Why SEO Isn’t That Simple

You can find articles all over the web on how to simplify your SEO efforts and why sticking to the tried and true methods of optimizing your website through technical updates, acquiring some backlinks, and cranking out some quality content will get your site to climb in rankings.

Well if it were that simple, SEO agencies would not exist, and you would not be reading this now. The truth is, it can be that simple, but, and this is a big but, it is rarely that simple.

We have managed SEO campaigns that get results in record time, and often times it even surprises us. Because there are always unknowns and issues that you just can’t plan for, or even find in an SEO audit, we have also managed SEO campaigns that take far longer to rank when we think we are doing everything right.

Case and point; we recently started working with a company called Seek One out of Atlanta. They are social media rock stars that are killing it with amazing content that over 117,000 people have subscribed to on YouTube and almost 60,000 people are consuming on Instagram. Not to mention a Facebook following of over 57,000.

With that kind of success on social media and their ability to drive traffic to their site and sell out products in minutes, you would think that getting Google to recognize their brand and website as a legitimate one would be easy. Well, unfortunately, that was not the case.

It turns out the old website developer who they hired from 99 Designs, built a Frankenstein of a site that did more harm than good from an SEO standpoint. There are a ton of lessons in that move alone, but I will save that for a later date. But just because I have to say something, I will say that you get what you pay for with companies like that. Moving on… 🙂

The short version of the story is that from a technical standpoint they built a website that was virtually invisible to Google. Not only was it not being indexed by Google it was being penalized because there was a ton of traffic coming from social links that was driving people to make purchases.

I do not have any hard data to back up my claim here, but I can only guess that Google is not a fan of people running ads or even getting legitimate links from social media and driving people to a sales page to purchase products. There is enough of this going on to make your head turn and I am sure Google is taking notice of all the scams out there.

Unfortunately for our client, this has hindered their ability to rank well for even their own brand name. We have concluded that it is not only this factor and the fact that the original site was built terribly, but also because they had basically no backlinks.

The problem with killing it on YouTube is that everyone that links to your content is linking to your YouTube Channel and not your actual website. They had tons of links to their social accounts but nothing linking to their website.

What I am getting at is that there are several factors that come into play with Search Engine Optimization and you can’t just write some awesome blogs and get other sites to link to them. You have to take a holistic approach that involves technical expertise, copywriting rock stardom, and plenty of experience just to name a few.

There is still work to be done to call this project a full success based on our standards but I felt I needed to get the word out to anyone working on their own SEO so they better understand that there are so many factors and although at a glance SEO can seem simple it is far from it.

Keep in mind that in this day and age, with the very landscape of the internet changing on a daily basis, there are far too many things to consider on your own. Hiring an agency that is up to speed with the latest online marketing trends is your best bet if you want to beat out the competition.

If you go it alone, best of luck out there. If you want some help. Feel free to contact us.