Are you struggling with SEO? Have you tried to search on Google about SEO and you get pages after pages of “best practices” to apply? And yet after all the efforts, you are still left struggling to get your website rank? Over the years, we have tried many strategies and practices from many different experts. Some we have success some it was a HUGE mistake. We will share some of the common SEO mistake that should be avoided. Here are the mistakes that have been blocking people from having success in SEO:
Ask around how you get ranking in Google and you get some of these common comments:
- Google reward sites that publish a lot of unique quality content so I publish great contents
- You need to mention & tag influential people in your content
- I consistently update my site with fresh content on a weekly basis
- Content marketing are only for the hot industry
Let’s go through some of these comments to see if these really work.
SEO Mistake to Avoid #1: I need fresh content
One of the most common advice given by “experts” is to keep updating your website with fresh content. These “experts”explained that Google loves websites that update new contents constantly. Regrettably, this is not TRUE. Brain Dean from Backlinko shared that he used to publish a new article for his website on a weekly basis. His consistent efforts in doing so resulted in generating only tiny amount of traffic and rank 5th page on Google. He concluded that fresh content barely have any or little impact to ranking his website. So does this means that Google don’t like fresh content? Google used to enjoy fresh content and reward website who updated all the time. But over time, Google stopped when regular updated become so common in blogs. Nowadays, Google like BEST content. It has been Google number 1 direction to show user the best result searched even if it is
a website that hasn’t been updating content in years. This figure was shown by Brain where he has another website where he has only 36 posts and he hasn’t been updating for 2 months. Most would think that his ranking would drop but instead it went up 24.1%. So how did he get so much traffic when no fresh content was being published?
Brain shared his success lies in what he has being doing for the past 2 months. And that is promoting. He spent the past 2 month promoting his existing content on his website making it truly special. SO instead of having fresh content, you should consider thinking of strategies to promote your published content.
SEO Mistake to Avoid #2: I need to publish a lot of Content to get rank
You often hear that content is king and if I have a lot of content, Google will definitely rank me. This strategy would work in the back in the earlier days where most blog would publish hundreds of similar content. But in today context, Google is not keen in how much content you have. Google only want to know how useful your content is to the user.
“Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors.” Google, 2017
One of the big changes in SEO over the last couple of years has been a move toward more in-depth content. Google announced that they are not going to be just interested in only content alone but rather they are interested in content that people have taken a interested in. I cited a case by Tim Ohlrich from Straightnorth where he has a client from tourism marketing in U.S. This client gotten their interns to write all their posts and the result was obviously that they did not get any traction expect handful of social share mainly from their employees. Meanwhile, their competitors were having great success with evergreen guides e.g. “X Free date night ideas in [Popular City]”, etc. As you can see from this case study, publish tons of content is not going to help. Instead, we should focus on creating content that is comprehensive and share it for outreach to get backlinks for website ranking.
SEO Mistake to Avoid #3: Google like useful content so all I need is GREAT content
It is a fact that Google like useful content but that doesn’t mean that by publishing a piece great content will help your website to rank. In actual fact, this is one of the most common mistakes made when people first started with SEO. You would first write a piece of fantastic article with heaps of useful information and after publishing it, you will be waiting for Google to pick it up or people to share and link your article. According to internet statistic, over 2 million blog posts are begin published in a single day. Let’s assumed 10% of the post are GREAT contents, which left us with over 200 thousand GREAT content posts, published in a single day. Let’s face it not all 200 thousand posts are going to be rank on the first page of Google.
What Google is actually trying to do is to provide the best results for any given search query and creating a better user experience. Pages that rank in Google have awesome content. But there’s more to it than that. And that is promoting the published content. If you do not promote what you have published, no one will be able to find your content in the midst of the 2 million published posts. When no one is able to find you, you will not get any backlines and if you don’t have backlines you will never get rank in google. First page ranking are usually a direct results of strategically creation and promotion of your content the right way.
Content is not king. It is only a foundation and Promotion of Content is the king.
SEO Mistake to Avoid #4: Content Marketing is not for my industry
This is one of the most debatable topics in SEO. Does content marketing work for my industry? It is agreed that industries such as Fashion or Lifestyle is easier to write contents that attract more viewership. But if it were to apply to B2B industry, ecommerce or cold industry such as pest control, how can we create content that people will like and want to share. One great case study I like to share is by Mike Bonadio, founder of Leadsmasher, who demonstrated that even though the industry is boring and cold, there is
still creative way to create a viral post and rank your website. A pest control company has engaged Mike to do content marketing for them. As we all know that pest control is not something that people enjoy reading and sharing about it. No one enjoys reading post that talks on ants or cockroaches unless you need a solution to pest. So, the typical approached by many would be to publish a direct article that talks about pest control. Well, let’s acknowledge this is just boring. But what Mike did was simply incredible. He creatively changed the
approached to the content. This strategy help him garner 15.1% traffic to his post. So what did he do?
Instead of writing a piece of article on the usual pest control methods, Mike decided to develop linkable content using infographic.
He did some research and found that the gardening was an evergreen topic where there were sizable amounts of blogger talking about. Leverage on this information, he created an inforgraphic to tell a story on How to Keep Pest out of your garden. Next, he begins prospecting for relevant bloggers who could share his post and email them all. After sending out around 100 emails, he managed to get more than a dozen high quality links from relevant bloggers. And also received over 1000 social sharing. Even website like LifeHackers picked up the article. By the end of the campaign, his client gains a boost in traffic that almost tripling their revenue.
From Mike story, we can see that with a bit of creativity and clear strategies to market your content, it is possible even in most boring industry to garner traffic and rank your website.
To Sum up on SEO Mistake to Avoid:
You do not need to consistently create fresh content or great content to get your ranking up. What you need is a great content and creative strategy to promote it. Use related topics can help you open up a new set of opportunities that you may not even consider. This will help take even cold industry and turn it into interesting post that is appealing to today’s social sharing environment.
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