Some of the SEO risks you should either avoid or take.

SEO Risks You Should Take and Avoid

A solid SEO strategy can have several benefits for your business and website. But let’s face it, SEO, like every other business strategy, has many risks that comes with it. And for that very reason, many SEO experts and website owners are at times hesitant to try new strategies. 

However, taking risks is an essential part of any decision making in a business. They can either bring some tremendous positive results and or may even go the opposite way sometimes.

Regardless, you cannot avoid risks altogether when you’re building an SEO website. In this article, our own experts from our local Liverpool SEO agency will be talking about some of the risks that you can take and ones that you should absolutely avoid. 

SEO Risks You Should Take

Making small and large changes

The main goal for anyone building an SEO website is to bring in more traffic and website transactions. However, there can be instances where your website does not get enough clicks regardless of how well it ranks in terms of keywords. 

There can be several reasons behind this. And it may even take a while for you to get to the bottom of it. 

The only way to find out the real issue is through A/B testing. You will have to take every element of your website, including the titles, contents, and meta-description, and test them for new variations.

So, what’s the risk here?

During the trials, it may take a lot of time to detect the errors and find the best layout and wording to maximize the traffic on your page. And at times you will even make changes that might reduce the traffic instead.

However, the risk is worth taking because once you find those issues, you can focus on improving your website for better traffic and returns.

High-Quality Backlinks

You might be wondering why anyone would want to risk losing users by providing backlinks to high-quality websites. And you’re even actually right. Backlinks do pose a kind of risk by dropping a few users of your page. 

However, it is a risk that you should take because providing backlinks show Google that you’re referencing some reliable sites on your webpage. This increases your credibility and allows your site to rank higher on search engine results. 

But it is also essential to keep in mind that if your website feature links to various spam websites, there’s a chance that Google may penalize your site. 

Improving Site Structure and URLs

The URL of your homepage should always be short and easy to remember. This way, it will be easier for users to find your website. Hence, it is always a good move to restructure your site’s URL to something simpler.

However, when you restructure your site’s URL, you’ll naturally come across some risks. You’ll be redirecting your site’s traffic to a new page, which means your ranking and traffic might fall. If you get it right, you will have an improved URL, which will be ideal for users and search engines. And in the end, you’ll be glad you took the risk.

Website Redesign

Website redesigning can be risky for your business, but it is still an essential part of an SEO website. It can be time consuming and expensive where you might also risk losing some of your consumers by alienating them. There is also a chance that Google may try to re-evaluate your website.

However, it is also important that your website stays updated to the latest trends to avoid looking obsolete. When redesigning a website, you also get a chance to make it more suitable for SEO. Eventually, users will get used to all the changes. But most importantly, new and updated websites bring in many new users.

SEO Risks You Should Avoid

Condensing or Deleting Entire Pages or Contents

When a product or service is discontinued or no longer sold on your website, deleting or condensing that page seems like the only reasonable thing to do. After all, why would you want to keep a page that is no longer in use, right? Well wrong.

When you delete a page that once existed on your website, the ranked keywords will also go away. And as such, it is highly likely that your site’s ranking will start to stumble.

So, instead of deleting the whole page and losing the rankings, it is better to keep them up even if the product is no longer available. What you can do is simply redirect the visitors to another page that sells relevant services or products. This way, you won’t have to lose those rankings and remain where you were.

Anchor Text Matching the Exact Keyword

Having your anchor text for link match with the exact keyword seems like a logical thing to do. After all, this will allow your website to rank higher for the particular keyword.

As a matter of fact, this method was very popular for SEO websites in the past. However, there were multiple instances where people began to abuse this method. And as such, Google started cracking down on people who overused the method and punished their website.

So, in the end, it is probably a good idea to avoid this method and instead look for a better alternative to link your website to gain better traffic.

Constantly Making Little Changes on Your Site

As mentioned on the ‘Risks, You Should Take,’ redesigning your web page can be a good thing. However, it is likely to raise a red flag if you continuously make small and irrelevant changes. Google may consider your website as a suspicious page and possibly even penalize your site.

Besides that, your users may even have a tough time finding your website if you make too many changes. Users who notice this might also become suspicious of your page and likely leave.

Conclusion

SEO is a risky business that can either make or break your website. But what’s more dangerous is not taking any risk to improve your site. Risks play an essential role in the success of your business. It can come in many types. This is why you must decide on the risks that you should take and the risks to avoid. This way, you can minimize your loss and maximize your returns.