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What happens when SEO goes wrong, and what is the impact on a business?
It is first necessary to point out the facts. SEO has proved time and time again to be a fruitful investment for businesses everywhere, but like everything in life, errors occur, and SEO is no different. However, the difference is, in SEO, this can be detrimental and be at a considerable cost to you.
The best way to describe the effect of these SEO errors, even the smallest of errors, is to cast your mind back to life before computers. Imagine you have your life’s work in front of you, and this is the only copy. Now imagine that you knock over your coffee or tea, you have a fire, or your important document are stolen. All of your work has vanished in a matter of minutes.
SEO is exactly the same. When you make a slight error with SEO on your website (the modern-day version of knocking over your cup of hot coffee), months of hard work, or even years, can become undone within seconds.
While the first thing you would likely do after losing your work is to pretend it hasn’t happened and hope it will go away, this will not work in SEO. Instead, you have to work fast to solve the issue at hand to minimise the damage that can come as a result.
Scenario 1: Crawl and indexation issues
Crawl and indexing is a process that Google uses to first find your new pages on your website before adding these web pages into its search engine. How it works is simple. Google will send in their bots to follow your links and will index based on your meta tags.
A NoFollow tag will tell the bots not to follow the link while a NoIndex meta tag will tell a sear ch engine, such as Google, not to index your page. If you don’t want a page to be indexed, then this is perfect – you won’t need to worry about it showing up. However, if you do, and you discover this stomach-churning moment, then what will happen as a result?
Unfortunately, it can have a huge negative impact. As it’s not part of Google’s search index , no one will find your content organically. If you are trying to build up your traffic, then no matter how well optimised it is for the SERPs and users, you won’t be benefitting from all your other hard SEO work.
This can also occur with your images, if it is a no image index, then crawlers will not index any images on your page – and with such importance surrounding images and rich media, this cannot afford to happen.
Easy to make yet significant issues like these can be solved quickly by removing the NoIndex NoFollow meta tag, but depending on how long this went unnoticed for, your traffic could be hit hard.
Scenario 2: Manual penalties
A penalty of any kind is a scary notion – even in football! However, in SEO, receiving penalties means your website didn’t just do something wrong; it means you did something very wrong, and the implications of such can be extremely harmful. Implementing various black hat SEO techniques that go against Google’s guidelines will see your rankings drop. Google doesn’t cache websites that perform these penalties, either. These impacts can see all the honest SEO work completely undone.
What actions would need to be taken for this to occur?
Anything from keyword stuffing and cloaked images to unnatural links to your site will be viewed as black hat techniques and will result in a penalty.
While some websites will fully deserve a penalty, such as sites that are pure spam, have a spammy structured markup, and have user-generated spam, others are purely down to SEO mistakes and not being aware of what Google wants.
For example, a business that was new to the world of SEO knew the importance of content. However, what they didn’t realise was that thin content with little or no value is not what Google wants. They received a penalty for having such content.
Coming back from these penalties isn’t always easy on your own, either, which is why we offer Google Penalty Recovery Services . Mistakes can happen, and you shouldn’t have to suffer forever because of it.
Scenario 3: Broken Website/404 errors
Every business, no matter whether they are run solely online or have a physical store or eatery, needs a website. However, when this website is broken or displays 404 errors, it can create a bad user experience. This will result in more bounce rates , a lack of trust, and a drop in your SERPs ranking position and a drop in your ranking position means less chance to attract organic traffic and, therefore, less chance to turn over a bigger and better profit.
Whether you have one or twenty internal broken links , it will still result in the same outcome, and worst of all, it is so easy to do.
All it can take is the wrong code, even one incorrect spelling in the code, a mistake in the configuration management, a terrible plugin, domain errors, a hacked website, or too much traffic.
Top 6 Reasons for needing SEO Services
With these SEO mistakes being easy to make, many businesses would rather not take risks by doing it themselves and instead turn to professionals who will be aware of what can wrong and how to fix it quickly if things do turn sour.
Why would you need our services?
If you are currently debating about whether you actually need to invest in digital marketing and, more  specifically, SEO, then you aren’t the only one. Many businesses all over are currently looking at how to boost their business online; the only problem is they don’t know why they should be investing in SEO .
We want to ensure that you fully understand why you need our services and the impact it will make before you invest and partner with us. Therefore, we have six reasons why you might need our services.
1. Not Ranking in the SERPS
Where are you currently placing on the search engines?
If you are further than page three, the chances are you aren’t getting much organic traffic, simply because people don’t like venturing further than this because of a lack of trust, and this has formed because Google always presents the best results first. After all, Google, just like you, is a business, and so they want to attract and keep as many users as possible to use their services, so they naturally display the “top” results to keep their users happy.
Without suitable SEO campaigns in place, ranking in the SERPs, overtaking your competition, and drawing in traffic will be impossible.
Make no mistake; those results that are displaying on page 1 are certainly using SEO to stay where they are.
If you aren’t ranking, it will be down to the fact that your website isn’t classed as one of those “top” results because it isn’t optimised the way they would like it.
What is the solution?
There is one way you are going to change this outcome, and this is by optimising your site. If your website doesn’t possess enriched content with relevant high traffic keywords , or the site speed is too slow, and you aren’t optimised for mobile or off-page SEO, then you have little chance of ranking well.
What service do you need?
To improve your ranking, you need to make the most of our technical SEO auditing services as well as our link building services . A technical SEO audit will uncover everything that is right or wrong with your site – discovering whether you are harming your current ranking position will allow you to fix these problems. Then, with an optimised site, we can work with you to create high-quality content that will be posted on third party sites with great domain authority , which will increase your visibility, thanks to the click-throughs and boost your ranking.
2. Not making any conversions
If you’re not making any conversions, this means you’re not gaining enough traffic to your site, and if you’re not getting enough traffic to your site, then that is usually because your ranking position isn’t quite in the right spot yet. As we mentioned in the first reason, not many people venture past page three on Google.
Therefore, the higher your ranking position, and the more you rank for multiple keywords, the more you will start to attract this organic traffic.
What is the solution?
The solution to this problem is to increase your ranking position by having a technical SEO audit and exploring the link building opportunities you have within your industry.
What service do you need?
Carrying out a technical SEO audit and looking into link building will require our technical SEO auditing services as well as our link building services .
3. Your competitor is doing better
There is one mission for businesses around the globe: to beat their competitors and become the leader in the industry. Therefore, when you see that your competitor is ranking above you on the SERPs, they have a great reputation, or their social media followers are through the roof, it can seem impossible to outperform them, let alone compete. As a business, everything relies on the success of attracting customers and making sales, but if your competitor is doing better, it could lead to the end of yours. This is the last thing you want. You want to be able to give as good as it gets, and overcome the adversity, and, with SEO, this is possible.
What is the solution?
Within SEO, there are several areas that can help give you the boost you need to overtake your competitors. This includes carrying out a competitor analysis, technical SEO audit, and investing in link building. With a competitor analysis, you can discover exactly what your competitors are doing and whether there are any gaps in the market. In doing so, you will uncover market trends, develop your own products/services, and then market these effectively. Finding out what is working for them and what hasn’t worked will save you from making any unnecessary mistakes, and help you to overtake them eventually.
What service do you need?
We offer all three of these strategies within our services. Through our managed SEO packages , you can also take advantage of the other services that come alongside the competitor analysis, such as optimising your content and developing a bespoke SEO strategy.
4. Not getting any organic traffic
You might be getting traffic from your PPC advertising, but are you struggling to get any organic traffic?
If so, you won’t be alone in that. Many businesses believe that PPC is enough to drive traffic, and while it is a useful service to use, it works best in harmony with SEO. The reason you won’t be getting any organic traffic is that your on-page content doesn’t have your target keywords within the content.
What is the solution?
Your solution first lies in a technical SEO audit, followed closely by content optimisation, and eventually link building. This will ensure that your content is optimised the right way, there aren’t any basic SEO errors on your website, and you are improving your own domain authority, which will help you move up the rankings.
What service do you need?
For this, you would need our content marketing services , as well as our link building and technical SEO audit services.
5. Can’t be found locally
One of the biggest problems that businesses find themselves facing is that their online visibility isn’t helping them to target those in the local area. Yes, you might be able to attract attention from people who are living on the other side of the world with SEO, but if you don’t sell your products online or you are a restaurant or a pub, then you won’t convert that lead into a sale for obvious reasons.
Therefore, for those businesses that rely on their website to attract footfall, you cannot afford not to be found locally. More and more people are turning to the web to search for “ restaurants near me ” or “ shopping centre in Birmingham ” to find, look over, and decide in advance where they will be going. If your business is not showing up when people type in these relevant search terms , it means more chance for your competitors to take the lead and dominate your industry, even if you are the only business in that area.
What is the solution?
You need to focus your attention on GMB (Google My Business) . You will have noticed when you type in “restaurants near me” that the search results display a map with icons of the top three results that are nearest to your location. If you are not within these top results, the chances of gaining organic leads become much slimmer. Your GMB account needs to be optimised with photos, as much relevant information as possible about your business, ensuring that everything is accurate and grammatically correct and that you have made the most of keywords. Adding in your location to your GMB increases your chances of being found, but so does optimising your own website with keywords.
What service do you need?
To ensure ultimate success, you need to make the most of our Local Managed SEO to ensure that your local SEO is as powerful as your standard SEO. Or, more specifically, you should turn to our Google My Business Optimiser , in which we will be able to take charge of your GMB account, maximising your potential. We will ensure that your reviews are managed, your photos look amazing all the time, and that you are posting at least one promotional post a month!
6. No brand awareness
One of the hardest situations businesses have to overcome is when there is little to no brand awareness. Many businesses believed that brand awareness didn’t matter – that the core focus should be solely on their target audience; however, brand awareness matters hugely! If you are struggling with brand awareness, then even if you manage to find your target audience, if they don’t know who you are, what you have to offer them, and know that they can’t trust you, this will not turn into a conversion. When a customer recognises a brand, whether this is a logo or an iconic phrase , they are more likely to spend money with them.
What is the solution?
There are plenty of ways to increase your brand awareness, from sponsoring events to being more active on social media. However, the best way revolves around search engine marketing and focusing on content creation. Posting high-quality content will give your customers a reason to trust you. You can start to write guest posts and building up links for your link building campaign to further your reach. As well as this, you should be focusing on creating consistent content for your own site, and then advertising this on your social media channels, as well as creating content specifically for your social media accounts. LinkedIn is a popular place to post content, for example.
However, even with an excellent piece of content, if your site isn’t offering the best user experience, then this will be for nothing. This is why you should also ensure you carry out a technical SEO audit. It will uncover everything that needs to be fixed in order for your site to perform better.
What service do you need?
Our blog writing services are exactly what you need to succeed. We have an extremely talented team of writers and editors ready and waiting to produce as much high-quality content as you need, making sure to tailor to your individual needs. You can also make the most of our technical SEO audit services to ensure a thorough site sweep check for a smooth boost in brand awareness.
Why Did My Google Ranking Drop
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Intelligence Hub. Buyers Guides. Reading Time: 10 minutes. Chapters. Subscribe to our Newsletter. Share this guide. LinkedIn. Twitter. Facebook. Email. What happens when SEO goes wrong, and what is the impact on a business? It is first necessary to point out the facts. SEO has proved time and time again to be a fruitful investment for businesses everywhere, but like everything in life, errors occur, and SEO is no different. However, the difference is, in SEO, this can be detrimental and be at a considerable cost to you. The best way to describe the effect of these SEO errors, even the smallest of errors, is to cast your mind back to life before computers. Imagine you have your life’s work in front of you, and this is the only copy. Now imagine that you knock over your coffee or tea, you have a fire, or your important document are stolen. All of your work has vanished in a matter of minutes. SEO is exactly the same. When you make a slight error with SEO on your website (the modern-day version of knocking over your cup of hot coffee), months of hard work, or even years, can become undone within seconds. While the first thing you would likely do after losing your work is to pretend it hasn’t happened and hope it will go away, this will not work in SEO. Instead, you have to work fast to solve the issue at hand to minimise the damage that can come as a result. Scenario 1: Crawl and indexation issues. Crawl and indexing is a process that Google uses to first find your new pages on your website before adding these web pages into its search engine. How it works is simple. Google will send in their bots to follow your links and will index based on your meta tags. A NoFollow tag will tell the bots not to follow the link while a NoIndex meta tag will tell a sear ch engine, such as Google, not to index your page. If you don’t want a page to be indexed, then this is perfect – you won’t need to worry about it showing up. However, if you do, and you discover this stomach-churning moment, then what will happen as a result? Unfortunately, it can have a huge negative impact. As it’s not part of Google’s search index , no one will find your content organically. If you are trying to build up your traffic, then no matter how well optimised it is for the SERPs and users, you won’t be benefitting from all your other hard SEO work. This can also occur with your images, if it is a no image index, then crawlers will not index any images on your page – and with such importance surrounding images and rich media, this cannot afford to happen. Easy to make yet significant issues like these can be solved quickly by removing the NoIndex NoFollow meta tag, but depending on how long this went unnoticed for, your traffic could be hit hard. Scenario 2: Manual penalties. A penalty of any kind is a scary notion – even in football! However, in SEO, receiving penalties means your website didn’t just do something wrong; it means you did something very wrong, and the implications of such can be extremely harmful. Implementing various black hat SEO techniques that go against Google’s guidelines will see your rankings drop. Google doesn’t cache websites that perform these penalties, either. These impacts can see all the honest SEO work completely undone. What actions would need to be taken for this to occur? Anything from keyword stuffing and cloaked images to unnatural links to your site will be viewed as black hat techniques and will result in a penalty. While some websites will fully deserve a penalty, such as sites that are pure spam, have a spammy structured markup, and have user-generated spam, others are purely down to SEO mistakes and not being aware of what Google wants. For example, a business that was new to the world of SEO knew the importance of content. However, what they didn’t realise was that thin content with little or no value is not what Google wants. They received a penalty for having such content. Coming back from these penalties isn’t always easy on your own, either, which is why we offer Google Penalty Recovery Services . Mistakes can happen, and you shouldn’t have to suffer forever because of it. Scenario 3: Broken Website/404 errors. Every business, no matter whether they are run solely online or have a physical store or eatery, needs a website. However, when this website is broken or displays 404 errors, it can create a bad user experience. This will result in more bounce rates , a lack of trust, and a drop in your SERPs ranking position and a drop in your ranking position means less chance to attract organic traffic and, therefore, less chance to turn over a bigger and better profit. Whether you have one or twenty internal broken links , it will still result in the same outcome, and worst of all, it is so easy to do. All it can take is the wrong code, even one incorrect spelling in the code, a mistake in the configuration management, a terrible plugin, domain errors, a hacked website, or too much traffic. Top 6 Reasons for needing SEO Services. With these SEO mistakes being easy to make, many businesses would rather not take risks by doing it themselves and instead turn to professionals who will be aware of what can wrong and how to fix it quickly if things do turn sour. Why would you need our services? If you are currently debating about whether you actually need to invest in digital marketing and, more  specifically, SEO, then you aren’t the only one. Many businesses all over are currently looking at how to boost their business online; the only problem is they don’t know why they should be investing in SEO . We want to ensure that you fully understand why you need our services and the impact it will make before you invest and partner with us. Therefore, we have six reasons why you might need our services. 1. Not Ranking in the SERPS. Where are you currently placing on the search engines? If you are further than page three, the chances are you aren’t getting much organic traffic, simply because people don’t like venturing further than this because of a lack of trust, and this has formed because Google always presents the best results first. After all, Google, just like you, is a business, and so they want to attract and keep as many users as possible to use their services, so they naturally display the “top” results to keep their users happy. Without suitable SEO campaigns in place, ranking in the SERPs, overtaking your competition, and drawing in traffic will be impossible. Make no mistake; those results that are displaying on page 1 are certainly using SEO to stay where they are. If you aren’t ranking, it will be down to the fact that your website isn’t classed as one of those “top” results because it isn’t optimised the way they would like it. What is the solution? There is one way you are going to change this outcome, and this is by optimising your site. If your website doesn’t possess enriched content with relevant high traffic keywords , or the site speed is too slow, and you aren’t optimised for mobile or off-page SEO, then you have little chance of ranking well. What service do you need? To improve your ranking, you need to make the most of our technical SEO auditing services as well as our link building services . A technical SEO audit will uncover everything that is right or wrong with your site – discovering whether you are harming your current ranking position will allow you to fix these problems. Then, with an optimised site, we can work with you to create high-quality content that will be posted on third party sites with great domain authority , which will increase your visibility, thanks to the click-throughs and boost your ranking. 2. Not making any conversions. If you’re not making any conversions, this means you’re not gaining enough traffic to your site, and if you’re not getting enough traffic to your site, then that is usually because your ranking position isn’t quite in the right spot yet. As we mentioned in the first reason, not many people venture past page three on Google. Therefore, the higher your ranking position, and the more you rank for multiple keywords, the more you will start to attract this organic traffic. What is the solution? The solution to this problem is to increase your ranking position by having a technical SEO audit and exploring the link building opportunities you have within your industry. What service do you need? Carrying out a technical SEO audit and looking into link building will require our technical SEO auditing services as well as our link building services . 3. Your competitor is doing better. There is one mission for businesses around the globe: to beat their competitors and become the leader in the industry. Therefore, when you see that your competitor is ranking above you on the SERPs, they have a great reputation, or their social media followers are through the roof, it can seem impossible to outperform them, let alone compete. As a business, everything relies on the success of attracting customers and making sales, but if your competitor is doing better, it could lead to the end of yours. This is the last thing you want. You want to be able to give as good as it gets, and overcome the adversity, and, with SEO, this is possible. What is the solution? Within SEO, there are several areas that can help give you the boost you need to overtake your competitors. This includes carrying out a competitor analysis, technical SEO audit, and investing in link building. With a competitor analysis, you can discover exactly what your competitors are doing and whether there are any gaps in the market. In doing so, you will uncover market trends, develop your own products/services, and then market these effectively. Finding out what is working for them and what hasn’t worked will save you from making any unnecessary mistakes, and help you to overtake them eventually. What service do you need? We offer all three of these strategies within our services. Through our managed SEO packages , you can also take advantage of the other services that come alongside the competitor analysis, such as optimising your content and developing a bespoke SEO strategy. 4. Not getting any organic traffic. You might be getting traffic from your PPC advertising, but are you struggling to get any organic traffic? If so, you won’t be alone in that. Many businesses believe that PPC is enough to drive traffic, and while it is a useful service to use, it works best in harmony with SEO. The reason you won’t be getting any organic traffic is that your on-page content doesn’t have your target keywords within the content. What is the solution? Your solution first lies in a technical SEO audit, followed closely by content optimisation, and eventually link building. This will ensure that your content is optimised the right way, there aren’t any basic SEO errors on your website, and you are improving your own domain authority, which will help you move up the rankings. What service do you need? For this, you would need our content marketing services , as well as our link building and technical SEO audit services. 5. Can’t be found locally. One of the biggest problems that businesses find themselves facing is that their online visibility isn’t helping them to target those in the local area. Yes, you might be able to attract attention from people who are living on the other side of the world with SEO, but if you don’t sell your products online or you are a restaurant or a pub, then you won’t convert that lead into a sale for obvious reasons. Therefore, for those businesses that rely on their website to attract footfall, you cannot afford not to be found locally. More and more people are turning to the web to search for “ restaurants near me ” or “ shopping centre in Birmingham ” to find, look over, and decide in advance where they will be going. If your business is not showing up when people type in these relevant search terms , it means more chance for your competitors to take the lead and dominate your industry, even if you are the only business in that area. What is the solution? You need to focus your attention on GMB (Google My Business) . You will have noticed when you type in “restaurants near me” that the search results display a map with icons of the top three results that are nearest to your location. If you are not within these top results, the chances of gaining organic leads become much slimmer. Your GMB account needs to be optimised with photos, as much relevant information as possible about your business, ensuring that everything is accurate and grammatically correct and that you have made the most of keywords. Adding in your location to your GMB increases your chances of being found, but so does optimising your own website with keywords. What service do you need? To ensure ultimate success, you need to make the most of our Local Managed SEO to ensure that your local SEO is as powerful as your standard SEO. Or, more specifically, you should turn to our Google My Business Optimiser , in which we will be able to take charge of your GMB account, maximising your potential. We will ensure that your reviews are managed, your photos look amazing all the time, and that you are posting at least one promotional post a month! 6. No brand awareness. One of the hardest situations businesses have to overcome is when there is little to no brand awareness. Many businesses believed that brand awareness didn’t matter – that the core focus should be solely on their target audience; however, brand awareness matters hugely! If you are struggling with brand awareness, then even if you manage to find your target audience, if they don’t know who you are, what you have to offer them, and know that they can’t trust you, this will not turn into a conversion. When a customer recognises a brand, whether this is a logo or an iconic phrase , they are more likely to spend money with them. What is the solution? There are plenty of ways to increase your brand awareness, from sponsoring events to being more active on social media. However, the best way revolves around search engine marketing and focusing on content creation. Posting high-quality content will give your customers a reason to trust you. You can start to write guest posts and building up links for your link building campaign to further your reach. As well as this, you should be focusing on creating consistent content for your own site, and then advertising this on your social media channels, as well as creating content specifically for your social media accounts. LinkedIn is a popular place to post content, for example. However, even with an excellent piece of content, if your site isn’t offering the best user experience, then this will be for nothing. This is why you should also ensure you carry out a technical SEO audit. It will uncover everything that needs to be fixed in order for your site to perform better. What service do you need? Our blog writing services are exactly what you need to succeed. We have an extremely talented team of writers and editors ready and waiting to produce as much high-quality content as you need, making sure to tailor to your individual needs. You can also make the most of our technical SEO audit services to ensure a thorough site sweep check for a smooth boost in brand awareness. Why Did My Google Ranking Drop. Link Building Buyers Guide. View all Downloads. Downloads. SEO. The Millionaire Guide on SEO: Become A Leading Brand In Your Industry. Download Guide →. View Learning Zone. Online Guides. GA4 Reporting Guide: Steps To Take. SEO. View guide →. Ultimate SEO Audit Checklist. SEO. View guide →. Ultimate Guide to International SEO Strategy. SEO. View guide →. What Is Google Analytics 4 (GA4) & Everything You Need To Know. SEO. View guide →. How To Increase Conversion Rates. SEO Solutions. View guide →. What Metrics to Use to Measure SEO Performance. SEO. View guide →. Ultimate List of SEO Tools. SEO. View guide →. What Is UX Design? Resources. View guide →.