There are a lot of myths around a bad SEO strategy. What isn’t a myth – is the consequences your website could face if your SEO is done incorrectly, or not even done at all. In this blogpost, we’re walking you through what a bad SEO strategy entails, myths around SEO and how you can combat your SEO problems for success.
What does bad SEO entail?
“Bad SEO” can be a relative term – something that may feel “bad” for me, might not be of caliber to you. That’s because we can place emphasis on different things within our business. With that in mind, I’m writing this post with things that I would personally be affected by if we encountered some bad SEO strategies. For example, here’s my list of what bad SEO can mean:
- You have no SEO strategy in place at all
- The SEO strategy you have in place brings in the wrong audience
- Your SEO strategy us not working and unsuccessful
It is very possible that each of these operate independent of each other or cohesively. Meaning – maybe your SEO strategy is bringing in the wrong audience and you aren’t seeing any return on your efforts at all.
Either way, find where you stand with your SEO strategy and see if it falls under one of those bad SEO categories.
Common questions about bad seo strategies
Once you’ve determined your placement with your SEO, I thought it was important to review some common questions when determining if your SEO strategy is “bad” or “not working”. We’ll be diving into each of these in depth below.
- Is repeat info on a website bad for SEO? Think: duplicating pages or content.
- Are redirects bad for SEO? If you’ve changed page links, you’d be using redirects. Does this have a negative effect?
- Are subdomains bad for SEO? Many of our clients use subdomains for their shops. How does this affect your SEO?
If you’ve found yourself completely confused on these questions – great. We’re here to educate. Let’s dig in!
Is repeat info on a website bad for SEO?
I think understanding context here is important.
When I refer to “repeat info” I’m meaning is if you were to copy and paste an existing blogpost from your website to create another website, but with a different URL slug. So, say you have a live blog at slug /my-favorite-website-platforms optimized for the term “website platforms” and you copy and pasted this content to a new post with slug /website-platforms-i-love.
Get it? Same context, different URL. This is bad for your SEO.
Why? Because Google wants to see original, authoritative content. They do not want to see content that is repeatable, predictable and not unique. You can actually get flagged by Google Search Console for duplicated content.
Now, let’s focus on what’s okay in regard to duplicated content. Let’s continue on the example of your post titled My Favorite Website Platforms. Say in 6 months, you want to revisit the same post in a new way. This time, you write about Website Platforms Optimized for Dietitians. These are still your favorite website platforms, but you tackle it from a different angle.
This is totally fine.
Are redirects bad for SEO?
Redirects are bad for SEO when they are not implemented correctly. Say – you have a permanent redirect from an old page you’ve renamed to a new page. However, when creating that redirect, you accidentally misspelled the URL and the redirect doesn’t work.
Instead, when you visit the old, original page, you’ll be greeted with a 404 page not found error.
If the page that you are [supposed] to be redirecting is important and gets lots of traffic, this can be bad for SEO. If it’s a page that’s no longer in use and rarely gets traffic, it’s nothing to stress over.
Are subdomains bad for SEO?
This is one of the most common questions we receive and the answer is no! When you have a subdomain, your goal here should never be to optimize content there.
Essentially, your subdomain should be looked as a detachment from your primary site or to better organize your content from your primary site.
We’d always recommend including your highly-optimized, traffic point to your main website.
Say for an example, you start keyword stuffing to “double optimize” content on a subdomain. This is when it could be bad for SEO.
Bad SEO #1: No SEO Strategy
Now that we’ve reviewed the common questions in regards to SEO, let’s talk more about the first bucket of bad seo, which is not having an SEO strategy at all.
In our opinion, a website without an SEO strategy is a complete waste of untapped audiences. While yes, you can have a website that’s functional without SEO, you are missing marketing to a large audience that could be getting you more traffic.
We have this in our bucket of bad SEO because we always recommend implementing an SEO strategy of some type. Most of the time it comes down to individuals simply not understanding SEO to implement it. If that’s you – consider signing up for our SEO Checklist first and then purchasing our SEO & Blogging Guide when you’re ready to take the leap into SEO.
Bad SEO #2: Wrong SEO Strategy
The second bucket of bad SEO would be if you have currently implemented the wrong SEO strategy. When you implement the wrong SEO strategy, you’d likely be getting traffic to your website that isn’t relative to the services you provide, thus, throwing off your bounce or referral rate in your analytics.
Or – maybe you are receiving inquiries from individuals you really don’t resonate with. For example, one of our SEO management clients once received several weight loss patients while they are not a weight loss practice.
When this is in place, it can mess up your analytics and accuracy for bringing individuals into your warm leads bucket.
Bad SEO #3: Unsuccessful SEO Strategy
Last but not least, bad SEO can mean it’s unsuccessful. Just like the second point above, when you are placing efforts into your SEO and it’s not working you should pivot.
It’s important to note that we don’t recommend evaluating your SEO strategy for success until after the 6 month mark.
Say after 6 months, you’ve not received one inquiry or not seen any increase of traffic. This would indicate an unsuccessful SEO strategy. At this point, it would be required that you reevaluate your existing keyword strategies and see what changes need to be made.
Maybe you reevaluate your branding, website design or copywriting to see if that’s having a direct affect on SEO performance.
Conclusion
Throughout this post, I hope I’ve explained why having an SEO strategy is so crucial to the successes of an online business.
What’s more important is understanding the bad sides of SEO and how to avoid those. To do this, you have to understand SEO from top to bottom.
If you’ve found yourself at a crossroads, we highly recommend reaching out to a professional design team to audit your website and see how we can help!
