Warning: That influencer's SEO advice cost me 6 months of traffic

I mean, so I followed this popular digital marketing influencer's advice about using long-tail keywords for my dog grooming shop's website. She had a whole course and everything, seemed legit. I spent like 3 weeks rewriting all my service pages to target these super specific phrases like 'best hypoallergenic haircut for golden doodles in Austin'. After 6 months of watching my traffic flatline, I finally asked a local SEO consultant in Austin to look at it. She basically laughed and said my keywords were so narrow nobody was searching for them. Turns out the influencer was pushing a strategy for huge ecommerce sites, not for a single-location small business like mine. Has anyone else gotten burned by generic advice from someone who doesn't understand your specific niche?

2 comments

2 Comments

tessa_roberts15d ago

Did you check if that influencer has ever actually run a local business themselves, or were they just another generic online guru?

hugo_jones25d ago

Did my buddy actually blow 2k on this one guru's course, and then find out the guy's only "local business" was running a dog walking app from his parents' basement? lol. Yeah, that was a hard yikes.