Top 9 SEO Mistakes You Should Avoid Right Now!

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Question a million dollars, what are the most common mistakes to avoid on-page optimization? The SEO is not an exact science, but a sum of empirical knowledge that feeds continuous tests, adjustments, and tests. Besides the Google algorithm, it is a patented technology and is its biggest competitive advantage.

Here, however, a few things to do absolutely and on which all agree SEO specialist.


#1- Ignoring HTTP Status and Server Issues

The most critical technical issues with a website are often related to its HTTP status.

These include status codes like Error 404 (Page not found), which indicate the server’s response on the back of a request from a client, such as a browser or search engine.

When the dialogue between a client and a server – or, in simpler terms, a user and your website – gets interrupted and breaks down, so too does the trust the user has in the site.

Serious server issues may not only lead to lost traffic because of inaccessible content, but they may also damage your rankings in the long run if they leave Google unable to find any suitable results on your site for the searcher.

#2- Traditional SEO techniques

Just the way the internet is changing, SEO is developing and changing too. To stay at the very top of the search results, you need to keep up with these changes and apply modern SEO techniques.

If you keep applying the traditional SEO techniques, then you may end up getting penalized. Those days are gone when you can rank by using keyword stuffing, PBNs, and other traditional methods.

Today, Google is smarter than before. Now, it can rank for those keywords that you have not mentioned in your content too. Recently, Google made an algorithmic update called Google BERT that helps Google to better understand the content and user-queries.

If you want to succeed with SEO, then you should adopt modern SEO techniques. Traditional SEO techniques can penalize your site but can’t outrank your competitors.

#3- Skipping Title Tags & Meta Descriptions

Optimizing your content does not finish once you include a target keyword in your articles. Title tags and meta descriptions are essential elements of SEO that should not be forgotten. Skipping them means a huge missed potential for your content.

These optimizing factors are considered by search engines when crawling your website, so if properly done, they can improve the performance of your content.

Another technical detail that content marketers sometimes forget is including image tags. The alt tags of the visuals you include in your content are important, as they are another sign of how you are targeting articles. Search bots cannot see the pictures – but they can read the alt tags and add this information in the way they index your pages.

#4- Creating Content That’s Not About Your Keywords

Another common pitfall in SEO optimization is producing content that is not actually about your keywords. The problem is that you want to rank for a certain keyword, but you fail to focus the text on your target topic. Search engines like Google want to serve their users with the most relevant content for people’s search terms. Thus, if your content does not answer user needs, it won’t rank well.

This mistake is often a result of trying to fit a few different topics within a single piece of content, creating low-quality work just for the sake of including keywords, or optimizing for multiple keywords in one article.

Your primary goal should be to produce content that truly corresponds to the questions and needs of your target audience, including using the right search terms. Then search engines will be able to trace your content as matching the keyword you are optimizing for.

#5- Failing to Reach Customers with Your Content

Continuing this discussion, you need to have a strategy in place to actually get people to view your content. I believe that much of the industry and many businesses don’t invest as many resources into content promotion as they do production.

Sure, you share your content over social media, but how much reach does it actually acquire without paid advertising?

Simply posting your latest article on your blog, social media channel, and e-newsletter limits its reach to a small percentage of your existing audience.

If you’re looking to acquire new leads for your business, then you’ll need to invest more resources into promotional tactics. Some strategies include:

  • Paid social campaigns.
  • Targeted sharing using keyword optimized hashtags.
  • Promoting content over influencer channels.
  • Link building.

#6- You Ignore the Organic Search Traffic You Already Have

You know… you probably have no idea what keywords you’re actually ranking for. You’re probably thinking “I already rank for them, why should I care?”

Well… the truth is that you might get some traffic from keywords you already rank for, but not all of it. If you’re getting 5 searches from a keyword that has 100 monthly searches, you’re probably not on 1st position because the average CTR for 1st position is around 30%.

It’s either you’re number 5 or below or you have really bad CTR and won’t last long in the top spots. If you’re on position 5+, then there’s still room for improvement.

You can monitor the keywords you’re already ranking for in your website analytics or by using Google Tag Manager on your website and adding Google Analytics to it. There’s a good amount of info in the Search Console as well.

#7- Poor Social Media Presence

How well and how often are you promoting your business through social media? Do you have a strategy in place?

Well, as a small business owner who wishes to rank up his/her website in the SERPs, you should be aware of the fact that a successful social media marketing strategy helps overcome common SEO mistakes.

That’s because Google, Bing, Yahoo, and all other search engines analyze the way people interact with your brand on social channels. The stronger social engagement you get the more SEO benefits your business receives.

#8- Having Duplicate Content (Stop Stealing)

Large and small companies alike may overlook duplicate content on their websites. Plain and simple, duplicate content negatively affects SEO. Duplicate content includes any matching content, printer-friendly pages and twin product listings across multiple pages.

There are a host of plagiarism tools online; many are free, designed to catch duplicated content for revision and omission from a website.

#9- Ignoring conversion optimization

The end goal of all businesses is to get customers and for that, you need to first generate leads and then convert them. However, many businesses end up ignoring conversion optimization and only concentrate on the top of the funnel.

Instead, it’s necessary to provide everything that your leads need to become paying customers. Load them up with reviews, case studies, and show them why they must purchase from you. Make it easy for them to make the purchase as well.

By ignoring conversion optimization, you may end up losing loads of customers and hence, revenue.


Takeaways

If you really expect to take your game to the next level, you must understand how SEO works. Furthermore, you have to acknowledge the common SEO mistakes that you’re currently doing, fix them, and implement new solutions afterward.

Do yourself a big favor and start correcting the aspects that hurt your rankings daily, or contact us and we can talk about your SEO strategy.

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