#fail: How to Completely Screw Up Your B2B SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most thoroughly understood subjects in digital marketing – just ask 20 different SEO experts for help and you’ll get 20 different plans.

Hire them all and presto! You’ve got… a lot of plans.

If that seems confusing, you could try to learn it on your own. Keeping up with Google is fun – there are only 500-600 ranking algorithm updates per year.

We’ve Seen It All

With a landscape that changes every couple of clicks, SEO know-how requires a lot of keeping up. But SEO know-how-not-to is its own kind of expertise as well.

We’ve optimized websites since the days of Lycos and AltaVista. Some of us even remember surfing the internet on blue UNIX screens – good times.

Over the years, we’ve seen some, uh… unique SEO methods. From black hat tactics to ineffective and complicated technical endeavors, we’ve witnessed SEO “strategy” so awful it could double as a magic trick: watch as your website completely disappears from search results!

As a key factor in driving traffic to your business website, SEO is kinda central to the whole success aspect. Screwing up SEO is a super effective way to tank brand recognition, leads, sales, and more. So how does it happen?

To help explain, we’ve created a 10-step guide to completely and utterly ruining your SEO. It’s that easy!

Ruin Your Website’s SEO in 10 Easy Steps

Step 1: Rely on Printed Materials, Skip the Digital Tools

Buy an SEO manual. Any edition. Read it carefully. Or don’t. If you’re pressed for time, just SparkNotes it.

You don’t need to monitor your site with Google Analytics or Google Search Console. Who cares what Google thinks about your site?

On the other hand, skip the reading. Just buy links to your site from someone you don’t know, preferably who uses Gmail as their company email – an instant sign of credibility. Contact JC Penney for help.

Step 2: Link Framing & Keyword Stuffing

Purchase 100 websites and link them all together. Stuff as many keywords as possible into the URLs. It’s not like Google is going to do anything about it.

And that white background? Throw some white-text keywords on there as well.

Step 3: Buzzwords Not Keywords

While we’re on the topic of keywords, don’t waste your time on research – after all, when has information gathering ever outperformed gut instincts? Who knows? It’s a hypothetical question. The point is, spend your time creating buzzwords, hashtags, and acronyms. Millennials can’t resist them. AIR (Am I Right)?! #yolo

Step 4: Duplicate Content Is the Bomb

Work smarter, not harder! Publish the same article everywhere you can and link it back to your 100 sites. Post it on every website you can get your hands on… Facebook, Reddit, Tumblr – you name it! Hell, even dig out that old Myspace account. Quantity outnumbers quality, amIright?

Step 5: Outsource or Automate (Everything)

Outsource everything. Trust your website to people you’ll never meet.

Even better: use bots, which can even write content. AI and prose is a match made out of perfection writing.

It’s 2020.5 and the future of your company is spelled #BOT. How cool is that? The millennials are going to love you. #DoTheRobot

Step 6: Customization Is for Suckers

If you’re using WordPress with Yoast, allow the default page titles and descriptions to populate. “One size fits all” works just as well for websites as it does for most things, so don’t bother to customize things with robots.txt, sitemap.xml or canonical links – pah!

Oh, and that “discourage search engines from indexing from this site” button? Look away.

Step 7: Don’t Be Elitist

Google PageRank is a silly, elitist concept designed to let higher quality content rise to the top. Well, who made Google the judge of what counts as “high quality content”? Listen to your marketing intern. Ignore this.

And when you launch a new website or change the name of a page, don’t trouble yourself with URL redirects – it’s fun to trick search engines and see those crawl errors skyrocket in Google Search Console. How high can you get them? Exhilarating!

Step 8: Don’t Worry about Hackers

Fear of cybercrime is so overblown. SSL certifications or other forms of encryption to keep your site protected? They’re just rackets. The internet is a safe place.

If you love the classic feel of WordPress 4.0, stick with it. Keyword rankings generally recover a year or so following a hacking. Maybe.

Step 9: Ignore Mobile

Don’t worry about mobile optimization – real business only happens at a desk.

Step 10: Ignore Google

Organic search is what matters, so just kiss Google Ads, Google My Business, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google-whatever goodbye. Who died and put Google in charge of the internet?

Bonus Step: Put IT in Charge of Your SEO

After all, why would you want your marketing strategy driving your SEO and lead generation? That’s crazy talk.

With So Many Ways to Fail at SEO, Which Do You Choose?

While there are many more ways to screw up your SEO, these steps will get you on your way quickly. As the old saying goes, if at first you succeed, try, try again.

However, if you’d rather have an SEO strategy that actually brings people to your site and generates leads and sales, we can help.