Being in the SEO business for over 8 years, we have seen MANY mistakes. This post shares some of the most common and costly mistakes businesses make when it comes to SEO.
When an SEO company audits a website, it’s easy to identify the costly mistakes that businesses are making. These mistakes have a negative effect on the results of their search engine optimization campaigns and can even cause them to lose website rankings completely. Check out the full article for a list of the most common SEO mistakes we see today.
Not targeting the right keywords.
One of the biggest mistakes we see on almost every website audit is not targeting the right keywords in your content. Not only is it a waste of time, effort and money to try and rank for keywords that you’re not even targeting, but it could get your site penalized by Google instead.
Map out your primary keyword before you start writing content and keep it in mind at all times. You should also be using variations of those keywords throughout your content so that you can make sure you’re hitting them all.
A good SEO will be using keyword research to find the right keywords for your business & content. The two go hand in hand. If you’re not targeting the right keywords, the content doesn’t matter because it won’t rank anyway.
If you are targeting the right keywords, then you have to look at what’s happening on the page. Is your content optimized for those keywords? Does it use those keywords? Does it answer questions that people are searching for? Are you using your target keywords naturally or are they stuffed everywhere in a way that looks spammy?
Wasting time on low-quality backlinks.
If you’re hiring a company that is promising you thousands of backlinks, run away as fast as you can. These companies are not doing anything to help your site. They’re just wasting your money. A good SEO company will focus on getting high-quality links from high-authority sites in your niche or industry.
Link building takes time, effort and money but if you don’t know what you’re doing then you could end up doing harm rather than good when trying to build links. If you’re targeting low-quality websites with low domain authority then there’s no point even bothering because they will have no impact on your own domain authority and search engine ranking.
Using keyword-stuffed content and/or title tags.
Do you use keyword-stuffed content and title tags on your site? Do you add as many keywords to your page copy as possible? If so, we’re going to guess that your conversion rates are lower than they could be.
SEO is about providing value to the person looking for information. It’s not about cramming your page with keywords to draw in more traffic. While it makes sense to optimize the content of the page for search engines, don’t forget that people are reading the content, too.
If you concentrate on writing good content instead of cramming it full of keywords, your page will be more relevant to users who are searching for those terms and more likely to appear at the top of search results.
Not using structured data and/or semantic markup in a good way.
Structured data is just a fancy way of saying “semantic markup.” That’s the code that tells Google what your web page is about. You need to use appropriate markup on any important web pages to make sure Google knows what your page is about. For example, if you’re a plumber and want to rank for plumbing services in Google, you need to use markup that tells Google that your page is about “plumbing services.” This would allow Google to display your page higher in the search results when someone searches for terms like “plumbing services.”
Using rich snippets or microdata can help search engines understand your website, which leads to better rankings for all your content. It does this by providing more information about the page in an organized manner. This can be anything from what type of business you are to how many reviews your products have received.
Schema markup is one of the most powerful SEO tools at your disposal. When used correctly, it can help search engines better understand your site and improve its ranking. You should at least use schema.org markup for your most important pages, like your home page and product pages.
Not targeting your content for local SEO.
Most businesses need local search optimization, yet few do it well. It’s one of the easiest ways to increase organic traffic and leads, yet many companies overlook it.
Most people won’t search for “handyman” — they’ll search for “handyman in Melbourne, FL.”
If you’re not targeting your content for local SEO, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. Every day, consumers use search engines to find the products and services they need. And according to Google, “four out of five consumers use search engines to find local information.”
In fact, with each passing year, local searches are becoming more prominent, especially as mobile continues to evolve. With the growing popularity of voice search and wearable technology, it’s no surprise that people are searching for local businesses with their smartphones more often than ever before.
Not optimizing your website and/or blog for speed.
If your website or blog takes a long time to load, it will increase your bounce rate and lower the number of pages viewed — which are both negative signals to Google, causing it to lower your search engine ranking in favor of faster-loading websites.
Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to speed up your site, including: Using a content delivery network (CDN) which takes static files (images, CSS and JavaScript) from your site and serves them up via its distributed network of servers around the world so they load much more quickly than they would if they were hosted on one server alone.
It’s easy to check whether your site is optimized for speed: run a free speed test on gtmetrix.com or WebPageTest.org to see whether your page is loading within two seconds. If not, try compressing images and caching static content.
Not updating your website regularly.
If you’re not updating your website content regularly, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to improve your search rankings. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if you’re not updating regularly, you’re basically not doing SEO at all.
Writing great content is the very foundation of SEO. And it’s also what most people tend to neglect the most!
Why? Because it’s hard work. It’s easier to slap some keywords into a blog post and call it a day than to create something that people will actually want to read. But without great content, your SEO efforts will never achieve their full potential.
Top-notch content is a must. You need to be creating or updating new content regularly if you want your SEO efforts to pay off. Great content is the heart and soul of every good SEO campaign.
Not having a blog
Every business owner should have a blog, but unfortunately, many companies struggle with the most crucial part of blogging – creating content. The lack of content is one of the biggest problems I encounter when doing SEO audits. There are so many businesses that do not have a blog on their site or even if they do, it’s been months since they’ve updated it! It’s definitely safe to say that having a blog will give your website a major boost.
Content is King!
I hear so many business owners saying “but I don’t know what to blog about.” Well, no problem! Here are some ideas for you.
1. Write about your company history.
2. Provide useful tutorials for your customers on how to use your products or services. This way you can build trust and credibility with them before they buy anything from you.
3. Write about industry trends in your niche and how you can help them solve their problems with your products or services.
4. Interview successful clients who are using your products or services and get them to share their success stories with other potential customers on your blog. This way you can build more trust and credibility with potential customers and convert them into customers more easily by showing them other people’s success stories.
Not having a call to action
Your visitors should know what action you want them to take when they land on your website. Don’t make them guess — tell them! For example, if you sell products online, don’t expect people to find their own way around your site to buy something. Make the shopping experience easy for them by directing them to “click here to shop now” or “browse our product catalog.”
Having a vague or ambiguous call to action makes it difficult for someone to convert. If people aren’t sure what the next step is after they’ve landed on your website, they’re more likely to leave. Letting visitors know exactly what you want from them helps increase conversions and build trust with your audience.
A vague call to action might say something like “contact us.” This tells visitors that there’s something on the other side of the contact form, but it doesn’t give them an idea of what will happen once they fill it out. A good call to action will provide a specific description of what happens next. For example, “complete this form and we’ll contact you within 24 hours” gives visitors a clear understanding of how they should use your contact form and how long they’ll have to wait before hearing back from your company.
Poor user experience
Poor user experience can negatively impact your SEO efforts. Make sure that the links on your website make sense, are easy to read, and intuitively take users where they want to go. On top of that, make sure that the copy on your page answers the question being asked and is written in a way that will be satisfying for users to read. This will ensure you have happy visitors and happy search engines.
SEO and user experience (UX) are not always complementary. In fact, many of the actions that marketers take to improve search visibility often directly conflict with the principles of good UX.
Trying to please both the search engines and your users is a delicate balance, but ignoring the user experience can have dire consequences for your SEO strategy.
Takeaway
The best way to avoid these common mistakes when it comes to SEO on your website is to hire a professional. Not only will they be able to help you generate more traffic, but they will help save you a great deal of time and money as well. Be sure to ask for references and examples of their work before committing to anything.
That said, we hope that this list will help to ensure that you are making your best SEO efforts online. If you work hard and learn what SEO is all about, your site will do well. When people search for the service or product you offer, they should see that you have it—and they should be able to find it easily on your website. You want them to be able to do business with you online, which means ensuring that your SEO is on point. And if it’s not now, there’s still time to fix things—so no excuses!
