You’re not ranked #1 in Google for your target keywords and you don’t know why? You might be making one of those very common SEO mistakes that many site owners make!
When it comes to SEO, while the requirements are changing every day, opportunities are increasing at an alarming pace with content marketing practices and holistic digital strategies. Broadly speaking, the market size is expected to reach $1.6 billion by 2027.
The struggle to avoid technical site problems, and especially to keep up with constant algorithmic updates, is part of marketers’ daily lives. You’re not alone, because we’ve all been there.
The good news is that SEO is one of those strategies that you can build slowly, but it takes time to master.
With a good understanding of the most common (and potentially harmful) errors, you can maximize your website’s performance.
let’s go ?
1. Minimize site speed
One of the most common SEO mistakes is reducing site speed: the faster your site, the more Google will support it. So work on the speed of your site to keep your pages in search results.
Google itself provides a handy tool to check your site speed and gives you an overview of the aspects to improve to increase the speed of a particular page. This is Google PageSpeed ​​Insights.
Among the key elements that slow down a site’s loading speed, don’t forget photos. Some are very large and therefore take a long time to load. It also affects the context of the images.
2. Not Knowing Your Audience
One of the fundamentals of SEO is understanding your target audience. Do you think you know your audience? Some often fall into the trap of not understanding how consumers behave in their market.
Also, consumers expect quick response and results for their queries. While historical data always gives SEO great insight into seasonal trends, the ways marketers understand their customers need to be holistic.
One of the most common mistakes in keyword selection is to ignore search engines and user preference for long-tail keywords. While you may define your products and services in a certain way, you must understand what keywords your potential customers will use to refer to them.
3. Lack of SEO Action Roadmap
It doesn’t make sense to take random steps to know your audience and maximize opportunities from that knowledge.
Many businesses, whether small, medium or large, struggle to create or execute a strategy because they do not have a clear roadmap.
To have a sustainable and effective strategic marketing perspective, set yourself objectives and clearly define your missions:
- Measure and understand your competition – rankings, keywords, content and performance;
- divide tasks into tasks;
- Set actions for content, site updates, SEO strategy;
- Look for SEO platforms and tools to help you set up and then be successful with your SEO strategy.
4. Not Using Google Analytics to See What Changes
Other SEO Mistakes: SEO isn’t just about massive amounts of free traffic. It is also a question of conversion. It’s easy to figure out which keywords are sending you the most traffic, and then quickly get frustrated when you can’t rank for those super competitive, high traffic keywords.
But think again, traffic isn’t everything!
Often, phrases with less traffic convert better because they are more specific, and achieving first-page rankings for many of them can lead to multiple conversions.
The only way to find out is to track the data on Google Analytics. Refer to your performance data on your individual keywords or phrases, then compare them against each other to see which produces the best results. This way you’ll better optimize your site as a whole and know which efforts have finally paid off and which need to be abandoned.
5. Ignore Mobile Traffic
If your website is not mobile friendly or mobile search is not part of your SEO strategy, you may miss out on many opportunities.
Google also supports mobile-friendly websites: over 50% of all traffic comes from mobile devices.
If you haven’t already, it’s time to optimize your website for organic traffic from mobile devices, make sure your website is responsive and loads in less than 3 seconds. So if you want to increase the organic traffic of your website then do not ignore mobile optimization.
6. Keep SEO Practices Old School
It’s no secret anymore: Google is constantly developing its search algorithm. So it makes perfect sense that SEO is evolving with it. Strategies that worked well 10 years ago are no longer effective. To stay on top of the Google SERP, you need to stay up to date with and apply modern SEO techniques.
Keyword stuffing, personal blogging networks (or PBNs), and all other old school SEO techniques are now seen as a search engine penalty rather than a ranking advantage.
So always stay up to date with the latest SEO best practices, keep track of new updates, changes from Google and changes in the market.
7. Ignore Bad Google Reviews
When it comes to Google reviews for a product or service, they can be positive or negative. The total number of these reviews increases the social proof of your business and contributes to localized search ranking factors.
So having only positive reviews makes your site look suspicious. Many customers expressing dissatisfaction with your website can also drive traffic away. Otherwise, the credibility of your website increases with positive reviews.
So what about bad reviews on Google? Use them to your advantage as a way to build a good relationship with your customers. Use them to understand your audience better and thus gain a new audience. For example, you can post on social media what kind of problems these people are facing and the measures you are taking to deal with them. This will show your professionalism and add credibility to your website.
Always be prepared for criticism rather than shutting yourself down from the conversation. Even encourage your audience to post reviews about your services and respond openly to them.
8. Forget Content Formats Other Than Text
In addition to text, videos, infographics, podcasts, webinars and images drive organic traffic to your website. Video usage in particular has grown exponentially and is seen as an excellent sales tool, according to this data collected by Oberlo:
- At least once a month, 56% of the French population watches a video;
- Once or twice a week, 86% of 15/24 year olds watch a video;
- 86% of consumers want to see more video content from brands and businesses;
- 73% of consumers are influenced by a brand’s presence through social media video marketing to make a purchase.
- 80% of marketing professionals say that video has directly helped in increasing sales;
- 80% also say that videos have helped increase traffic to their website.
More and more visitors prefer watching videos instead of reading articles. That’s why you’re probably seeing more videos on social media feeds as well as on Google SERPs. Then it’s time to get started!
9. Ignore Branded SEO and EAT
SEO is not just about ranking first on Google results. It is also about building a trustworthy brand. Today, Google favors authentic, reliable and popular sites. This is Google’s EAT (Expertise, Authority and Trust) concept. It determines the EAT of the website using a combination of various data points and algorithms.
To demonstrate your expertise, authority and credibility:
- Try to be included in top media publications;
- Be transparent: Provide information about your company: address, authors’ presentation, awards won, etc.;
- Make sure your SEO strategy includes ways to increase brand-related searches.
10. Not Optimizing for Local SEO
If you run a business that focuses on customers in a particular city or region, avoid one of these most common SEO mistakes: neglecting local SEO. Most search engines, including Google, handle this a little differently than more common keywords.
Start by including region-specific keywords in your page title and meta description. Also include a local address and phone number on your pages, such as in the header or footer, so that you appear in local results.
To further optimize your website for local SEO, also consider signing up with local review sites and networks such as Google Places, Foursquare, Merchant Circle, or Yelp.
11. Don’t Use Anchor Text for Internal Links
Have you ever seen “click here” type links in an article? From an SEO perspective, it doesn’t do much. Sure, using a call-to-action can increase the click-through rate, but it reduces the ability to customize your anchor text, which is one of the most important components of SEO.
For example, if you’re writing a blog post and want to link to your e-commerce services page, make the anchor text “e-commerce web design services,” for example.
In addition, if you Of course Call to action, try to include at least a few relevant keywords in the link. For example, “Click here to learn more about our e-commerce services”.
12. Not inviting people to visit your site
When a website appears for certain queries, metadata is what appears on search engine result pages (SERPs). This typically includes the title of your page and its meta-description:
- Page Title: This has always been an important ranking factor for Google. So make sure it’s optimized properly for each page by adding your keyword if possible, making sure your page title isn’t too long;
- Meta description is not a ranking factor, but it does play an important role in your click-through rate (CTR). The more likely people are to think that your site will provide an answer to their search query, the more traffic a page will receive. If you customize your meta description with a clear and engaging message, it becomes easier for them to know whether the information they’re looking for is on that page.