10 Mistakes to Avoid for a Successful Career in SEO

Fahim

February 17, 2024

Blog

10 Mistakes to Avoid for a Successful Career in SEO

I had been on an in-house SEO team of a Facility Management Consulting and Engineering Network.

Throughout my journey of learning SEO and working with a real business, I’ve come across some strategic SEO mistakes from both an SEO and client perspective.

Here are the 10 of these mistakes to avoid becoming successful in SEO.

To be honest, I made most of these mistakes myself.

Mistake #1: Don't Obsess Over Traffic Numbers

SEO is nothing more than a means to an end, and that end is more traffic, leads, and sales.

❌ And that’s why we never want to be obsessed with traffic.

We need to become obsessed with generating revenue, and that all begins and ends with keyword research.

The truth is we, SEO specialists, can’t control product quality, how the offer is presented, and how well a business can sell its product.

But what we can control is the quality of the traffic that we send to a website.

Unfortunately, many agencies know how to lie with data.

So what they’ll do is they’ll target informational keywords with lots of search volume to grow their client’s traffic numbers.

But in the end, the client is confused why traffic has increased but sales haven’t grown.

That’s because informational keywords rarely lead to direct conversions.

That’s why my keyword research process uses a bottom-up approach.

Instead of caring about search volume, I care about intent and conversions.

And from there, every single action is based on improving the performance of keywords that actually drive revenue.

Let’s take the example of Dental SEO.

Suppose I want to rank for “Dental SEO services in Los Angeles,” which indicates a potential client’s intent to find SEO services specifically for dental practices in Los Angeles.

Firstly, I would create a dedicated landing page entirely focused on this target keyword.

Then, I’d identify related keywords that could complement this main page, such as “How to improve online visibility for dental clinics” or “Benefits of SEO for dental practices.”

These informational keywords are designed to support the commercial keywords.

So I recommend beginning with the end in mind and building your content strategy to support the keyword that’ll actually drive revenue.

Mistake #2: Thinking SEO is Everything

SEO is one marketing technique designed to drive organic traffic from search engines like Google.

But Google is only one traffic source, and it’s not wise for us to put all our eggs in one basket.

For example,

YouTube and email marketing can be the biggest sources of revenue in our SEO business.

Diversifying customer acquisition channels will actually make our SEO business succeed.

Mistake #3: Relying Solely on Salary

Affiliate marketing, creating courses, or even starting our own e-commerce business are all terrific ways to make money online with our SEO skills.

But if we are just starting out, there’s one thing that’ll stall our growth and even possibly kill our venture: a lack of capital, or in other words, a lack of cash flow.

In fact, according to a study conducted by CB Insights, 29% of small businesses failed because they ran out of cash.

And that’s why I personally started client SEO right away.

However, I tried to start affiliate marketing in the fishing niche with my Top Gear Best Fisher website.

It’s not growing fast now, because of lack of capital.

To produce income with affiliate marketing, we need to produce content and acquire high-quality backlinks, both of which cost money.

Since initially our budget will be tight, it’s going to take us years to get any traction.

On the other hand, we can accelerate our results by simply having more cash from our client SEO service to invest in our project.

That’s what makes client SEO so powerful.

We can take our profits from working with clients and reinvest them into other projects.

Mistake #4: Consuming Without Action

At the end of the day, we can watch every YouTube video on SEO, read every blog post, and sit and think about SEO all day.

But nothing will change until we actually get our hands dirty.

The real mastery comes from actually doing the work.

That’s the only way to build real long-term expertise.

Every time we take action and learn from our mistakes and successes, our experience has a compound effect, meaning we get better and better the longer we do it.

The key is to make sure we’re always learning from our mistakes and always trying to level up.

Mistake #5: Fixating on Lagging Metrics

There are two variables we need to track to achieve any goal.

First, we need a lag measure, which is the primary goal that we cannot control today.

For example, a lagging measure is, “I will easily make $20,000 per month from SEO services by December 31st. 2024”

And this is a lagging goal because we can’t control it today.

However, what we can control are our lead measures.

A lead measure is what we can actually do today to get to that goal.

An example is, “I will reach out to 10 local businesses every single day and offer a free SEO audit.”
Notice that this is action-oriented.

The key point here is that we need to focus on the output because that’s where all the magic happens.

Mistake #6: Ignoring Supplementary Skills

We all have heard of the idea that our income is directly proportional to the amount of value we add to the marketplace.

Well, it’s the most important idea we can get out of this post.

Listen, if we want to increase our income, we must increase our value in the marketplace.

It’s that simple.

And when I was new to SEO, I used to get paid very low per hour, and now I can get clients with higher rates.
So how did I make that happen?

Well, it’s because I increased my value by improving my SEO skill set and adding supplementary skills to my tool belt.

You can do the same.

I highly recommend learning skills like conversion optimization, paid ads, sales funnels, copywriting, persuasion, relationship building, PR, and most importantly, sales.

Mistake #7: Not Starting Our Own Project

If we really want to level up, then we need to have our own projects, projects where we are solely responsible for the success or the failure.

And you’ll be shocked how fast we’ll learn when we actually have skin in the game.

Mistake #8: Not Having Systems and Processes

Think about this: what would happen if Toyota tried to create a car from scratch every time without any systems?

Well, it would be horrifying because every car would be different and likely very dangerous.

So then why do so many SEO gurus rely on their experience instead of building systems?
It’s a huge mistake.

The best SEOs on the planet take the experience that they have in their mind and put it into a repeatable, step-by-step process.

But an organic system, a system that team members can be trained on, so we can produce predictable SEO results every time.

And that makes our SEO business more efficient and effective, and it helps us drive better results for our clients.

Systems are the lead domino for any SEO company’s long-term success.

Mistake #9: Being the Smartest Person in the Room

We all have probably heard the idea that “You’re the sum of the five people you surround yourself with.”

Well, we may be sick of hearing it at this point, but truer words have never been spoken.

For example, if we spend our time with people who see the benefit of proper nutrition and exercise and believe staying fit is important, then we’re likely to maintain similar standards.

And the opposite is true as well.

I won’t belittle the point, but if we want to take our SEO skills and our business or personal development to a whole new level, we need to be around people who have already achieved the goals we’re aiming for.

Remember, we are who we surround ourselves with.

Mistake #10: Getting Complacent

So there are two quotes that explain this way better than I can.

And

The truth is, there will never be a time in our life where there isn’t more to learn.

It’s never-ending.
And that’s why we must adopt a learner’s mindset.

Even if we don’t consider ourselves a learner, we should train ourselves to become one.

It wasn’t easy for me in school, but I developed into a learner after graduation.

So you can definitely do it too because I did it.

So I hope this article serves you well, and if you got some value, please share it and leave a comment below.

And thank you so much for investing your time into reading this article, and you can follow me for more.

Tags :

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Have Any Question?

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consecte adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore