Chasing the Definition of SEO and Its Most Common Problems in 2019 (Part 1)

Vũ Khôi

Author at Wotech Electronics Blog

As a marketer, you must at least know what SEO is and SEO's importance in a digital marketing campaign. Yet sometimes what you know is only the surface — there are many issues surrounding SEO, and it's no longer as simple as the concept of what SEO is. If you want to leverage SEO to the fullest to build your business's position on the search engine, keep these troubles in mind and stay far away from them.

Grasp what SEO is to solve Google Index problems

The first and most common problem SEO-ers encounter is the sudden "drop in value" — the website falling in rankings — due to issues with index management. The root cause is an incomplete understanding of what SEO is, leading to misconceptions about how Google actually works. Many people mistakenly believe that once they build links and add noindex junk pages, their website is fine and operating normally.

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The problem with Google is that even after you've added noindex to your pages, they keep their metrics until Google re-crawls (re-indexes) them. Some people add robot.txt to block these pages and save crawl budget — a good idea, but only after the pages are removed.

So how do you fix this problem? Fortunately, the answer in this case is fairly simple, based on advice from SEO service veterans. First, review the concept of what SEO is, then start by checking your website: search the domain and inspect the site's Google index. Look closely for pages that shouldn't be indexed and start proactively removing them from your crawl budget.

Overcoming localization problems starts with understanding what SEO is

The second most common problem SEO-ers encounter is when clients use multiple languages. It's great that your website has an international reach and serves foreign users localized content. But it's a nightmare with respect to Panda penalties if the setup isn't configured correctly. SEO service companies recognize the risk of these problems and always work to fix them.

Many people who know what SEO is are familiar with URL structures — which you can use for localized text — yet forget to set up HREFLang on the website. If you're looking to set up HREFLang codes, I'd advise you to look for matching pages to get the right country codes and locations.

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Here's a specific case where ranking becomes very difficult: a client's website successfully integrated hreflang into its source code, but they included neither the location code nor the language code. So when they tried to do this for en-GB, the page no longer existed and redirected to the sitemap. In the end, the website only updated 50% of its languages and created a large number of indexed duplicates. That is one of the reasons their SEO campaign kept failing. Experts confident they know what SEO is should jot down these lessons to avoid silly mistakes with immeasurable consequences!

Internal keyword competition in SEO — as everyday as "sugar and milk"

Keyword cannibalization happens when you — accidentally or deliberately — target the same keyword for two or more articles on your website. This leads to pages competing against one another within a single site. It confuses Google, leaving it unable to determine which landing page deserves to rank, and it also leaves users puzzled about which content is what they're actually looking for.

And the truth about keyword disputes is that Google doesn't like them. In the SEO world, keyword cannibalization happens as routinely as "buying sugar and milk", and it usually hurts website rankings. How do you fix it? Just follow these principles:

• Learn to diagnose the culprit pages, because if you can't find the cannibalization on your site — how can you fix it?

• When creating additional pages with keywords that duplicate the main page, always remember to link back to the main page.

• Use keyword-tracking tools: one of the benefits clients get from working with Markdao's SEO services is that we track keywords continuously with Analytics tools. Checking keyword rankings tells us which URL Google is prioritizing for a keyword, and from there we shape an appropriate offpage strategy.

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What matters more than SEO? User Performance Metrics

Understanding the essence of what SEO is, you'll see that User Performance is the key factor in an SEO strategy's success. Even so, many companies doing SEO don't track these metrics. Only by relying on numbers like traffic, bounce rate, conversion rate, and user behavior can we evaluate SEO's final results. A keyword truly at the top of the rankings will do nothing for your business results if User Performance metrics are low.

Given the importance of User Performance, don't limit your business with methods like link spamming and buying links instead of focusing on building content that is compelling and hits customers' psychology. With engaging content, combined with suitable design and prominent CTA buttons, after just a short while you'll have brought your business a host of new potential customers.

MORE TO COME...

What are the most common problems with SEO? Perhaps you don't yet have a fully satisfying answer. 2019 isn't stopping there. Save your checklist, and we'll continue with some of the most important mistakes in onpage and offpage SEO in the next article.

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