7 Common SEO Mistakes That Kills Business Growth
Don’t Let These 7 Common SEO Mistakes Kill Your Business Growth
In a world where organic search brings 51% of all website traffic, SEO should be an essential part of any digital marketing strategy.
As a marketer, you already know the importance of SEO. It is one of those strategies that’s easy to implement but requires time and patience to show the results.
Sometimes you can’t seem to get the expected results. Mostly in those cases, the reason is a few common SEO mistakes.
That’s why I have curated a list of 7 common mistakes that people make when implementing SEO strategies on their website.
Let’s dive right in…
7 Most Common SEO Mistakes
1. Creating Poor-Quality Content That Doesn’t Satisfy Search Intent
Google itself reveals the importance of good quality content.
Unfortunately, most marketers get it wrong. They avoid the hard work of putting original and link-worthy content and think that publishing poor-quality or plagiarized content is going to work.
Well, it’s not.
The reason lies in how Google works. If a particular website is answering searcher’s queries and helping them solve their problems, Google will give that website an SEO boost.
Although being one of the most common SEO mistakes, it has a simple solution: write content with your audience in mind. Optimize your content for readers, and it will be automatically optimized for search engines.
2. Buying Links
When people publish poor content, they expect their rankings to boost overnight. That’s not how search engines work. So in frustration, they start buying links.
They forget two things:
(1) One high-quality backlink is way better than 500 paid and sketchy ones.
(2) Buying links from other websites is a violation of Google’s webmasters guidelines.
So, instead of risking getting a penalty from Google, you should focus on building high-quality backlinks.
You can follow these tips to build high-quality backlinks.
· Write guest posts on other blogs.
· Collaborate with other leaders in your industry.
· Perform case studies that no one has done before in your industry.
· Reach out to top websites with those case studies and ask them to link to your content.
3. Not Realizing the Power of Internal Links
Some people don’t realize how important internal links are for Google to understand your website’s structure.
And this is not only important for Google. This is important for your website’s visitors as well. It gives them a better chance of exploring other topics on your website. It also gives you a chance to send traffic to articles that hadn’t gotten much attention before.
So, whenever you are publishing an article, remember to include links to relevant pages on your website.
4. Choosing the Wrong Keywords
Keyword research is the building block of any content marketing strategy. Even the slightest variation in keywords can mean a huge decline in search volume.
Suppose you have a website that sells drones. And you want to create a blog post about FPV (first-person view) drones.
You have two choices of keywords now. The first one is FPV drones that has a monthly search volume of 27,000. While the second one is racing drones that has a monthly search volume of only 710.
These two different keywords describing the same product have a staggering difference in search volume. Choosing racing drones over FPV drones means 26,290 monthly traffic opportunity is missed. You can see how choosing the wrong keywords is one of the most common SEO mistakes.
These are a few things you should keep in mind when choosing a keyword.
· Your keyword should have a high search volume and low competition.
· Your keyword should have a high CPC. The more money people want to spend on your keyword, the better it is.
· Avoid keywords that have very high competition. There are already many SEO experts out there ranking for those keywords.
· Target long-tail keywords especially if you have a new website.
5. Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is a tactic that involves using a keyword multiple times in a webpage in order to manipulate search engines for high rankings.
It destroys readability.
As compared to the past years, the practice of keyword stuffing has decreased. But some businesses still use it to boost their SEO rankings.
As buying links, keyword stuffing also leads to a Google Penalty. So, you should avoid this black hat SEO tactic at all costs.
Instead, use these techniques:
· Use your targeted keyword once in title tag and meta description.
· Keep URLs short and keyword-rich.
· Use your target keyword in H1 tag, H2 tag, and first 100 words of your article.
· Optimize for Yoast SEO.
6. Not Optimizing Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Your page’s title can make or break your article. Good titles get people to click on your article because they have an emotional side to them.
So, make titles that describe how you are going to solve reader’s problem. Using a specific number or time frame in a title improves the clicks as well.
Meta descriptions can boost your organic CTRs. So, write descriptive and keyword-rich meta descriptions that tell readers exactly what your article is about.
Pro tip: Always add a descriptive alt tag when you add an image. It helps Google understand what the image is about.
7. Not Considering Mobile SEO
Mobile SEO is the practice of optimizing your website’s design and content so that the mobile and tablet users get the same experience as laptop or pc users.
The no. of mobile users is increasing each year. Keeping that in mind, ignoring mobile SEO will hurt your SEO strategy.
So, having a responsive web design using CSS3 media queries is a must.
Now It’s Your Turn
With each mistake, your website gets further away from Google’s first page. It hurts when you work so hard to publish content but don’t get any results.
Now that you have read the 7 common SEO mistakes, you know how to avoid them and what to do instead.
Which mistake were you making in your SEO strategy?
Or do you want to share some other common SEO mistakes?
Either way, let me know in the comments!
