There are about 170 million active websites per year on the World Wide Web! How can yours stand out in the midst of so many? Great search engine optimization (SEO) is the place to start.
If you don’t get your SEO right, the search engines penalize your page. This means you won’t rank as high as you should in organic searches.
Managing your website is overwhelming at times. Just mastering the terminology takes time. But learning what SEO mistakes to avoid is important to your website’s success.
Read on to avoid making these seven common SEO mistakes!
Using the Wrong Keywords
When deciding on which keywords to use, be specific. Generic keywords bring traffic, but that traffic may be low-converting traffic. You don’t only want high traffic. You want consumers with a serious interest in buying your product.
Drill down and get specific so you’re attracting your target market.
Are you a photographer in Los Angeles who shoots real estate?
Don’t use the keyword “photographer” by itself. Get specific. Use “real estate photography services in Los Angeles.” This string of keywords together should give you good results right away.
Later, when you’re a known authority, optimize for more competitive words like “photographer.”
Keyword Stuffing
You must use keywords.
But, it’s a big mistake to put your target keywords in every sentence of your blog post! No one wants to read the same word over and over. And, worse than that, too many keywords stuffed into your website hurt your search engine performance.
Google uses Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) for recognition of content. This means you don’t need to overuse keywords within your website.
Many novice website designers overstuff keywords into their content and their sites end up registered as spam by search engines. Avoid overstuffing your keywords into your content.
It’s fine to use your keywords a number of times. But make sure you use them in a natural way. Do create good content that relates to your keywords. Don’t overuse the keywords themselves.
Publishing Duplicate Content
The quality of your website content is important. Search engines penalize content that appears plagiarized. If you’re taking content from other sites and spinning it to look like it’s your own, you won’t rank well in searches.
Don’t take text from other sites. Do your research. Take the time to write original content that resonates with your readers. Make posts that teach your target audience about your product.
Give your readers ideas and solutions that relate to your product.
Are you a plumber? Write a blog post about a simple way to unclog a sink. Give your target audience quality information that helps them. When they have a problem they can’t fix, you’re already a trusted source. They’ll call you first!
Don’t Forget Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Search engines “crawl” millions of websites. If you’re skipping title tags and meta descriptions, you’re missing a chance to appear in organic web searches. Title tags and meta descriptions are easy ways to optimize your content.
Web crawlers see your title tags and meta descriptions. These help the search engine index your site. Don’t leave them out.
It’s also important to include a short descriptor in the “alt tag” section of your images. It seems like a small element, but it’s an important detail that helps your site rank higher in a search.
Forgetting Quality Links
Has a site linked to your website? As long as the site is not spam, go ahead and link back to it. This helps build future traffic.
Look for quality sites to link to your original content. Find sites with high traffic, helpful content, and a good reputation. Then go ahead and link to those sites when they’re relevant to your content.
Relevance is important. Don’t link to a site only because it’s high quality and has lots of traffic. Search engines look for content that makes sense in the context of your site.
When you’re using anchor text for a quality link, use text that makes sense in the context of the link.
Mindful Internal Linking
It’s good to include internal links. But make sure you’re not making a few common mistakes. Don’t link to your top-performing pages only because they’re top performing.
It’s a great idea to put internal links to your top-performing pages. But it’s only good for optimization if page links are relevant to the focus and topic of the content you’re writing about.
If you stuff your content with internal links only for the sake of linking, you’ll rank lower with search engines. The content and the links must be natural and relevant to the topic you’re writing about.
Write with intent. Focus your content on a topic with meaning in relation to your business. Include keywords and links that make sense.
Painful Mobile Experience
More people use mobile devices than desktop computers when it comes to surfing the web. You must optimize your website’s performance for mobile devices.
You’ll lose potential customers if they can’t navigate your website from their smartphone. Optimizing your site for mobile helps your site rank high in Google searches.
If you’re optimized for mobile devices, you can install extras such as QR codes. A QR code is a small box made up of black and white squares. It’s machine-readable code that can store URLs, tickets, event dates, and other information.
Users love QR codes since the code keeps information at their fingertips.
Avoid SEO Mistakes
SEO can make or break your website. Implementing a good SEO strategy is a must. You need original, relevant blog posts and other content. You need great internal and external links and a site that works well on mobile devices.
Use targeted keywords, but don’t go overboard. Don’t forget what seem like little details, such as title tags and meta descriptions.
Avoiding making these SEO mistakes and you’ll see a difference in your website traffic. Building a website is only the first step in exposing customers to your product. Getting the traffic to come takes time, energy, and consistency.
Looking for solutions to your SEO problems? Find more out here.
