Regardless of your political affiliation or feelings about Boris Johnson and Brexit, the recent boom of the pound and the general approval of businesses point to both some opportunities and some challenges for businesses of all shapes and sizes.
And that includes a challenge that will be evergreen no matter who’s in power and what their policies are… competition! In the digital age, there’s a wealth of opportunity for the entrepreneurially minded to set up businesses of their own without the crippling overheads that traditionally come with running a business in physical space.
However, whether you do your business online or in the real world, staying one step ahead of the competitors at your heels will always be one of the biggest challenges you face.
And in an era of Micro-Moments, where consumers will instinctively reach for their smartphones when they’re trying to find a product or service near them your business will survive or thrive on the strength of its SEO.
I know what you’re thinking...
But I’m already doing SEO!
We all know that consumers are getting more fickle in an era where they have more choice than ever. And that means that they’re less likely to scroll through pages and pages of entries on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) to find a business that appeals to their needs.
The higher up you are on the SERPs, the better a chance you have of attracting the consumers you’re trying to target.
But while many businesses adopt SEO practices into their online operations they can still suffer from a painful lack of visibility online. If you’re losing ground to your competitors on SERPs it may be time to rethink your SEO policies and procedures...
You’re taking the wrong approach
Be wary of anyone who tells you that there’s a one-size fits all approach to SEO. Your approach should depend very much on the kind of market you’re trying to target. Local SEO is a different beast to national SEO which again is very different to international SEO.
Local SEO is all about building links with trusted, high domain-authority local sources and ensuring your NAP (Name, Address and Phone number) data is listed in as many local directories as possible (as well as being kept up to date).
International SEO, however, is more about localising content for international languages. This goes beyond translating it into the local language, it also includes geotargeting with international-friendly URLs and using the “content-language” meta tag in your HMTL <head>.
Using welcoming prompts to redirect users from your .com website to their local equivalent is also a good idea as well as reaching out to high domain sources overseas for link building.
You’re sacrificing quality for quantity when it comes to content
Most business owners know that content is still king when it comes to SEO. The more content you have and the more regularly you update the bigger your website gets, the more people travel around it and the longer they spend on your website.
These all get a big thumbs up from search engine crawlers. But at the same time, we can learn the wrong lessons from this and turn our websites into vasst archives of poorly sourced, low quality content which cancels out the benefit of having a plethora of posts on your website.
Search engines, especially Google, are primarily concerned with delivering high-quality search results to users. This means keyword stuffed, low quality content, duplicate content and spun content (which is copied and pasted from other sites with some superficial changes) are all potentially damaging.
Your content is your chance to demonstrate your knowledge and experience as well as bringing likeability and personality to your brand. Don’t sacrifice quality for quantity.
You’re trying to do too much in-house
The appeal of managing your SEO and other aspects of digital marketing in-house is understandable. You’re an entrepreneur with confidence and a broad portfolio of skills. You want to do things your way. However, this can be counterproductive.
Outsourcing your SEO to a local agency can not only result in a more cohesive strategy with a better and more sustainable ROI, it can also free up your team to deliver a higher standard of service. Great SEO and outstanding quality of service can make for a devastating one-two punch!
You’ve been tempted by the dark side
Finally, in your desire for quick results, it can be tempting to turn to the dark side and embrace Black Hat SEO tactics. These include keyword stuffing, hidden text, linking to sites with irrelevant content, cloaked redirects and blog comment spamming.
While these may give you a quick SEO bump you’ll likely come down with a thud when search engine algorithms get wise to you.
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