conversion rates

conversion ratesYou’ve heard about the importance of SEO and have hired an external SEO company to take the reins of your SEO strategy. Rather than seeing an increase in conversions, however, you’ve been surprised to see conversion rates plummet. In fact, you may find that your search engine rankings have also fallen right off. What’s going on?

Warning Signs your SEO Company is Hurting Your Success

Shady SEO companies have tainted the entire industry. Those offering to take you to the first page of Google within two weeks for under $200 are likely too good to be true. Here are a few signs your SEO company may be killing your conversions:

  1. Not willing to discuss their techniques or a lack of clear deliverables. While search engine success doesn’t happen overnight, your SEO company should be willing and able to show you what they’ve been doing.
  2. They haven’t asked for access to anything. Asking for access to your website admin or Google Analytics tools is considered fair game. This is needed to examine your website in greater detail and perform an SEO audit. If they haven’t asked you for access to anything after several weeks or months, this is a red flag.
  3. Your rankings and traffic plummet shortly after your hire the SEO company.

Staying on top of new SEO rules and regulations is important. SEO is a field in constant flux due to ever-changing search engine algorithms, but a reputable SEO company should be willing to work together with you and share their methods.

How a Bad SEO Company Can Harm Your Business

SEO practices can generally be divided into two broad categories: white hat and black hat techniques. Black hat techniques are those that violate search engine guidelines and try to deceive the search engines by using aggressive or sneaky tactics.

A few examples of black hat techniques include:

  1. Creating ‘spammy’ backlinks or poor quality backlinks by commenting on other sites or submitting to shady directories.
  2. Purchasing links – a definite ‘no-no’ in the eyes of Google that violates their guidelines.
  3. Copying poor quality content and publishing it across different platforms.
  4. Creating fake accounts. This includes setting up accounts on review sites under fake names or posting overly ‘positive’ reviews of your company. Getting caught doing this can create lasting damage to your brand.
  5. Too many keywords. This is often known as “keyword stuffing” which crams as many relevant keywords as possible within an article and often sounds ridiculous.
  6. Creating spam or ‘fake’ blogs full of duplicate content that’s of poor quality.

On the flip side, using white hat SEO tactics while using a conversion rate optimization (CRO) tool can increase your conversion rates. While white hat techniques such as developing great content, building organic backlinks from quality websites and optimizing your website take time, they are the only way to ensure you stay on the right side of search engine authorities and develop long-term results.

Having an effective SEO strategy is only one part of a comprehensive online marketing plan. To reach your target audience, you’ll need to integrate all facets of your online marketing from content creation, social media and SEO to conversion optimization.

We can help! Contact Lead to Conversion™ today for more info.