Search Marketing Blog
How To Ruin Your Search Engine Optimization Investment
Posted by Kent Schnepp on 11.05.2009Data-driven, ROI-focused Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is proven to be one of your most cost-effective means of generating qualified leads and increasing sales online. It can also be a very time consuming, labor-intensive process that can take many weeks, or even many months, to yield significant results. This fact should make you realize a very important marketing axiom: SEO is an investment.
Obviously, most people desire to protect their valuable investments. However, when it comes to hard-earned value gained through Natural search strategies, I have often witnessed companies doing the exact opposite.
For example, we have seen prospective and current EngineWorks clients, eager to launch their new Web site, fail to consider the consequences of their new site structure in terms of non-indexed pages and search engine ‘authority’. Many times, companies also experience difficulties in adjusting their mindset to be willing to incorporate SEO as a separate channel of their marketing mix.
This blog post is to identify the following three common pitfalls that can diminish the value your SEO investment, and lead to poor rankings within the major search engines.
Pitfall #1 – SEO is a One-Time Event
Oh . . . if only this were the case! All you would have to do is just optimize a few titles, write some good content, and secure a few good links. Then, sit-back and watch the sales come in! However, in reality, effective SEO requires a continuous schedule of optimization enhancements and advanced strategies in order for your site to remain highly attractive and relevant to the search ranking algorithms.
Today’s sophisticated search engines prefer Web sites that feature fresh, optimized content. They also respond favorably to sites that continually attract relevant inbound links. Therefore, publishing unique content on a regular basis that is useful for your site visitors provides search engines a reason to re-crawl, and re-index, your site. Always remember that SEO is not a one-time shot.
Pitfall #2 – Overwriting Previously Optimized Pages
I have seen this happen all too often. With the increase in popularity of content management systems (CMS’s), many companies fail to put in place a system to protect their optimized pages from being overwritten by their new code structure. When this occurs, new pages can be re-indexed by the search engines, resulting many times in a sharp drop in positioning within the Natural search indexes.
This common pitfall can be avoided by implementing a robust system of SEO checks and balances within your online marketing department. In addition, it makes a great deal of sense to provide your IT team with on-going, comprehensive SEO education to mitigate these types of costly mistakes.
Pitfall #3 – Re-designing Your Site Without A Plan
A new Web site re-design is an exciting time. There are so many things to think about, including creative design, user experience, content management systems, and branding. However, none of this really matters if your customers are not able to find your cool, new site.
Two potential problems are present during the re-designing of your Web site. First, changes to your site, such as the overall structure, file and directory naming conventions, content and on-page optimization, can be disastrous for your organic search rankings. Secondly, if you do not properly communicate to the search engines via 301 Re-directs, which notify the engines that your page locations have changed, you will encounter 404-Errors. 404-Errors signal to the search engines that a page no longer exists. This in turn, causes your previously ranked pages for important search terms to be removed from the search engine indexes. Thus, any ‘search equity’ that you accumulated in your Web site will be lost.
Take a look at the following resources for insight into proper re-designing, or moving, of your site:
- Best practices when moving your site – Google Webmaster Central
- Best SEO Practices During A Website Redesign – Search Engine Land
Best Practices
Search Engine Optimization ensures that your site is easily indexed by the major search engines, and easily found by eager customers. However, if you do not remain vigilant of these three common pitfalls, you can easily ruin your SEO investment. Remember, always apply best practices, and always adhere to the search engine guidelines, in order to see the greatest return on your effort.
Have you experienced other ways that companies have ruined their SEO investment?
Let us know by posting a comment.
Scott Clark 11.05.2009 at 10:57 am
I’ll bet we’ve all seen companies who tweak their whois registrant information radically and reset their domain name age benefit. For example, turning on private registration for primary domains.
Kent Schnepp 11.05.2009 at 11:00 am
Good one Scott.
2Go Media 11.10.2009 at 10:36 pm
my best answer is make use some of black hat SEO, if you want to ruin your hard work this is a method that guarantees website exposure but sacrifices your page rankings. It’s not ethical to do this kind of stuffs its better to keep it organic as much as possible.