Great Ways to Kill Your SEO Progress

There are many ways that you can really hurt your search rankings in today’s search space and it is important that if you are planning on doing anything online you consult with a professional especially if you base your livelihood on your organic rankings.

Website Overhaul
If you are doing a large sweeping website overhaul and you are planning on changing everything including URL structures and content you will see a dip in rankings. The proper way to change URL structures is by implementing a 301 redirect on the old webpages you are converting. This is common as websites do often times change technology platforms. Removing all old content can also pose a problem. Rather than changing content completely try just updating the old content so it is not such a drastic change in the eyes of the search engines.

Black Hat SEO
Black hat results might look appealing from the quick rankings you could receive but remember those rankings will not last long and if Google pings you as a black hat spammer you could find yourself with a search penalty so large you have to start an entirely new website. Imagine how fun that would be? Don’t fall into this trap because you will regret it when you lose all your rankings.

Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is a huge no-no and if the search engines catch up to you and find you have any on your website you could find yourself with a penalty. Always write unique content across your website in order to stay away from any potential problems.

Not Enough Marketing (Link Building)
The bottom line is that simply optimizing your website in many niches and categories is not going to be enough to acquire those search rankings you are looking for. You have to proactively link build your website and your internal web pages in order to achieve those desired rankings.

Try reading through all the helpful google webmaster guidelines online on how to stay within range of the search engine firing squads so you don’t find yourself on the losing end of the search results, or page 193.