10 Secrets some Marketers are Hiding from You
Don’t get me wrong, a marketing agency can be useful for a variety of reasons. Simply, getting your website ranked in the search engines, is not exactly easy, and often times takes experience. However, many startups will tell you that it’s not really a good idea to place your faith in someone else’s hands — especially without first doing your own research. Here are 1o things that your marketing firm could be holding back from revealing.
1. Great Content Isn’t Enough to Rank Your Site
You’ve probably heard the expression “Content is King” echo all over the web. However, this is only partially true. Content is still very important, and you don’t have much chance of ranking well without good, frequently updated content on your site. Many other things are important as well, such as on-site SEO, links from authority sites and your site’s loading speed is a pretty big deal. A good marketing firm will give you a login to your profile on all the tools they utilize, so you can see them for yourself, and thus be able to keep them in check.
2. Optimizing Keywords in Anchor Text Can Do More Harm Than Good
This is a fairly recent development. Google is trying to hamper any type of SEO expert appearing to manipulate rankings. For example, this includes using keyword-rich anchor text. It’s fine and dandy to use some keywords in the anchor text, however, I caution you to implement them in moderation. In addition to following Google rules, it’s always best practice to vary your keywords.
3. Search Engine Results Are Never Guaranteed
No matter how effective SEO marketing is, be leery of any “expert” guaranteeing you results. No agency with integrity will assure, that you will be on the first page of Google: for its creative competitive keyword phrase tactics.
4. Local Rankings Depend on Links, Citations and Reviews
Ranking your local business through search engines requires intricate detail and a well-rounded strategy. This includes high-quality links, citations — which are listings of a business’s name, address, phone number and other data found in directories, press releases, articles, and other content.
5. Some Businesses Should Focus on Local
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If a business gets most of its customers locally, the local search should be of utmost importance. This means that many traditional SEO strategies focusing on national or even global ranking is not very useful for many businesses.
6. Having A Lot of Pages Doesn’t Equal High Ranking
Some SEO firms try to impress you by telling you how many indexed pages they can construct for you. This in itself is not going to guarantee good results in today’s SEO environment. Google now cares more about the quality and relevance of pages than how many pages your site has — and that’s a fact.
7. Videos Are Not Easy to Rank
In short, Videos can be useful. However, quality videos get shared more often, and there’s a lot of noise. Some SEO firms will tell you that a video with lots of views, likes or favorites will rank better; when in truth, the fact remains: it’s easy to buy views and likes at very cheap prices, and thousands of people are doing this. And consequently, this will hurt your marketing efforts tremendously.
8. Google Authorship Doesn’t Matter Anymore
The cat has been out of the bag. However, this is not to say: “SEO” is long gone, and you shouldn’t waste your time trying to rank better. The truth is: you should always strive to reach better rankings.
All told, Google stated that Google Authorship no longer counts towards ranking. That said, run fast and far from any marketer that suggests implementing this into your strategy.
9. Ads Can’t Help Your Search Engine Ranking
You may have heard that if you advertise through Google AdWords, your website will rank better in the search engines. Sadly many SEO firms managing AdWords campaigns encourage this belief. The fact is, however, that advertising and organic search results are two separate categories. You might get benefits from paid advertising, but don’t fool yourself about turning your business into a hockey stick because of this strategy.
10. The More Links You Have, the Better
Gone are days that getting thousands of backlinks to your site will ensure high rankings. While reputable digital marketing agencies know this, some will still try to excite clients by telling them how many backlinks they can generate. The focus should be on the quality rather than the number of your links.
