If you own a business and, thus, a business website, then, undoubtedly, you are concerned with proper search engine optimization (SEO) on your site and for your business. Unfortunately, though, SEO can be a very difficult thing to master, which is why many businesses, despite their best internal efforts, end up turning to professional SEO firms to handle their search engine optimization needs.
Of course, there is no shame in finding yourself in this situation. Indeed, it’s quite brave to recognize that you need help and to reach out and get it. However, you’ll never get help if you aren’t aware of and constantly on the lookout for the tell-tale warning signs that your SEO isn’t doing its job properly. If, though, you know and are watching out for these signs, you can stop bad SEO in its tracks and end up helping your business in the process. Here, we’ll detail some of the warning signs that your SEO isn’t all that it needs to be, and, if you notice these signs in your own business, then you’ll know to get some help and/or change things up while you still can.
Sign #1: You Don’t Know What’s Going On…
First off, if you are working with an SEO firm already, you probably feel like you have a pretty firm grip on your “SEO situation,” but do you really? If you really don’t’ have a clue exactly what your SEO firm does or how it’s (supposedly) helping you, that spells trouble.
A good SEO firm will give you clear details on exactly what it is doing and what strategies it is using to better your business. If it hasn’t done that and if you don’t even know what you’re paying for, then you either need to ask for some answers or find an SEO firm that is more transparent and more interested in keeping you in the loop and educated so that, eventually, you can tackle at least some SEO tasks on your own.
Sign #2: Your Titles are Bad
Another important thing to know is that, if you don’t have good, properly optimized page/meta titles, you are hurting your Google rankings. Believe it or not, Google and other major search engines absolutely do care about and pay attention to what your site titles are, so they need to be good and fully optimized.
You also shouldn’t have any pages with the same title, only slightly varied. If you do, then this could be a major reason that your SEO isn’t garnering the results you want.
Sign #3: Your Company Makes Impossible Promises
Finally, if you are using an SEO company and it seems “too good to be true,” then there is a good chance that it is. If a company promises you, for example, a certain search engine ranking or makes other big promises, that’s a problem since even the best SEO is unpredictable.
Likewise, if your SEO firm is promising you a certain number of link placement per month, that’s also an issue since it’s likely using a link building bot, which could ultimately damage your Google standing.
As you can see, your SEO will let you know when it’s bad; you just have to be on the lookout for these warning signs, and, if you happen to discover any of them, then you need to take action immediately if you want your business to be the best that it can be.