Three Common Yet Often Ignored SEO Obstacles

Marketers in general tend to understand and appreciate the importance of identifying SEO obstacles where they exist. Some of which are of course more common than others.
Nevertheless, research suggests that certain SEO issues often go overlooked or ignored entirely. There’s apparently something of an SEO blind-spot as far as certain potential problems are concerned.

The good news being that in all instances, corrective action can be implemented to address the issue with relative ease. Nevertheless, positive progress cannot be made without first identifying what exactly is standing in your way.
So with this in mind, here’s a brief overview of three common yet often ignored SEO obstacles that could be affecting your progress:

1. Negative SEO
First up, negative SEO refers to any kind of SEO strategy implemented by a third party to harm your rankings. Rather than focusing on boosting their own SEO profile, those who get involved in negative SEO seek to damage the SEO profiles of others. Fake reviews, spam backlinks, copied and pasted content – negative SEO is surprisingly easy to go about and terrifyingly commonplace.

Should you detect any such activities taking place, you need to take action as quickly as possible. Proactive reputation management and regular SEO audits should be considered mandatory. If you lack the technical skills and experience to take care of things yourself, you may need to enlist outside help.

2. Google penalties
Google is becoming more heavy-handed with its penalties and punishments all the time. Slip up even slightly and the powers that be won’t hesitate to deal your online business a hammer-blow. Some Google penalties inflict moderate damage over time – others will see you plummet from the rankings overnight.

In both instances, the key to restoring order lies in first identifying where you went wrong. After which, it’s a case of slowly but surely implementing the necessary fixes. There’s no real room for quick fixes when it comes Google penalties – nor can the recovery process be rushed. Once again therefore, it’s critical to ensure you identify the issue at the earliest possible stage and take decisive action to repair the damage.

3. Keyword Cannibalisation
As for keyword cannibalisation, this is where your good intentions regarding choice keywords and phrases end up steering your SEO strategy down a dark path. When you use the same keywords in generous quantities, piece after piece, you quickly dilute the value and meaning of the respective keyword. Your pages begin competing with one another, ultimately blurring into one vague lump of generic content in the eyes of the search engines.

It’s the classic case of too much of a good thing doing you no favours at all. It’s a well-known fact that keywords should be approached and used strategically and in sensible moderation. Something that applies to your site’s content in general, as opposed to simply within the same piece of content. Tailor your content to ensure keywords aren’t overused for the sake of it and you may see a noticeable improvement to your SERP performance.