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No matter where you turn or where you look, SEO is always there – watching and waiting. It could be in the title, in the content you read or down in the depths of the log files… SEO always knows what you did last summer.
This Halloween the team at Ontario SEO have combined some iconic horror movie quotes with valuable lessons when it comes to search engine optimization. Pay close attention or you may fall victim to a digital marketing blunder.
Psycho (1960)
“We all go a little mad sometimes”
… Especially when Google rolls out a new algorithm update
The realm of digital marketing and search engine optimization is constantly changing. Sometimes it’s because of new technologies, sometimes it’s because of a change in the economy, but more often than not, it is because of a new algorithm update. Google has been said to change its search algorithm anywhere between 500 to 600 times a year! That’s enough to make any website owner go slightly mad.
The Fly (1986)
“Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
… a website migration is coming.
Website migrations is when a website undergoes a substantial change in areas that could significantly impact search engine visibility. Some of these changes include:
- Site location changes (domain change, rebranding, etc.)
- Platform changes (moving from Joomla to WordPress)
- Structural changes (completely updating site navigation)
- Design and UX changes (website redesign, media changes)
When implemented correctly (with a thorough strategy), site migrations can benefit a website and business immensely. However, if a website migration is done on a whim, you could be wandering down a very dangerous path that has no return!
Misery (1990)
Google My Business “I am your number one fan”.
Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is a free tool that allows business owners to control and manage their business’ information across Google products. It allows you to highlight key information to your customers (hours of operation, location, etc.), engage and connect with customers (posts, Q&A, etc.) as well gain valuable insights. This tool has provided so much value to our clients that we are happy to be known as its number one fan.
Saw (2004)
“I want to play a game.”
Find the broken canonicals.
Technical SEO is the process of optimizing your website for crawling and indexing, which in turn, makes your website more visible on search engines. While this can be a complicated process, to the experienced technical SEO, it can start to feel like a game; finding the important clues and hints to eventually solve the complicated technical SEO puzzle.
One component of technical SEO is canonicals. A canonical is an HTML element that helps website owners prevent duplicate content issues by specifying the “canonical” or “preferred” version of a web page. When a canonical “breaks” it is usually because it is being directed to a 404 URL, a URL that has a 5xx error or it is stuck in a forever maddening loop of doom.
Carrie (1976)
Still using hidden text?
“They’re all gonna laugh at you.”
An infamous black hat SEO technique that was commonly used was known as invisible or hidden text. Website owners or SEOs that chose the dark side would hide a whole bunch of spam text that was invisible to site visitors but could be crawled by search engine crawlers. They would do this in hopes of increasing keyword rankings for valuable keywords.
The technique looked something like this where content would be in white font on a white background and would use keywords and keywords and more keywords over and over again to put in more keywords.
? Did you notice the hidden text?
This is not best practice and is now a laughable offence if a digital marketer ever recommends this technique. Invisible text can cause your website to be penalized by Google… it could even cause your whole website to become deindexed. The horror!
SEO does not have to be horrifying
While the digital marketing realm can come across as scary, especially as we linked it to iconic horror movie quotes, we are here to be your guiding light! We help businesses like yours to create a strategic digital marketing strategy that gets you in front of customers no matter what day of the year.
Learn more about our digital marketing services and start planning your digital strategy today.
