Article By Bogdan Krstic
Fact-checked and written by a human ✔️
It’s all fun and games until someone loses their rankings overnight and yes, this happens more often than you think.
Will it happen to you?
Today, you will find out. Be aware of the 3 restoration SEO mistakes we’re going to cover because these will either cost you a ton of time or money (or even both). Let’s dive right in!
1. Trying to rank with a homepage
Your homepage should be only branded and not targeting any keywords. Do not chase rankings with your homepage.
What you should do instead is have a page for each of the services you offer and a page for each of the locations you’re serving.
Many companies limit themselves by using domains like “serviceincity.com” and then trying to rank for that service using their homepage.
This actually can work, but it’s going to be way more difficult and you’re hardly going to scale to other locations if you build your entire website around one location.
2. “I’ll just wait it out”
When most businesses do SEO, they’re following the one-and-done approach.
They set up their website and citations, open a GMB profile and then they… wait.
This approach is wrong. Letting Google “take care of everything” is a huge time-waster.
Some people do this due to a lack of SEO knowledge while others do it just because they’re lazy.
Aren’t we supposed to wait?
Yes, according to Google. However, if you’re smart, you will not wait. Instead, you will take consistent actions that will speed the whole process up.
Google is a robot, not a human being. It needs certain signals to recognize quality. This is why, once the initial foundation has been laid out, you need to “feed” Google’s robot with the signals it’s looking for.
These signals include traffic, engagement, and backlinks.
NOTE: The contrary of this is expecting the moon overnight. Yes, you can speed the process up but it will still take time.
3. Garbage content
Low quality, duplicate content doesn’t directly harm your rankings. Instead, it harms the user experience which results in bad rankings.
Internet is getting bombarded with content every day. This is why Google values great content that provides value to users.
And they will continue to value it more and more as their algorithm becomes a lot more sophisticated.
Naturally, users will click away if your website is garbage. This will result in poor conversion rates and horrible rankings.
You don’t want that, don’t you?
BONUS mistake - Spammy backlinks
Bumped into a guy that promises he can build 1,000 backlinks to your website in a week for $20?
Most of these links would have come from a “Public Blog Network” that is used solely for linking to other websites.
Google has no mercy for these deals and if they find out that you’re using PBNs, regardless of if you’re aware of what’s going on or not, your website will get either penalized or completely deindexed.
What to do instead
Not only do spammy backlinks not work but they can also get your website banned from Google. On top of that, they will waste your time and money.
Instead, focus on building quality backlinks.
10 quality backlinks > 1,000 spammy backlinks
Yes, they’re harder to acquire but they’re also the type of backlinks that ACTUALLY move the needle.
Wanna learn how to get’em? Check out this article.
That’s a wrap-up! Hope you enjoyed this article. If you did, spread the word around of this blog.
Also, join our Facebook group! You will be able to ask us anything digital-marketing-related and connect with other business owners from your industry. Come on!
Bogdan is a restoration SEO expert with over 3 years of experience helping businesses grow. He is passionate about the restoration niche because of how underserved it is, and RepairSprout is the business he started and works on with joy every day. When he is not helping restoration companies grow, he works out, takes long walks, and watches Suits, which is completely ironic given how rarely he dresses up in a suit himself.