The Worst SEO Mistakes Businesses Make
The Worst SEO Mistakes Businesses Make
If you are managing a business of any size, you have undoubtedly realized that in today’s dynamic marketplace there’s no way you can win without a relevant digital presence. However, simply going online won’t be sufficient and you should think and invest in the right efforts that would lead to tangible success. In the meantime, while you are working on the optimization of your website, for instance, you better be aware of the basics and avoid the worst SEO mistakes businesses usually make.
The Biggest Technical SEO Mistakes
At first, search engine optimization (SEO) was all about technicality. With time, Google and other search engines improved their algorithms and made them less dependent on the back-end and more dependent on the quality of the content. However, some aspects still matter and they are very easy to implement and fix.
Poor Internal Architecture and Link Structure
The internal website architecture is the base on which your entire site is structured and determines the distribution of your traffic. As top pages usually get the most link juice, what content you put there, how you format them and connect them with the other parts of your site is crucial. Additionally, when crawlers start indexing a website they move from page to page through the internal links. This makes deeply hidden pages less authoritative and encourages fewer conversions. That is why, one should be very precise when developing the internal link structure and building redirects, like 404 errors or duplicate content could have a devastating effect on your ranking. What you need to aim for, basically, is having all your webpages at most 3 clicks away from the home one. And if your current situation is different and you plan on improving your links now, then you can submit an XML sitemap at the end, encouraging the search engines to reassess and reindex your site.
Too Slow Loading Speed or Lack of Responsiveness
The simple truth is that if your site is not working properly, the chance that it’ll be ranked well is very low. As loading time is a major factor in website abandonment from the user’s point of view, especially in mobile, search engines require pages to load fast, preferably in under 3 seconds. And as slower websites translate not only in the lower ranking but also in lower conversion and worse user experience, you have a further incentive to shorten the loading time. Additionally, with people searching more and more mobile and being almost always connected to their phones, the responsiveness of websites became a must. If you want to gain more insights, you can rely on the PageSpeed tool of Google, that would facilitate the optimization process. If you aim at solving the problem though, the best you can do is getting a hosting provider nearer to your target market.
Some of the Biggest Strategic SEO Mistakes
While the technical aspects are a necessary prerequisite for a well-optimized and well-ranking website, as mentioned above, they are in no way sufficient and the strategy behind your SEO efforts is what would make a difference. So make sure to avoid those mistakes, as well.
Choosing Wrong Keywords
If you’ve followed all the rules when optimizing your site, building links, and creating campaigns, but you still see no results, then most probably you are aiming at the wrong set of keywords. The problem here could be complex. You may be optimizing for too broad terms or too popular ones, which hardly give results for small and medium-sized businesses. The easier you can do to avoid this problem is relying on efficient keyword research tools like the ones provided by Google Analytics and ahrefs. Another issue could be the overreliance on long-tail keywords and any attempt to fit them in anchor texts or content pieces. And the biggest problem could be a lack of insights into what your prospective customers could look for and find on your website.
Creating Low Quality Content
Once you’ve figured out the right keywords, the worst mistake you could make is creating content for the sake of creating content only. With Google improving its algorithms every day, it is now looking for websites, which add and deliver value to the end users. Thus, the quality of the content uploaded matters much more than the availability of certain keywords and is where you need to put the focus. Create content, which is extensive and informative. Add the details you could not find elsewhere. As pages with less than 200 words unique content are not indexed at all, you will aim at the higher quantity while insisting on the quality, as well. And then work on evergreen topics that would make your effort relevant for the long-term, attracting both users and link in the future.
Not Targeting the Right Audience
Finding your target is just as important as setting your keywords right. And the most common mistake here is surely having a too wide audience. There is no way you can deliver value to all people browsing the web and if you attempt to bring “everything to everyone”, you are at the edge of delivering “nothing to no one”. So, either take the conventional marketing approach and create your Buyer persona or just keep asking yourself what your ideal customer would be and what he or she would be looking for.
The most essential SEO mistake: not optimizing and auditing your site
Search engine optimization is clearly a continuous effort. So doing it for a week or two will be just as inefficient as an avoiding one of the mistakes mentioned once. So invest some time in defining clear goals. As SEO is complex and requires a good understanding and sufficient expertise so that your objectives could be translated into a strategy and actionable steps could be implemented to improve your digital presence, never hesitate to hire a professional. Only then you will be on the right track.