7 Signs That Your SEO Provider Might be Harming Your Website
Collaborating with an SEO provider can either be a game-changer or a goal-crusher. The biggest plot twist for using an SEO provider is: What if they’re unintentionally steering you off-course?
Imagine investing a substantial budget just to discover minimal website improvements or, even worse, witnessing your website’s underperformance. When you start to feel that things are veering off the target, that’s when you must hit the brakes.
We’ve listed crucial signs to tell you that your SEO provider is harming your website. From being unclear with their strategies to dropping website traffic, let’s break down each sign of harmful SEO providers or services.
1. They Don’t Tell You Strategies
A reputable SEO provider should be transparent about their strategies and methodologies. They will start by analyzing your website, brand’s pain points, and objectives. A thorough analysis will help them to create personalized optimization strategies for your website.
If your SEO partner is secretive about their techniques to improve your website’s performance, it can be a red flag. Lack of transparency can indicate that they use unethical or black-hat SEO methods that can harm your website’s search engine rankings.
Open communication and a clear understanding of the implemented strategies are essential for a successful SEO partnership. Ensure your SEO provider tells you each strategy and how it can help you overcome the problem and gain long-term benefits.
2. Their Offerings are Too Good to be True
Remember that SEO is never a one-night battle. You won’t reap results overnight. But if your provider offers promises that seem too good to be true, it’s your warning to be skeptical.
SEO is a complex, dynamic, and time-consuming process to produce meaningful results. Be cautious of providers who guarantee overnight success, such as massive traffic increases or instant high rankings.
Those promises are unrealistic, especially if you’re competing against bigger competitors. So, be clear about what strategies they use to help you improve your website. Also, ensure you check the key metrics regularly to keep things on track.
3. Focusing On Lackluster, Thin Content
High-quality, valuable content is the backbone of successful SEO. If your SEO provider emphasizes quantity over quality and produces lackluster or thin content, it can negatively impact your website in several ways.
Thin content is content that lacks depth, originality, and value to the audience. This can be in short, superficial blog posts or pages with little substance. Meanwhile, Google encourages websites to provide relevant and in-depth discussions, showing first-hand experience.
Consequences of focusing on such content may include poor audience engagement, high bounce rates, and search engine penalties. Visitors are more likely to bounce away from your site if they encounter low-quality content, resulting in a poor user experience.
Your SEO provider needs to prioritize creating content that’s not just keyword-rich but also valuable and engaging to your human audience. Provide relevant visuals, eye-catching videos, expert insights, or relevant podcasts to keep your website credible.
4. You Steadily Lose Organic Traffic
If you’ve already sealed the contract with an SEO provider, you can check their efforts using your website. One of the simplest ways is looking into your organic traffic.
Frequently, a significant goal of SEO is to increase organic traffic to your website. If, over time, you notice a consistent decline in your website’s organic traffic, it’s a clear sign that something is amiss with your SEO provider’s efforts.
It could be that their strategies are misaligned with the latest search engine algorithms or engaging in activities that result in search engine penalties. A reliable SEO partner should be able to maintain or increase your organic traffic along the journey.
5. Dropping Keyword Rankings
One of the primary objectives of SEO is to improve your website’s visibility for specific keywords in search engine results. If you notice a consistent decline in your website’s keyword rankings, it’s a clear indication that something is going wrong.
This drop in rankings can occur for various reasons, such as changes in search engine algorithms, increased competition, or, in some cases, ineffective SEO strategies. Ask your SEO provider to explain what can be the cause of your ranking drops.
If your SEO provider can’t give comprehensive analysis and proof, you need to question their credibility. A decline in rankings can lead to decreased organic traffic and, ultimately, a negative impact on your website’s performance.
6. Poor Quality Backlinks and Irrelevant Inbound Links
Backlinks are crucial SEO, but not all backlinks are created equal. If your SEO provider is building poor-quality backlinks or acquiring irrelevant inbound link-building strategies, it can harm your website’s reputation and search engine rankings.
Low-quality backlinks from spammy or irrelevant websites can trigger penalties from search engines, leading to a drop in rankings. For example, your website acquires backlinks from irrelevant websites, websites filled with spammy content, or even link farms.
Your SEO provider must focus on acquiring high-quality, relevant backlinks from authoritative and reputable sources. If they discern the backlinks they generate, it can damage your website’s SEO efforts rather than enhance them.
7. Placing Wrong Priorities
An essential factor of modern SEO is that your website must cater to both search engines and human users. It can be detrimental if your SEO provider prioritizes search engines over human audiences.
For instance, content with keyword stuffing and design that are overly optimized for search engines results in a lack of user-friendliness and a frustrating user experience. Users may quickly leave your website if the content needs to be more relevant or easier to understand.
Instead, engage audiences through conversational posts, embed YouTube videos, or social media content. Moreover, if your content doesn’t resonate with your human audience, it’s unlikely to convert visitors into customers, subscribers, or leads. This issue can lead to missed opportunities and affect your business negatively.
Takeaways
A website is an asset for every business. It serves as a 24/7 digital storefront showcasing your brand’s products or services and a platform to generate trust and credibility with your customers.
With an optimized website and high-quality content, you can reach, engage, and convert your target customers, generate leads, drive conversions, and make sales. Therefore, choosing the right and reliable SEO provider is essential.
Collaborating with a reputable and ethical SEO provider helps you improve and maintain your brand’s online reputation. They also help you ensure your website continues to be a valuable tool in your business’s long-term success.
