4 Reasons Your SEO Sucks (And How You Can Learn To Be A Pro)

You are probably making at least 2 of these horrible SEO mistakes and your rankings are suffering as a result.

So in this post I am going to show you why your website is like a dead body.

Let me clarify. That is a part of a fun quote I read at SMMW recently:

The best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of Google

Sounds a bit like an episode of CSI! But what does it mean exactly?

Almost nobody ever gets to the second page of Google, so if you are not on Page 1 of Google, you might as well not even be on there at all.

Here are the stats to prove it:

Image Courtesy of Moz

This chart clearly shows that Page 2 of Google has an total click through of less than 5% of the total clicks on search results.

You know where to hide your dead content now, right?

So without further ado, let’s get on with the reasons why your SEO probably is not as optimal as it should be (aka. why it sucks)

1. You Never Bother With Keyword Research (Do You?)

I know learning to do keyword research is a pain in the butt, and it also puts me out of work. However, if you are a serious blogger or website owner (or even hoping to be), it is time you learned to do at least the basics.

You might have heard that “SEO is Dead”, and that you should get all your traffic from places like Facebook. But really, is that something you can rely on? Look at the recent rumors of Google+ being dismantled.

I get about half my traffic from Google and I am also quite active on Social Media, and have guest blogged a lot too. So I have diverse traffic sources. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying you should rely on Google completely. But it is a huge source of traffic that you really should not be ignoring.

In fact, you are probably leaving some very free and targeted traffic on the table (in the internet to be precise) so why not spend an extra 15 minutes on that post you spent 4 hours writing (and another 3 promoting) and get some of that free Google love you deserve. I know it’s not the 60s, but it’s free baby, yeah!

And keyword research is the basis of all of that so…

2. You Have Ever Met My Friend:  On-page SEO

Have you ever heard of On-page SEO?

Many of you might have, but do you really know what it means?

Quite simply, it’s all about tuning the SEO on your web pages.

After you find those juicy keywords that you want to target, this is the most important thing I can teach you.

Fix up your website and make sure it is optimized for on-page SEO.

Google will love you for it, and your traffic from search will rise my friend (ok, we are not friends yet, but I bet you will send me some lovely emails once your traffic rises…won’t you?)

In fact, to prove my point, let me tell you a little story:

I worked on a client’s website late last year, and they had not done any on-page seo at all. After some initial keyword research and then some on-page seo we increased their traffic by 20% in one month.

And that is consistent, month over month traffic, not spurts of visits from Twitter or Facebook. How cool is that!

Note: we actually we kept increasing it til it doubled, but that is another story involving more time than I have right now.

I know, you are new to this and probably won’t achieve those stunning heights so quickly but you will get MORE TRAFFIC, just from a little hard work. So why not try?

3. Your Link Building Efforts Are Negligible (or Zero)

Even your mother is embarrassed to tell her friend’s about this one. I asked her.

You do little to no link building, and as a result, your website has no chance of ranking against the big boys.

I get it. Link building is one of the forbidden arts that they teach us at SEO School, and without the special SEO Hat (White or Black, your choice!) you are not allowed into the club.

But I am going to let you in on a little secret (the SEO police are knocking on my door right now, so read this quickly, before they arrest me):

You can do at least a little link building on your own

Yes, that’s right, I am giving up the trade secrets here people!

One of the simplest ways of getting links, although it does require you to do some work, is to guest post on incredible blogs (like mine).

People are always talking about the non-SEO benefits of guest blogging (and there are many listed in the post above) but one of the big reasons guest blogging is still so popular is that it gets you a link from a blog that is “better” than yours. And often you can sneak in a contextual link while you are at it (you will learn about that in second year SEO School).

And although I don’t get as many guest posts as the popular kids, my blog is actually more “SEO” powerful than many of my fellow marketing bloggers, because…I do link building. All the time.

4. Your Website is Not Mobile Ready (The Deadline is Looming)

Ok, you got me there. This is not a reality yet, but unless you have been asleep, you might have noticed a few amazingly well researched and written posts like this one flying around the web.

It’s all about how Google is going to pseudo-slap websites that are not mobile-ready – i.e. by raising the sites in the rankings that have passed their test.

So if you get a lot of mobile traffic (that’s more than a few percent in my eyes) and your site does not pass the Google Mobile Test, it is time to wake up and smell the ones and zeros!

On April 21st Google will judge your website, whether you like it or not. Get with the times and mobile pimp your website.

And no, it’s not just about making Google happy. Your iPhone carrying customers will love you for it too! (and maybe even your Samsung carrying ones too, although their lives are already quite horrible :>)

What Can You Do Right Now To Improve Your SEO

I know this post has been full of horrible one liners and Australian sarcasm, and for that I don’t apologize. That is how I am going to roll in 2015.

However, I want to leave you with some to dos, just so you don’t get lazy and forget about all this.

At the very least:

• Ensure your website is Mobile Ready (for Google’s and your customer’s sakes) – take the Google Mobile Test

And if you are prepared to take it a step further:

• For at least one post a month, do some keyword research and tweak the on-page SEO

Link building is the last piece of the puzzle, so keep that in the back of your mind too.

And last but not least, if you have absolutely no time to do any of this crazy SEO stuff, I just happen to offer some amazing SEO Services you might want to take a look at.