Hmmm a blog post relating Google to Valentine’s day? I know, I know, it is stretching it a bit, but in all fairness there are some similarities which are worth talking about. We all know Valentine’s day is about love, romance and relationships. Now let’s imagine for a few minutes that your business wants to woo Google. How’s it going to happen?

Well, like any relationship, it has to start off well, but be built on solid foundations or it won’t last. SEO is a little like this. There are techniques that can be used (and some firms do), which can look attractive to Google at first, but after some time will do a lot of damage. For example, imagine you meet someone who looks like they have everything – good looks, money and a great personality. However, after a few months you realise they are loaded with debt, the posh car is actually just on finance and they’re struggling to keep up the repayments. On top of that, they tend to get really rude when they’ve had too many drinks! What would you do – you’d dump them wouldn’t you? Google does the same thing if you use too many ‘dodgy’ SEO techniques, and will penalise your site! And you do not want Google to be singing Cee Lo’s ‘Forget you’ to your website do you?!

To do SEO properly, you need to start off by having the right keyword strategy. This will help put you in the right place for Google to see you, and your customers to find you. Then you look at getting your on-page SEO right – this makes it attractive to Google to look at. The next steps involve using authoritative and relevant links (off-page SEO) to point to your website, to enable long-term stability at the top of the rankings. CheshireSEO.org will be with you every step of the way.

Doing these steps properly will set you on the right path with the search engines.

Recently I’ve been hearing more stories of SEO companies using poor methods. Things like firing thousands of spam links at a site, which artificially bloat the site. Google accepts it for a while, but soon enough it gets hit with a penalty, and starts to fall down the rankings…rapidly! This type of practice is hard to recover from too, and in some cases the only way to recover is to start over with a whole new website. This, as you can imagine, is the complete opposite of what a business wants!

Other stories I’ve heard include SEO companies using outsourced writers from overseas to do their blog posts, or even online content. There’s nothing wrong with using overseas people, don’t get me wrong, some are great – BUT you have to be really careful, as the latest Google updates are tending to focus more on quality, and if it isn’t well written, relevant content, Google will know! 

It’s your business and you need to be careful. If you are working with an SEO firm now, they should be telling you what they are doing. If you’re unsure of the reliability of the methods, get in touch with us and we can help advise if the methods they are using are safe.

If you want to boost your rankings with the major search engines, then get in touch with Cheshire SEO. We’ll be able to help you climb the rankings with tried and trusted methods, that will give results for the long-term. That’s how Cheshire SEO services operate – we like to be a strategic partner for a business, not just a quick fix. By Stu Davies.

SEO Long Term Growth