Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid
It used to be that websites were a thing of luxury, but not anymore. These days, it’s almost a necessity to showcase your business online and make it easy for people to find you. Many business owners want to keep up with their competition and in doing so, harm their visibility with aggressive marketing tactics. Be careful that you aren’t making some common mistakes that will actually hurt your business rather than help it.
Being Keyword Happy
The whole idea behind keywords is to use them to rank well in search engines. However, there is a difference between being selective with your keywords to maximize their benefit and overstuffing your content with keyword phrases. It’s definitely not okay to stuff your pages with keywords in the hope of ranking well. Not only is this completely ineffective, but you could be penalized by Google and possibly removed from the search results. Go ahead and use keywords, but remember to use them smartly and not overuse them because it is easily detectable and appears unnatural to the search engines.
Not Enough Quality Content
Once upon a time it was okay to have content that was short, sweet, and to the point. However, it is now the trend to have in-depth and informative content. There is still a place for shorter content and that would be on your mobile site, but for your full website, ensure that you publish content that is relevant, valuable, and informative. Content doesn’t have to be merely a long string of words. Break it up with images and video. This will help your content rank better and gain more social shares and higher engagement with your audience. Also, make sure your content doesn’t go stale. Keep it fresh and updated frequently.
Bulk Link Buying
Link building is a bit like walking the high wire. While you want links on your site, it’s important not to appear unnatural about it. Too often, businesses think that buying up a bunch of links is an effective way to boost their site’s search engine rankings. Wrong! Google will severely penalize you if you’re caught building up unnatural links. Take your time to find quality links that will give your website authority and come up in search engines naturally.
What? We Have to Have a Plan?
Surprisingly, many website owners don’t even have a marketing plan for their website. They build the site and hope it will take off. Well my friends, this won’t work. In order to be successful, you need to have a strategic content marketing campaign. In order to establish your brand and your authority online, it’s important to have fresh, quality content. It’s been shown that by doing this alone, your site will achieve higher search engine rankings. Have fresh content will also help build awareness, credibility, and build your brand. These are all positives that you should be working on daily in order to keep up with your competition and maintain your audience. Take the time to differentiate yourself from your competitors and tell your audience why they should choose you.
No Social Media
Social media has exploded all over the internet and to not be a part of it is to shoot yourself in the foot. It’s vital that your business has social media presence in order to create buzz about your business and grow and engage your audience. Use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. to market yourself. And make sure the social media platforms you use are linked to your website.
Duplicate Content
We just discussed the importance of content marketing for your website. Now we need to add that you need to publish content that is unique and not copied from another source. Don’t get caught using someone else’s content as it will harm your search engine rankings.
Having a website is no easy feat. But with a little education and research, it’s entirely manageable. Keep up with SEO updates and current trends and not only will you find your sweet spot on search rankings, but you will continue to build your brand authority and the trust of your audience. Good luck!