Suppose you do SEO by yourself, hire an agency or an individual, or engage a freelancer for your SEO. In that case, this post is perfect to enlighten the difference between good and bad SEO. Not knowing the disparity may result in paying for nothing or, even worst, paying to damage your ranking. But before we dig deep into it, let's get two things out of the way:
If you don't know what SEO is, please read "What is SEO" before reading this post.
Secondly, let's admit SEO is one of the most questionable industries that promise a lot and mostly deliver nothing out of all IT services.
In this article, we will explain the good and the bad, and hopefully, by the end, you will know the difference, and you can put it into practice or hire the right people to get good SEO for your website.
SEO Require Content
SEO is mostly content creation and publishing, yes, there are a few tricks to get the most out of the content, but you need content before anything else. Why? Because Google loves good content, google wants to rank the best content against relevant keywords, so the searchers love Google. So, in general, SEO is about building content authority by delivering value to readers.
Good SEO
Bad SEO
The Good SEO Team have professional content writers to produce quality content with the right SEO settings.
The bad SEO guys either don't publish content at all; or
If you write your content, the good SEO team edit it to ensure it optimises against the right search terms
Write content that is of no value to anyone. It's not engaging or useful; or
Fix the title, headings and structure for better results.
Steal content from another website that results in a plagiarism penalty; or
Use AI to automate content generation, which is again useless content.
Link Building
Next is link building. There are two types of link buildings internal links and external links. Every SEO person you talk to will tell you how important links are, but many will not explain why? Here is the thing links are important, but link building is more of an art than mechanics.
Why are Links Important?
Links are important because they provide more valuable related content to your readers.
This is where we should mention search intent and context. Search intent is user intention and expectation of what they are after. Therefore, any internal links or outbound and inbound external links you establish need to respect their search intent and create links within the correct context.
In other words, if you create link baits and links for the sack of link building, you will not get any benefits from it. On the contrary, you may get a penalty if you do too many links.
Low-Quality Links Vs Good-Quality Links
Other terms commonly used through sale pitch is high DA website vs Low DA spammy sites. Yes, it is relevant and important to get links from good reputation high DA sites, but it's also important to get more natural links that are relevant and valuable for the person clicking on them. You will still get a penalty if you get a high DA website but use spammy practice.
Paid Links and PBN (Private Blog Network)
Many SEO agencies and individuals pay a lot to get paid links from PBN sites. This is a borderline shady practice. It may or may not get you a penalty from Google. Here is what's important:
It depends on the PBN network you use. Are they good or bad
The mixture of your links, if you have too many PBN links, it will hurt.
Is PBN links contextual and satisfying the needs of a person clicking on them or not?
Good SEO agency
Bad SEO agency
A professional white hat SEO agency doesn't breach Google's guidelines.
Build out-of-context links that result in misguiding users and produce a higher bounce rate
They establish links from only reputable high-DA websites.
Get links from low-reputation spammy sites with poor DA scores
The links are always relevant and match the context.
Generate too many links too quickly
External links are only established from relevant sites. So, for example, you won't get a link to a car's website from a fashion blog.
Generate too many links for the same page or content
Internal links are well-placed and provide valuable additional information to users if they click on them.
Have no regard for user intention or satisfaction when creating internal links
Keywords
Keywords or search phrases are the cornerstone of SEO work. First, you look for the keywords that will bring your website more traffic. Then you create a content plan and strategy around those keywords and try to rank your content and pages for them. When selecting keywords for the website, it's not just about a keyword/key phrase's traffic volume. Instead, it's about two things:
The keywords relevance
Funnel stage
The Keyword Relevance
To understand this better, many keywords may be related to your business, but they are not fully relevant to the content or business services. Others may be too generic.
For example, a keyword like WordPress is too generic, so ranking a WordPress Development Service page on this keyword may produce a very high bounce rate. On the other hand, "Download WordPress" is not relevant to WordPress Development service, even though it has WordPress word.
So, you want to rank for relevant keywords with the traffic, not just any keyword with traffic.
Keyword Funnel Stage
Not all keywords are at the same funnel stage. Understanding the keywords funnel stage helps you target the audience differently through different content. People who are ready to buy mostly use buy, price and the best place keywords. On the other hand, people who are not prepared to buy may search for related keywords to learn about the product, its benefits, its alternatives and so on.
When creating web pages and content, you want to ensure the right keywords are well distributed across the right pages. The page needs to deliver an answer and value. Optimising the how-to page for buy keywords may result in dissatisfaction.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is the practice of adding keywords without context or relevance just to optimise the web page against it. It is a black hat SEO practice, discouraged by Google and even results in a penalty from Google.
Keyword stuffing is also bad, it may deliver traffic, but it won't have conversions in most cases. When visitors don't find what they are looking for on the page, they leave your website within the first few seconds.
Good SEO
Always choose the relevant keywords
Always create the right web pages with the proper keyword distribution and quality content to engage visitors.
Understand the search intent and ensure the page is structured to deliver value.
Bad SEO
Does not understand proper keyword distribution across different pages and sections
Perform keyword stuffing by adding keywords in the content without context.
Many don't have the right content, so they can not rank against related keyphrases properly. As a result, their SEO effort is limited to fewer keywords at best.
Final Words on Good and Bad SEO
This post explores how content creation is vital to SEO Optimisation and its success. Good content makes your business the industry leader. Like good content, a good SEO campaign delivers relevant traffic for free and improves your conversion rate through brand development and trust. Because it provides a sustainable long-term ranking and helps build trust with the consumer, SEO is something you should consider.
SEO with Ads and Social media marketing to re-target visitors is the most powerful digital marketing strategy of modern times. If you are looking for a professional white hat SEO agency and digital marketing provider, check how iVersion delivers growth and success through our transparent SEO service and digital marketing.
