SEO: Risks to take and avoid!

One of the biggest decisions for businesses operating online for their marketing is their SEO strategies. People have a hard time waiting for the value of SEO to reflect on their business. And as SEO strategies take at least 3 months to really show its effect through traffic and sales, the gestation period is full of risks. But let us all agree that risk-taking is a part of the business.

Every company today is challenged with the idea of taking risks in SEO to see considerable results. In this context, it is important to highlight the risks that are worth taking and the ones which can be avoided for good. While neglecting SEO is the biggest risk for online businesses, here are some risks that can be evaluated individually whether to take or not!

Risks to take:

A/B testing of information

SEO focuses on increasing the traffic on the website and ultimately converting them into leads. All of the content on the website is put on the notion of being of need to the visitors.

The targeted keywords, meta title, meta descriptions, Alt Text, images, etc are worked on the science of optimization. But sometimes one or the other element of the content doesn’t let the website get popular. And to find what is lacking or being misused, the A/B testing of information is important.

Here small or large changes are made to different metrics, one at a time, to acknowledge the change it brings. The risks involve the changes in traffic that may considerably reduce for some time or increase. But this testing is important for the right SEO techniques to work.

Backlinks to other websites

Websites create backlinks to other websites i.e. competitors sometimes. This may look like the guidance of traffic to some other website which attracts the risk of losing traffic. But the key idea here is to establish authenticity and authority online. Google recognizes the linking of two websites as one of the key processes where authenticity and reliability are established. This sends a message that the website is dedicated to providing good information to the customers and isn’t blindly promoting itself. It works wonders for websites in ranking on SERPs.

Precise URLs

The domain URL of a website should be in the format www.abc.com. And the subsequent page links should have the keywords attached to them for the relevant page. But they should be precise and short for Google to read all of it and display everywhere. The long URLs with unnecessary words don’t make it to the ranking list. SEO strategies require changing these into crisp links which might disturb the traffic that the page is already getting.

Reconstruction of websites

For SEO purposes many experts recommend restructuring the website for enhanced design, experience, and optimization. It is both time consuming and costly process. And the fact that it alters the already established place on Google and customers is a big risk for the business. But when the website is restructured with the right technology, SEO techniques, and dynamics to meet the demand, the traffic shows a positive effect too. This risk is worth taking when you are dedicated to making a better website.

Risks to Avoid:

Deleting pages

Companies tend to delete the pages of the website for products they have discontinued producing or remove blogs related to certain topics. The discontinuance of the pages leads to a drop in the traffic. Some page-specific keywords tend to make it to the ranks even though these products might not be available. Instead of risking the loss of traffic by deleting pages, it is wise to keep the pages as these are and put up a message that the product has been discontinued. This keeps the traffic coming to the website and browse through other products.

The perfect match keywords

Trying to rank for an exact keyword might look worthy but is not ideal to mark for anchor text, URL, topics, etc all together. Some black hat SEO experts used excessive exact keywords to rank on SERPs which later got recognized as an artificial means. Instead of risking with exact keywords, one should focus on more natural keywords to target ranking on Google. SERPs track more natural keywords to rank on the list rather than stuffed single keywords. Exact keywords can turn risky especially when overstuffed with non-relatable content.

Small SEO changes from time to time

Even the smallest of changes on websites aren’t missed by Google. While making small changes from time to time might seem like a great idea to enhance the website SEO, it is actually sending red flags to Google for suspicious activities. The changes will alter the performance of the website online and impact the traffic heavily. The readers will come across changes that will render the site unreliable. And the frequent change keeps making shifts of traffic for the website, based on the content and use of keywords. These small changes make SEO strategies ineffective.

Canceling neutral backlinks

When creating backlinks the SEO experts have the options to go from very high-quality backlinks to low quality. While the low-quality links are marked as spam or malicious, it is the neutral links that can be of help. Most of the experts recommend high-quality backlinks only for good traffic, but unless the neutral links are notified as spammy by Google, these work great to improve traffic. Removing or canceling the neutral backlinks from your website can be a mistake leading to a drop in traffic.

earch Engine Optimization is one of the powerful strategies to make a business gets its maximum exposure online. There are a number of risks involved with making the strategies run on the web. While some may yield positive results, others shall impact the traffic considerably. The idea is to keep making tests and implement ideas that bring in positive results. Select the right risk that brings about a good impact on your traffic and sales. It all narrows down to the choices a business makes for its ultimate performance in the market.