It may be tempting to hire a marketing agency who promises quick SEO results, but often times this strategy ends up doing more harm than good. There are no shortcuts to SEO, and while they might be tempting to try, they typically don’t work to your advantage long term. SEO Lead, Natasha Nelson, explains why shortcuts just don’t work and provides five helpful tips on providing the best user experience (because that is what Google is judging your site on) so you will achieve higher rankings through SEO efforts in 2021.
For those who aren’t SEO experts, here is a basic overview of how it works. Google decides the order your website is ranked in “search” on multiple factors. As Google acquires data metrics to judge where your site lands, they are wanting to know how much value your site is delivering. The data metrics Google weighs is always changing. This is why the best practices of 2020 may not be the best practices this year. It was widely accepted you needed numerous backlinks to your site to gain traction with Google. A backlink is a link created when one website links to another. Backlinks are also called “inbound links” or “incoming links.” While backlinks can be a major factor, you still need to think long term and ask what is Google looking for in the future? You can use the stock market as an analogy. If you think of Organic SEO on your site as an investment, it should compound over time, just like money.
The bottom line is, while tempting, shortcuts do not work. Google’s algorithms become smarter every day, Google will catch them and punish your site for them by lowering your ranking. It can take years to simply get back to where your rankings were previously.