Most of the SEO campaigns lead to nothing but failure – It’s like they are destined to be. Majorly because expectations are set to high with verily low budgets and assumptions is the foundation for customer expectations rather than authentic data collected from research.

Another increasingly becoming widespread reason of SEO failure is the old SEO norms that everybody follows. They are some centuries old and while everything in the past decade has changed, SEO trends have transformed too. However, not much has changed for a lot many brands, companies and even small-scale businesses in terms of SEO.

The centuries-old norms are still in business. They are a leading cause of failure, few understands the fact. There is a dire need to break free from the norms that are keeping us away from marketing in the right direction. Here are 5 points to remember, that shouldn’t need to be implemented anymore, the next time you’re on it:

1. Old School Article Submissions

The moment SEO drops in the conversation; the next thing is EzineArticles and the others in the categories. Are you still stuck there? It’s about time that you get out of there for it really isn’t the best of tactics anymore. Link building is a complicated matter for you can’t just optimize anything, it takes a lot of time and the kind of efforts involved requires loads of work in the background.

Why not try relationship building with bloggers? Go on and write guest posts for them that hold value for them, their site and the community that follows them. This way your brand will gain exposure on a readily established community.

2. A No-News Press Release

So you know now, relationship building over mere link building, what’s next? A Press Release? Well, do you have some news that needs to be shared? If you answered ‘No’ to this then the argument that you just want your name out, just doesn’t hold up.

Press Release is more than just linking and getting your name up. It’s building public relationships, a conversation held with the stakeholders to let them know that you care for them. When leveraging relationships comes easy to you, that’s where you know you have the upper edge – the whole purpose of PR is to inform and spread awareness rather than just link building.

3. Automation kills the real purpose

There are so many automated tools out there that you can actually use but there is a limitation to just about everything. If you overdo them, you lose your actual voice and are living under the shadow of automation which does not allow for real-time relationship building.

Through SEO, you need to build and uphold your relationship. And to be able to do that, you need to be social for if you are not, your brand is rather muted or have been strangled to death.

4. Implanting tactics without strategy

Although this is plain general, but you need to know that a lot many people actually do this and have been doing this since centuries – implementing the tactics without an appropriate plan. SEO certainly does not work like this. Unless you have a proper penetration plan, don’t go any further. Stop right there, think again, browse more, rinse and then repeat.

5. Paying attention to Rankings, only

Sometimes you are handed a report of rankings, and that’s all that we have ever cared about, and you find out you’re on top of Google results: Bravo! But wait, whatever happened to the traffic and analytics and the sales that would have been drawn from there? Whoops! Looks like you were focusing only on rankings. HUMONGOUS mistake!

As fascinating and captivating as such ranking reports may sound, the job of SEO to steer the conversation as well, to a meaning that you really want the end-customers to know.

Now you all the norms that you need to break free from, so what are you waiting for? Get to work and don’t forget, hiring an expert who speaks OTHERWISE than the norms above will really do you good!