6 Common SEO Mistakes To Avoid

SEO is evolving as the different algorithms of the search engines are changing constantly. SEO must be on top of marketers’ agendas as it is a powerful way to bring you business on top of the digital marketing arena that attracts visitors to your company’s outlets and to direct them towards your sales funnel.

Optimizing your website is an essential element of your online marketing strategy. There are some common SEO mistakes that are tough to avoid. Here are some of them:

1. Using the wrong keywords

Keywords are the most essential element in optimizing a website. SEO is all about the keywords that you want your website to rank for. But are you are using the right ones?

If you want to rank in Google you have to make sure that you’re using the right keywords for all your web pages. One of the most common mistakes in selecting keywords is optimizing for too generic keywords. It’s important to define your products and services in a certain way to understand what words your potential customers would use to search in related to your offerings.

Do not optimize your web pages for wrong keywords. Instead, conduct a keyword research carefully before you start the optimization. Using tools like the Google AdWords KeywordPlanner, SEMrush and Moz Keyword Explorer can help you in selecting the most trending and adequate keywords for your products and services.

2. Outdated content

You might not think having outdated content is that big of a deal. Search engines like Google prefer websites that frequently publish new content because it’s a signal that the business is active and keen to meet the customer’s needs.

Frequently publishing new content or updating existing content with the latest information using related keywords or terms also gives your current visitors a reason to revisit your website, spend more time on the site, and share your content or blogs on social networks which is a good measurement of engagement. So, keep your site’s content up to date. Visitors also want to see content that is current and relevant

Find your top and worst performing pages or blog posts through analytics and improve them.

3. Not optimizing for site speed

According to research, it takes just 1/20th of a second for site visitors to form a first impression about your business. If your website speed is slow, visitors won’t waste their time waiting for it to load instead they will turn away to your competitors, and that’s a loss for you. Customers nowadays have a little patience, so optimize your site speed to have a better crawl rate and provide a good customer experience.

Poor website loading speed can be extremely harmful to businesses. Most consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less. 79% of shoppers reported that they would not return to purchase from a slow-loading website.

Use site speed tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or WebPageTest to analyze your site speed and have an idea on how to improve your site including optimizing images, leveraging browser caching, and minifying JavaScript.

4. Not optimizing images

The images you use on your website provide a visual element that can positively impact user experience. But if they are not optimized, they can also hurt your ranking on search engines.

Optimizing web images delivers high-quality images in the right format, dimension, size, and resolution while keeping the smallest possible size. Image optimization can be done in different ways be it by resizing the images, caching, or by compressing the size.

5. Not optimizing URLs or site structure

When it comes to your website, your URLs are often the first thing Google and customers will see. Many site owners leave the title of the page or the post as the URL, which can lead to long URLs that do nothing to help your search rankings.

Most URLs on a search results page keep their character limit from around a healthy 30-40 words. So, keep URLs short and simple, concise, and optimized them with keywords. Here are some tips:

1. A long tail URL should use a dash (-) rather than an underscore (_) to separate individual words.
2. Avoid using characters like: @&$% and others.
3. Keep your URL and Page Title similar.
4. Avoid keyword repetition within URLs.

Bottom Line

Getting a website to rank in search engines doesn’t happen overnight, but it does take hard work and consistency. Search engine optimization is an indispensable part of any digital marketing strategy today. These six common mistakes can help you recognize them to make your site rank even better.