10 Signs that your SEO is harming your website

 

Most companies hire SEO companies to help them rank higher on search engines, unfortunately, some of these SEO companies are completely incompetent and actually end up hurting your site.

Let’s take a quick tour through the various signs that indicate your SEO company is killing your website, and that you need to be cautious.

1 . Your site has low organic search traffic

One of the most common signs that your SEO company is hurting your website is seeing a drastic drop in your organic traffic. This usually happens because your search engine ranking drops, which causes people to click on your website less often. If you’re noticing that you’re not getting as many visitors from search engines, this is almost always caused by your SEO company.

2 . You’re getting a lot of traffic but no conversions.

One common sign that your SEO company is killing your website is seeing an increase in the number of people who are visiting your site, but very little in the way of conversions.

The Google Analytics stats will show that you’re getting more traffic, but the numbers for conversions are either staying the same or are actually decreasing, which means that your website is not converting as many of these visitors into customers.

Another way to test this is by opening up Google Adwords and running some ad campaigns. If you notice that your ads are delivering a higher number of clicks, but without a corresponding increase in conversions, this is a sign that something might be wrong with your SEO company.

3 . Your page rank is dropping

Another common mistake that many SEO companies make is using techniques to improve your search engine ranking at the expense of your page rank. It’s true that more people are starting to focus on getting more traffic from search engines, but this is because these people now understand that you can’t have one without the other.

In order to improve your SEO, you need to work on increasing your backlinks as well as gaining more social media followers and traffic from those sources as well. If you notice a drop in your page rank anytime soon after signing with an SEO company, this is probably why.

4 . Your email marketing isn’t working

One of the worst mistakes that SEO companies can make when trying to help your site rank higher on Google is by using techniques that are designed specifically to avoid triggering penalty warnings from search engines, which often results in your email marketing campaigns not being fully optimized.

One example of this is using shortened URLs, which can sometimes confuse the system and cause your bounce rate to appear higher than it actually is. If you notice that your email campaigns aren’t bringing in as many sales or leads as they used to, then there’s definitely something wrong with your SEO company.

5 . You have difficulty communicating with your SEO company

One of the worst signs that your SEO company is hurting your website, and yet also one of the most common, is the lack of communication. When you hire an SEO company, they should be more than happy to answer any questions that you might have about their techniques and services. If you find yourself struggling to get in touch with your SEO company, or if it takes them a very long time to get back to you, this can be a sign that there might be something wrong with them.

Another way to check is by running some ad campaigns through Google Adwords and testing out different ads and keywords. If a good portion of the traffic that you receive from these campaigns is coming from keywords that are unrelated to your website, then you can almost rest assured that your SEO company is hurting your site.

6 . You aren’t getting many social media shares

One of the biggest indicators that something might be wrong with your SEO company is the number of social media shares that you’re receiving. When it comes to modern search engine optimization techniques, social media is one of the most effective ways to increase your traffic quickly. If you notice that you’re not getting as many likes and shares on Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter then there’s a good chance that something might be wrong with your SEO company.

7 . You’re starting to receive penalty warnings

One of the most harmful things that an SEO company can do to your site is to use black hat techniques and strategies. If you notice penalty warnings appearing next to any of your search engine results, even if these are not on the first page, this can be a sign that you’re either dealing with an incompetent SEO company or one that focuses more on increasing their own profits than on helping you improve your site.

8) You can’t access your website for days

If you can’t log in to your dashboard and access the site through FTP it’s most likely because your SEO company has already taken down the whole site and they’re waiting for Google to re-index you, which could take up to a week or more. You will just have to wait patiently until the SEO company decides they’re ready to put you back up.

9) Your site loads extremely slow.

This can be a sign that your SEO company is stuffing pages with tons of useless junk, such as javascript and flash files which slows down your page load time. It could also mean they’re leaving off important tags from your HTML which means search engines won’t have access to your chosen keywords or image sitemap.

10) You can see all sorts of weird messages in Google Webmaster Tools.

Google webmaster tools can be accessed through your Google account, if you start seeing lots of messages in there about URL requests, weird crawling errors, and unnatural link warnings then it’s more than likely that the SEO company has broken some rules with Google.

Conclusion

If your SEO company hasn’t had the decency to warn you about this beforehand then you can be sure that it probably won’t get fixed properly.

If you want to make sure your website stays safe from SEO companies who break the rules and put up crappy content then you should always check out our premium SEO services. That way you can get on with running your business without having to worry about SEO again.

Look out for the above signs to prevent your SEO company from causing more harm to your website than good. It is good to keep a check on the practices being used by your SEO agency to avoid unwanted harm. Communicate frequently to stay up to date on the work they are doing and the stuff going on in the hindsight.

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