going to know if your SEO strategy is working is by tracking it. There are many different ways to track and analyze your SEO, and it’s important that you do so on a regular basis. If you’re not monitoring your strategy, you’re not going to know what’s working and what’s not working, and if you don’t know this information, you can’t make the necessary changes needed to boost your efforts.
6. You focus too much on design.
The design of your website is also critical to the success of your SEO. You want to make sure that you’re employing the right amount of content density, which means that you want to have a solid ratio of copy per web page size.
You also need to consider the items on your website. Sites that focus mostly on videos or images are not going to be as successful as sites that use content. While you can add keywords to meta tags and alt tags, this is not as relevant to search engine crawlers as real content. If your site contains a plethora of images or videos, you should consider getting an audio or video transcription and placing the transcription on your website. This way, while your audience will be able to enjoy the images or videos you have on your site, the search engine crawlers will be able to enjoy the content, and your SEO will certainly benefit from this strategy.
Jessica Strop writes for Technology Futures and other online marketing blogs and publications. She hold a degree in marketing and is frequently invited to speak on the topic of marketing scams