If you work as an SEO specialist or in a digital marketing agency, you’ve probably wondered why small marketers ignore SEO and focus only on ads initially.
Sure, it’s easy to say they want quick results, but that’s not the only reason. Over my experience, I’ve noticed 7 things that make them skip SEO. Let’s go over them below.
What Happens When Marketers Ignore SEO?
I like to think of it this way — when marketers ignore SEO, it’s like working on daily wages. If they stop running ads, their traffic stops, and so does their income. It’s back to zero.
But SEO works differently. It builds momentum over time, so even if you pause your efforts for a bit, the results can keep coming.
Think about it — when you rely only on paid ads, you’re paying for every visitor. But with SEO, you’re investing in long-term growth. It’s like planting seeds today that keep giving you fruit for years.
The real question is:
What benefits are marketers missing out on when they ignore SEO?
Read >> What Happens When You Ignore SEO?
7 Reasons & Blunders: Why Do Small Digital Marketers Ignore SEO
The reason some marketers ignore SEO is simple — they want quick results. They don’t want to wait or spend their time and energy on something that feels slow and doesn’t give instant leads or sales. That’s why most of them start with paid ads to get their business going.
Experience
As an SEO expert, I’ve worked in a small digital marketing agency offering SEO services and paid ad campaigns. But here’s what I noticed:
They weren’t giving SEO the same focus as ads. For them, SEO was more of an afterthought because it requires time, effort, and sometimes money — and they didn’t want to wait for results. What they didn’t realize is that SEO has a snowball effect. Once it starts working, it keeps building over time.
Most of the time, small marketers don’t work on SEO at all. But even when they do, they end up making common mistakes.
I’ve seen many successful digital marketers with paid ads and making a living from them. But because of these mistakes, they assume SEO doesn’t work or isn’t worth the effort.
Let’s talk about those mistakes and why they happen!
1. Lack of Understanding:
There’s a popular saying — having no knowledge is better than having half-baked knowledge.
Many digital marketers see SEO as something super simple. They think it’s just about doing keyword research and adding those keywords naturally to the content. But SEO is way more than that.
It’s about building a brand. It involves things like niche research, competitor analysis, creating strategies, and more to help businesses grow.
So, instead of taking SEO lightly, marketers need to understand the bigger picture. It’s not just about ranking on Google; it’s about creating long-term success.
My Experience
Let me share a real-life example from my time at a small digital marketing agency. My team lead had to work alone at first to lay the foundation for a project. The website was an eCommerce site selling unstitched dresses for women.
So, my team lead did some keyword research and decided to use the keyword “Unstitched fabric” for the home page of the website. It had good search volume and low difficulty, so it seemed like a good choice. But I knew that the keyword didn’t really fit with what we were selling. Who searches for “unstitched fabric” when looking to buy unstitched dresses for women?
After six months of effort, we managed to rank on the first page for that keyword. However, we only got around 4,000 impressions a month and 200-300 clicks. We missed out on the right audience, and the number of sales was way lower than it could have been. The worst part was that once the website had gained authority, it was hard to change things. That kind of growth takes time.
2. Quick Results:
SEO isn’t a quick fix. It takes time, effort, and patience. You need at least three to six months to build a solid foundation. The key is to stay consistent and keep going — the results will follow!
3. Failure to Adapt to Algorithm Changes:
Google usually releases two core updates each year that can either help or hurt your website. On top of that, Google rolls out smaller updates to support these core changes.
The problem is, that many SEOs struggle to keep up with the changes. And when they can’t adapt, they end up frustrated or even “blasting” (giving up).
4. Wrong On Page Architecture:
A big part of SEO comes down to on-page factors like how you use headings and where you place your keywords. If you focus on the main keyword the wrong way, it can hurt your SEO, whether you’re running a blog or a service website.
But many small digital marketers make the mistake of just throwing keywords into their content and expecting great results. They forget about how Google actually reads their text. They don’t consider NLP (Natural Language Processing), which is how Google understands and processes what’s written.
Getting your on-page SEO right is more than just stuffing in keywords — it’s about how Google will interpret and rank your content.
My Experience
When I was at a small digital marketing agency, I noticed a lot of mistakes in how things were being done. For example, my team lead had to create a web page for a service website, and here’s what happened:
First, they did some keyword research and wrote content. Then they worked with the developer, but they updated the page randomly without thinking about some important things:
- Understanding the niche of the website is key.
- Keyword research should be based on the keywords our competitors are using.
- The structure of the landing page and how many sections it needs depends on those keywords.
- The order of sections matters too!
- Adding CTAs (Call-to-Actions) in the right places is important.
- It’s a good idea to look at competitor pages and add useful sections that improve the user experience, even if they’re not directly related to keywords.
I could definitely write a blog post about how to do keyword research the right way (with the right intent and audience) and how to build a landing page that actually works!
5. Creates Bulk Spammy Backlinks:
Some marketers hire people to build backlinks in bulk, like creating 40+ backlinks a day, but they often ignore some important factors:
- Spam score should be less than 5%
- The website should have over 1000 visitors
- Domain Authority (DA) or Domain Rating (DR) should be 25 or higher
- The website should be relevant to your topic
- Use LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords as anchor text, not just the main keyword
- Focus on pages that are on the 2nd or 3rd page of search results
- The website should be secure (use HTTPS)
- Don’t go overboard — two backlinks from one domain are enough
- Backlinks should be dofollow
- Contextual backlinks are better (ideally, in blog posts)
If I talk about quality backlinks, here’s what I believe: The best backlink is one that brings you traffic. It’s not just about having your link on a webpage; it’s about getting traffic from that page where your link is placed. That’s what really makes a backlink valuable!
The good news is, that Google doesn’t punish websites just because they have bad backlinks. Even if competitors try to hurt your site with poor backlinks, Google will only pass on the link juice from the good ones and won’t penalize you for the bad ones.
6. Overlooks Technical SEO:
Right now, Google is really focusing on technical SEO, and it’s super important. SEO specialists can actually grow a website just by working on the technical side — even without making any changes to the on-page SEO.
It’s not just about the usual things we think of with technical SEO, like Schema markups, minifying JS & CSS, fixing canonical issues, and managing redirects. There’s more to it than just following a basic checklist.
I can share an advanced technical SEO checklist with real steps in another blog post, but for now, let’s keep it simple.
My Experience:
Let me share something from my experience. Back when I worked at a small digital marketing agency, my team lead came to me one day and said:
Team lead: Wahaj?
Me: Yes?
Team lead: We’re working on 8+ e-commerce stores, and I need you to write 16 blog posts by the end of the day — 2 posts for each store.
Me: What? You’re kidding, right?
Team lead: Nope, hurry up. And don’t waste time on keyword research — just get an idea from GPT.
Me: Ok…I started writing and managed to finish one blog post in 3 hours, which wasn’t enough for a good-quality post.
Team lead: What? You’ve only done one? Let me show you how it’s done. He opened Bard AI, got an idea, and generated a whole blog post in 8-10 minutes.
Me: Sorry, but I wouldn’t do that if it were my site.
Team lead: I get your concern, but just do it anyway.
So, I wrote 10 blog posts a day and published them. Obviously, they didn’t rank or perform. After a while, we had to stop this spammy approach.
Because of this, they didn’t get the desired results and ended up relying on paid ads instead.
Final Thoughts: My Advice to Small Digital Marketers
Dear Beginner Digital Marketer, I get it — it’s tempting to stick to what’s working right now, especially when money is coming in. But think of it like this: If you’re going back and forth five times a day, carrying a can of water each time, go ahead. But imagine this: What if you could set up a pipeline to bring water straight to your house? It’s a little work upfront, but after some time, you won’t have to carry those cans anymore.
Instead of working hard every day, you’d just have to flip a switch and get water directly. No more lifting heavy cans or wasting time. Just a little bit of smart work every day, and soon, you’ll have a steady flow of water without all the effort.
I could go on with facts and logic to explain more, but let’s keep it simple for now. The point is, SEO is like that pipeline. You can run little campaigns for specific tasks on each post — like internal linking or optimizing meta titles — and bit by bit, your results will improve. Perfect doesn’t exist; it’s all about constant improvement.
We’ll get better over time, one small step at a time.
Discover more from Wahaj Ansari
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.