5 Huge Warning Signs of a Bad SEO or Digital Marketing Agency

With the increase in the demand for SEO, the industry is rapidly growing with an enormous quantity of digital marketing agency. There is no doubt that nowadays everyone wants to grab a strong online presence for their webpage and has only one goal in mind, i.e., to be on the top of the first page in the SERPs.

But to make this wish a reality, you need to make sure that your website is full to search engine optimized.

How does SEO work? 

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To make SEO work on your webpage, you must follow a mix of On-Page and Off-Page SEO techniques. Some of these techniques are quite technical, and you might require a professional to implement them, for example, setting up SSL, increasing the speed of your site, and enhancing the user experience, etc. Non-technical practices such as the addition of quality content, keywords, and meta-tags, getting high-quality backlinks, reviews, and listings require only SEO guidelines and policies shared by the search engines.

The field of SEO is extremely dynamic and not confined to the practices mentioned above. So, if you are thinking about getting to the top without any help, then we will recommend that you hire an agency or company that offers digital marketing services as cannot study one article on SEO and decide to call yourself a master of the field while others spend years of mastering and perfecting the skill.

Choosing the Right Digital Marketing Agency to Perform SEO

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The market is currently overwhelmed by the number of companies offering SEO services. They try to prove that they are the “best” in the market. Have you ever wondered; if there were so many “best SEO Agencies” in the market, then wouldn’t all sites be on the first page of Google?

So, today, we will discuss the red flags that can easily tell whether an SEO or digital marketing agency is terrible news for your business:

• Specific Number of Links

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Companies that offer a specific number of monthly links or a promise to provide you with a particular amount of links on your website are for surely using black hat techniques. We all know that SEO is a time-consuming procedure, and anything that has submitted on high-quality sites is always reviewed. You can never be too sure about what will be accepted after the site owner has considered.

A company using automated links which can be irrelevant for the business or using black hat techniques to improve the link ratio is useless and harmful. Link building that involves SEO strategies and proper SEO work that can take a lot of time. It is always recommended to go for the technique that lasts longer and has a more engaging impact on the site. Other methods such as PBNs, etc. last shorter, a figure can be displayed, but you can never have the desired output, and worse can even get manual action from Google. 

• Pre-determined Amount of Traffic 

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Even though good SEO brings the right amount of traffic on your site, it is not easy to provide an estimate of the traffic that will end on your website. Any agency that promises you a specified number of people on the site is undoubtedly lying to you. 

It is easier to release bots on the site that will increase the number of traffic on the “Analytics” page, but they leave no impact on your business and do not contribute in helping the company in any way. 

• Lack of Transparency

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When you have worked for a company, and the project is deemed as successful; what do you do? You put it in your CV or portfolio. SEO Companies who are biased enough not to let their clients’ go through the results of their previous projects encourage a lack of transparency. These companies do not have anything on the record to show you.

It recommended that before investing in hiring and SEO, always look for reviews and testimonial references. If you are unable to find any, you know you should be looking for another agency. 

• Instant Ranking on Top Pages

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An agency trying to bluff with the people who are interested in their services will promise you high rankings within a short period. A company who claims to give you top page ranking in a short time are bad news. Their technique usually ends with them explaining several problems that your website has and will make you realize that you need to fix the issues to get the desired results.  Once the contract finished, businesses end up with a combination of keywords with zero to no monthly search volume. 

• Cold Emails

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Cold emails are the epitome of blind marketing. When a company wants to spread its name without targeting a relevant audience, they pitch to random email lists hoping to score a contract. It shows a lack of technique and inadequate knowledge regarding digital marketing. 

Agencies sending cold emails have probably purchased a bulk of emails from a provider or scraped them. That means that they have no clue about what you do in your business. They claim to work for someone and a proficient in something they don’t know. Some companies are deeply involved in this technique of spam based marketing, which is why they end up in the spam folder of your email. 

Conclusion

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Let’s conclude this article with a few key points that you must consider before hiring someone to perform SEO for your website. 

1. Keep in mind that SEO is not a short-term procedure, and it involves a lot of techniques and processes. 
2. You can never be too sure about the figures and results that you would be reaching because of your SEO strategies. 
3. Google changes policies now and then so it is essential to understand and remain up to date with the plans. 

We hope that this article will help you in identifying shady agencies and individuals practicing black hat SEO skills. If you are looking to invest in affordable SEO services, then make sure that the company being hired has a good track record with proven results.

Images Source

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https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/creative-agency-meeting-group-business-people-407327212?src=yBkPyi6ZT2Zjee6mMHCgQw-1-3&studio=1

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/businessman-seo-marketing-strategy-working-concept-226757146?src=K_6PjTAz55rX1f-1yPvOcw-1-15&studio=1

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/two-guys-girl-drinking-juice-office-790590634?src=yBkPyi6ZT2Zjee6mMHCgQw-1-7&studio=1

Changes Needed for Improved WebPage Performance

There are numerous ways of improving web-page performance. Each of the methods varies from one to the other Besides, and it also works differently for each person.
Users left with no patience. Hence, they want the website to load faster, quicker, and of course, user-friendly to navigate. There are three core areas to focus on.

1. Hardware i.e. Web Server
2. Server Side Scripting
3. Front-end Performance

Those mentioned above are the three main areas to focus on web development. With that thought in mind, we have a curated blog that shows the necessary changes needed for the improved webpage performance. Curious to know? Let us check out the blog! 

HTTP Requests

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HTTP stands for the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. The requests from the HTTP are numbered whenever a browser fetches the information, picture, or file from the server. 

As per the statistics, the HTTP requests tend to consume 80% of the webpage loading time. Besides, the browser will limit the requests to 4-8 connections per domain. Hence, this will result in using more HTTP requests. It will take longer to load as retrieving the data consumes time. 

So, try to minimize the HTTP requests by combining the CSS or JavaScript files. In addition to that, you can also reduce the number of images used. If they are huge, compress them to for fewer HTTP requests. 

Inline CSS and JavaScript

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It’s by default that the browsers fetch the external CSS and JavaScript. When the user shifts from the landing page, the browser will store the stylesheets and of course, the JavaScript files.

If you are using plenty of CSS and JavaScript files in the HTML document, then you unable to take full advantage of the web-browser’s caching features.  

Speed-Optimized Theme

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If you are a WordPress user, then you can improve the webpage performance by using the speed-optimized themes available for free and paid versions. For someone who lacks in coding, this turns out to be a brilliant option in optimizing the speed.

Also Read
Top 8 SEO Plugins For WordPress Website

Minimize Resources

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When the web developers design the website, they use plenty of spaces, indentations, and line breaks for secure communication within the team. While this is helpful to them, it does make the webpage look clutter and longer. It also increases the page-loading time.

Therefore, a simple way to resolve it is by minimizing the resources that make the coding languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript leaner. You can also use the plugins for page loading time. 

Fixing Broken Links

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Broken links tend to upset the customers and make the UX look poor. It also slows down the speed of the website. So, one has to check the broken links. If you try to do it manually, then it will undoubtedly become a tedious task. 

Thus, use the tools and plugins available to take care of the broken links. Once, you have installed the tool or plugin, then it will monitor all the links and gives notification via email or WordPress dashboard. 

Compressing Images

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According to the statistics, 60% of the average bytes loads per page, this is around 1504 KB. Images consequently consume a large amount of the HTTP requests. Most of the times, we tend to download the photos from the stock and without knowing the size and later uploading it on the server without optimizing the images for the web that leads to a slower response.

If you find yourself in such a situation, then you can install the plugins that automatically optimizes the images. There are even software options available Image Optimizer and Compressor.io for optimizations. 

Dedicated Hosting

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Last but not least comes the dedicated hosting options. If you are using the shared hosting option and not happy with the output, then it is high time to shift towards the dedicated hosting plans. It’s costly, but the investment is worth it.

One does not have to deal with the traffic surges and other small problems that occur in slowing down the web-page performance. But, when you have a dedicated hosting option, many advantages on your way. 

Time is money, especially when it comes to web-page performance. As we mentioned earlier, visitors go away from the websites that run slow; one has to make subsequent efforts in improvising it. 

The above seven changes help optimize web-page performance. Apart from the ones mentioned above, there are plenty of ways to try. So, go ahead and bring changes to your website. If you like the blog, then do share and drop suggestions in the comment section below. 

Social Media and the Role it Plays in our Lives

Social media plays such a vital role in our lives now. We can’t imagine life without it. This has become a global phenomenon and still widely spread. Social media is a medium that reaches people all around the globe. People are so connected these days; it is true that in the last 15 years, social media has taken the world by storm. Not so long ago was life still black and white? It was still a life where cell phones have not taken our lives completely and where we still use telephones to connect. The internet was used restrictedly, but this was just 10 -15 years back, and till then, social media management and the internet has taken our lives by storm. It is estimated that in the next 15 -20 years, everyone will have access to the internet.

When we talk about the internet, we can't ignore the social media sites be it Facebook or Instagram. These two sites have taken the world by storm and are conquering both the youth and the older generations. How social media gained popularity.

Social media - How it all began

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When the social media sites of hi5 and Orkut was created and launched, it didn't impact the people too much because at that point the internet was not introduced in the cell phones at a cheap rate. The internet was accessible only through laptops and computers. Although these sites like hi5 and Orkut gained popularity, the youth and older generation alike didn't get addicted. The first internet services introduced in phones was in 1996, but the internet services were limited and really expensive, and this carried on till the year 2004 -05 when the internet services started becoming more popular in cell phones, it was around this year 2004 that the internet sensation Facebook was launched too and there’s no looking back.

With the introduction of cheaper internet rates and Facebook in 2004, the internet became a household name, and its popularity isn’t taking aback by anything since then. Let’s take a look at youth and the social media

Youth and Social Media 

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 Previously the internet was accessible to people, but it didn't play such a pivotal role in their life. Yes, it connected everyone, but people would use the internet only using email, but with the dawn of Facebook and other social sites, it has completely taken away the time of the youth who spends about 5 -6 hours on the social media sites such Facebook, Instagram, and other such addictive sites. Facebook was created and used in 2006-07, and Instagram was launched in 2010 and has gotten the whole world hooked on them, and this is not slowing down thousands of people are creating their Facebook and Instagram account so as we're talking.

Effect of social media 

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There is a widespread effect of social media, especially Instagram and Facebook. The most common negative effect is addiction.

Addiction 

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The youth especially are addicted to these social media site, and social media control every aspect of their lives. They spend so much time on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and the latest addictive site TikTok. It can be assumed that social media has more addictive quality than cigarettes and alcohol, and this is alarming.

Sleeping Pattern 

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Another effect of social media is unhealthy sleeping patterns. With the youth becoming increasingly addicted, they have unhealthy sleeping patterns. Because the youth use their social media until the late wee hours of the night, they generally lose their sleep. The social media sites are not only addictive, but it also affects the sleeping patterns because the youth would use the social media sites until the late hours of the night they generally fall asleep with their phones and wake up the next day holding on to their phones.

Depression

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Another side effect of social media is poor mental health. It is found in studies that the excessive use of social media results in poor mental health and poor mood, which leads to numerous mood swings. It is found that the more time you spend on the internet or social media sites, the more it has adverse effects on your mood.

Unrealistic Expectation 

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Because of the pressure to look good and present you in the best way at all time, this creates unrealistic expectations. For example, Instagram is a site where you upload your photos so generally the youth or the older generation would like to upload only photos where they look good, or they would like to upload photos of places they've visited. This instant need to look good and present yourself and your lifestyle in a grand manner lead to harming ways in which the individual either spends so much money to look good and spend money on their trips just so to look good on social sites and impress their followers on Instagram.

Ruins Body Image 

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If you scrutinize Instagram, you'll see that the celebrities play a major role in it and the celebs would post a picture of their perfect body and rich lifestyle and this creates such a disparity between the celebs and the common man. The common man starts building negative body image, and they would also like to become more like the celebs, and this harms them more than anything else.

Briefly 

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It is therefore important to curb our needs and use of social media. If we use social media in moderation then there are no ways we'll get addicted to it, and we can perform our daily functions without many troubles because social media really mess up with our daily functionality instead of doing our homework we spend our time on the social sites and this creates havoc to our daily lives.

Finally

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To conclude, it is important to maintain moderation in life, be it in everything we do. So the same goes to social sites if we spend around 1 hour or at the most two hours on the social sites this doesn’t hamper with our daily lives and routine and it is good to be connected too.

Author Bio

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Walter Moore is a notable management consultant and digital marketing expert. He is an experienced digital marketer and has helped e-commerce businesses in all niches gain with his effective marketing strategies and guidance.