Five Common SEO Mistakes You Need to Avoid
Five Common SEO Mistakes You Need to Avoid
Let’s face it… SEO is here to stay. But it’s an ever-changing world, and we need to stay on top of the challenges as well as the opportunities it presents. If you think you’ve lost the way on your SEO journey, here are some pointers towards just five of the most common SEO mistakes you need to avoid right now.
#1. No Plan
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
It is crucial to understand what you actually want to achieve with your SEO endeavors. Increasing traffic to your website does not automatically entail a boost in sales. Understand your customers and what you want from your website and plan your SEO accordingly.
#2. Lousy Site Performance
Just two seconds! That’s about how much time you have to engage users on your site before they go elsewhere. Speed is one SEO ranking factor for Google and it really does affect your rankings. Finding the right company for hosting web services is a first step to ensuring the quality and speed of your site. You can even do your own speed test using one of the many tools available on the internet.
It’s a good idea to get rid of uncompressed and unoptimized images, as well as any plugins that can slow down user experience, especially mobile users, who just moved into pole position with over 55% of worldwide market share over desktop and tablet.
#3. Poor Insight
There’s really no excuse for no analytics. SEO is not about traffic but conversion. How can you know what content works on your site and what not? You need to be able to track your data and have insight on the makeup of your audience and their behavior on your site to improve SEO and conversion. Consider also doing a periodical audit of your site to understand site visitors and take action based on the data you have.
#4. Old, Unoriginal, Irrelevant… Content
There’s nothing worse than poorly written content—except maybe content that is plagiarized, duplicate, or irrelevant of course! Why not invest in original content written by real people and not software? Impress your audience with fresh, readable, and relevant information and check out common content writing mistakes to avoid. It doesn’t have to be only text either. Infographics, webinars, videos, podcasts or images are all alternatives to the written word and engage different types of site users.
#5. Keyword Troubles
Keyword research is essential to forming a keyword strategy. You need to get into the heads of your customers to pinpoint the keywords they use when looking for a product or service that you offer. What problems or needs to they have and how can you solve them? The answers will lead you to optimized keywords.
With too generic keywords, you’ll be competing for ranking with the big guys on the block. Avoid this by using more specific words which are uncommon or longer terms. Adding for example your geographic location will at least bring higher rankings for you among users looking for something local.
You can even refresh or update SEO basics by revisiting Google’s own SEO starter guide for a wealth of information to avoid keyword troubles.
Long-haul
SEO is a long-haul journey, with no real end in sight, but it doesn’t have to be tough and it’s never too late to learn more. Avoid SEO mistakes and take a look at some learning platforms where you can master your SEO and digital marketing skills.
Ready? Now let’s go do some SEO!
