Mostly people decide to concentrate on SEO for gaining more and more traffic from major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. They optimize their websites and obtain heaps of links, in the expectation to see their websites start rising on the search results.
After spending time on it for some weeks or even months, they find that their sites aren’t doing well and still far from the first page. Nothing seem to be assisting them in climbing out of the hole and reaching at the top position in the search results. It’s time to think why this is happening?
They shouldn’t be despondent at this stage as SEO is one of those approaches that can be implemented in a few weeks to get best results, but it still takes time to be a SEO Master.
If you are also suffering with such situation then there is a good news for you, you can actually over-come this state by fixing some crucial errors to start getting positive results. You can possibly acquire that first page ranking too.
Most Common Mistakes SEO Professionals Should Know
So, here are some most common SEO mistakes which you should avoid to get your desiring results:
1. Doing Wrong Keyword Optimization
Choosing right keywords is an initial and most significant stage in SEO and by doing wrong keyword optimization you are actually blocking the targeted traffic to your site. It’s really important to understand what are the keywords that your possible clients are using to find their desiring results. It is possible that the keywords you consider right might be different for your customers. Researching carefully before going for optimization is highly recommended. You can take support from some of the common and trustable keywords research and planner tools such as Google Ads, Google Trends, Moz keywords and SEMrush in putting your finger on the most suitable and trending keywords.
2. Keyword Stuffing in the Content
If you are thinking that repeating your targeted keywords in every single sentence of you web content would boost your website ranking on search engines result page, then you might be wrong. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t target your keywords in the content, you should be but going overboard with filling your content with keywords will make your content spammy in the opinion of search engine. Having spammy content on the site actually harms your overall SEO performance.
Such type of method would convert your content into useless and unusual for its audience and readers. That’s why overusing keywords or keywords stuffing isn’t considered as advantageous for your SEO success.
3. Ignoring Meta Description and Title Tag
It really would be a damaging mistake if your website is having your company name as the title for each page throughout the site. If you aren’t aware with this then it would amaze you that every page of your site should have a unique title which is not just important for your SEO purposes. Title tags of your website is usually used in various purposes for instance it used as the main title while bookmarking the site. Hence, it should be unique and relevant to the content.
Meta description is also a significant part which you shouldn’t avoid in SEO. Alike the title tags of your website, meta description should be well formatted and unique. It should be included in every page of your website whether it is homepage or any other page of the site. So, make sure that your site is having well persuasive and targeted keywords rich meta descriptions will make people want to click on your listing in search engine result page.
4. Using Plagiarized Content
The next in the queue is the most common mistake related to the superiority of your website content. Though copying text was a common exercise back in the day but today it is considered as a penalize and black hat strategy by the search engines. Plagiarising and duplicating the content is perceived as a spammy practice which actually doesn’t work. So, instead of coping the content from any other resources or spinning the content using spinning tools to give it a new shape one should invest their time and money in producing fresh and unique content that search engine are looking for.
Through this way you may perhaps make sure that your site won’t be pushed back by search engines.
5. Not Using Relevant Content
Another common error in search engine optimization is creating content that is not actually relevant to your targeted keywords.
The problem is between the topic you have chosen and the keywords you are trying to insert in the content. In most cases when you want to rank on certain keywords, you try to insert multiple keywords in one piece of content and which make it irrelevant to the targeted topic.
Your primary aim should be on the way to producing meaningful content that truly parallels to the queries and requirements of your target audience, including using the right search keywords. Then search engines like Google that want to impart relevant and best-matched content to their visitors will be able to rank your site in their search result page.
6. Ignoring Link Building in the Site
You need to be very cautious while attaching internal links in your site as this is one of the most common mistakes in SEO which can be injurious for your site. Essentially, it’s important to place internal links in your site content to give your visitors a chance to explore the things in depth. Through internal linking you can improve your site bounce rate as well as visibility. But overdoing internal linking just for the sake of ranking won’t going to work. If your content and links appear unusual then your efforts will not be valued by your target audience as well as search engines.
7. Ignoring Anchor Texts in Internal Links
I’m sure that you might be aware with the Anchor text. Basically, anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink. Linking generic texts like “click here” is completely useless as per the SEO perspective. Anchor texts in your site should include keywords which you want to target. According to the SEO strategies anchor text should be relevant to the page you are linking to.
For instance, if you create a blog post, and you want to link to your SEO training course page, then you need to make the anchor text something like “SEO training course”.
8. Not Using Unique Anchor Text for Every Link
If you are using same anchor text for every link in your site page then it might create problem for you. You need to use the variation of different phrases in the anchor text to provide essential and right information regarding the linked page to search engines as well as visitors.
If your site is having duplicate anchor texts then it looks funny to visitors, and it can be harmful for your site ranking too. So, try to mix it up and use different variation of the keywords in the text.
9. Using Poor Internal Linking Strategies
Using keywords as I have discussed above is necessary to provide essential information to the search engine regarding the page. But there are very few SEO handlers who seem to use this method on their websites. For instance, making click here as anchor text for lead pages is a very common mistake which provide no information to the search engines. We can include our keywords and make it more informative for reader as well as search engines.
A much better substitute of “Learn More”, “Click Here” and “Next Page” would be “Click to know more about our web design services.”
10. Using Uncompressed Images
If you are uploading uncompressed images in your site then it causes site speed issues which can affect your site traffic. You need to optimize the images before uploading on the site.
11. Priority to Quantity of Links not Quality of Links
You can find lots of easy ways to get bulks of links, but rather than focusing on quantity of links you should generally give importance to quality of links. You don’t need to collect hundred and thousands of links from low quality directories. One quality link possibly works more than the bulks of low quality links.
That’s the reasons why major search engines give importance to the sites having backlinks from the popular domains.
12. Not Focusing on Website’s Architecture
Website having an impressive architecture and user interface force the visitors to stay on the site and which result in recovering conversion rate and leads to healthier business and returns. If your site is suffering with poor user interface then it might become hard to acquire traffic and returns.
13. Ignoring Analytics
If you are thinking that SEO is all about the free traffic then you are wrong as it is directly related to the conversion too. So, you need to know that which keyword phrase is sending more traffic to your site. You can find out the whole traffic track by using analytics set and compare your targeted keywords between each other to find out which is making more customers. Google analytics is one of the best tools for analysing your website’s activitie and a best way to enhance or optimized your website for better results.
14. Forgetting About Local SEO
If your business emphases on customers within a specific area or region then you need to know about local search. Most of major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo handle the local search results little bit differently than global. Comparing with global ranking you can gain more revenue by local searches. If you forget about the local SEO then it might block your earnings and profits which you can attain at local regional level.
To improve your ranking in local search results you need to consider few essential things such as including region-specific keywords in the meta descriptions and page title tags. You want to add the local phone number and address in the header and footer sections of your website. At last list your site on major local business listing sites and review webs such as Google Places, Yelp and FourSquare.
15. Doing Constant SEO
Due to the modifications in search engines algorithms, we can’t consider SEO as a constant practice. Along with the changes in the search engines algorithms, new participants seem to enter in this arena all of the time. More prominently, you have patrons who change their way to use search engine to find out their goods and services, hence you also need to change your SEO approaches accordingly to get most out of your efforts.
Search engine optimization is a requisite task to promote your business today. So, you must be very cautious and should avoid the common SEO mistakes which I have mentioned above to get high ranking as well as increased returns.
