When SEO Goes Wrong How choosing the wrong strategy, or implementing outdated tactics, can sink your SEO campaign.	Visited: 1817 4.5/5.0 (21 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Brian Easter September 01, 2010

Intro

SEO is universally considered the most efficient way to attract traffic to a website. However, an improper strategy or technique can often lead to less than optimal results. When a firm is trying to find the right SEO firm, they can potentially contract a company that is outdated, has limited understanding of proper strategy and best practices, and will at best offer bad advice. Worst case scenario, when SEO goes wrong, it can cripple your online efforts, driving traffic away, instead of towards your site.

Keyword Strategy

The fundamental underpinning of any SEO campaign is the keyword strategy it promotes.  Without a solid keyword strategy as a foundation, your SEO strategy will quickly crumble.  However, developing a good keyword strategy consists of more than optimizing for the keywords a client desires.  Most keywords are competitive, and some could be classified as cutthroat. 

One sign of a SEO strategy gone awry is a client competing for keywords that are unattainable for their site.  Breaking the news that a client’s site isn’t strong enough is never pretty, but it is crucial to ensure clients are pursuing the right keywords, not only those specific to their industry, but at the appropriate traffic level.  When SEO goes wrong, clients can pursue an inappropriate keyword strategy for months and never reach a competitive level, while concurrently losing traffic from keywords they were previously focused on.

Black Hat Tactics

The temptation of black hat tactics is strong.  Yielding results means clients are happy, and are willing to pay more for longer.  The only problem with black hat tactics is that these short term successes can lead to potential long term ruin, or at the very least, severe penalties. 

Black hat strategies are a sign of bad SEO, and can include bad links, invisible text, duplicate landing pages, and keyword stuffing.  Although black hat strategies are successful, they are also transparent to search engine algorithms that constantly change to overcome “gaming” the system.  Don’t succumb to the poisoned apple of black hat.   No results, no matter how good they may be, are worth risking severe rankings penalty, or the ultimate threat: search engine banishment.

Incompetence or Laziness

Oftentimes, SEO failures are not the result of an active mistake, but the result of improper application of SEO technique.  The key difference between good SEO firms and bad SEO firms is the way they employ SEO, either as a tactic (good) or as a strategy (bad).  SEO is not an end all be all way to get traffic. It is a means to an end that when properly used is effective.

However, there is no set of rules that defines an effective strategy, as SEO techniques evolve constantly; a tiring task for SEO firms.  Some of the symptoms of SEO fatigue are complacency with success of current strategy, irrelevant or stale content, and auto linking software.  If left untreated, SEO fatigue can lead to insufficient analysis, too much emphasis on rankings, and ultimately a website that isn’t SEO friendly.

Turning Things Around

A bad SEO strategy can be devastating.  Dealing with the repercussions of penalties, rankings decreases, and traffic drop-offs in traffic can destroy the enthusiasm of even the most stalwart defender of SEO.  However, as devastating as the after affects of bad SEO can be, recovery can be achieved through the development of proper strategy, employing a reputable SEO firm, and resolving to never let bad SEO happen to you again.