Let’s talk about common SEO mistakes you need to stop making! A frequent topic for our clients is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It always seems to be that “thing” that people hear of and kinda, sort of get the concept of but are completely overwhelmed with trying to figure it out. SEO is one of the main reasons we offer our continued monthly marketing support in order to help our clients best optimize their online presence. SEO is one of the most important factors that needs to be considered whether building a website or diving into social media and online marketing. A common question is “how do I do SEO”. The answer is always, that there’s unlimited options that can be considered when it comes to improving your SEO. There needs to a few steps taken prior to determining the right path for your businesses needs. For us we take a look at your current efforts, we discuss your goals, then we develop a phase strategy of creating a plan of action and follow through.
Something that gets covered immediately is what’s not being done and any mistakes that can quickly point out one reason behind unsuccessful search engine rankings. Yoast.com shared an article about How to Avoid Common SEO Mistakes. We couldn’t agree more with what they pointed out as they are typical finds for us when covering this topic with our clients. Let’s take a look.
#1: Forgetting that faster is better
“The first thing I’d like to touch on is site speed. The faster your site, the more Google will favor it.” Yes! This is why we have to provide our honest feedback when someone wants an animated graphic, too many pictures, videos, etc. We always explain the reasoning behind our suggestion of not using specific items. We then discuss alternatives for allowing you to get what you want while not being detrimental to your sites performance.
#2: Trying to rank for the wrong keywords
“If you want to rank in Google you have to make sure that you’re using the right keywords for every page. One of the biggest mistakes I frequently encounter is that site owners are optimizing for too generic keywords.” This is is an every day occurrence when we try to explain what type of keywords our clients should use. They stated it perfectly. “If you are a relatively small business that wants to rank for ‘rental car’, you’re aiming too high. You should try to come up with something more specific than that. Otherwise, you’re competing with all the car rental companies all over the world, which is impossible to do!”
#3: Failing to invite people to visit your site
You need to include relevant keywords in your content, Page Titles, and Meta Descriptions. These are all factors that Google picks up on as well as the visitors. If you have a Page Title and Meta Description that pulls the audience in they will click on your page to read more. If the Page Title doesn’t do a good job of describing what they can read more on then they are less likely to click when they find themselves questioning it. If you don’t have a Meta Description that leaves them feeling like they want to keep reading then why would they click on it? Take your time and think about the content you are putting on the page, what’s your call to action, and how can you title it to make the viewers want to click.
#4: Neglecting to write awesome content
Yes! I feel like these are my exact words. Google has millions of sites to search through, why are they going to pick yours over the next? “Keep in mind that you don’t need to think of Google as your audience. You write for your visitors and not for Google. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and provide the best answers possible. You can’t expect Google to see you as an expert on a certain topic when you have only written two sentences about it. This indicates to Google that your page probably isn’t the best result to match the search query.”
#5: No call to action for your visitors
Include links throughout your site. What else might be interesting to them related to the topic you are sharing. How can you help them follow through with an action you brought to their attention? “Once visitors are on your site, an important goal is to keep them on your site. You don’t want your visitors immediately bouncing back to Google once they have read something on your site. This is why you need to encourage visitors to click through your site. The best way to do this is to create a call-to-action (CTA), which usually is a button that offers an action to your visitor”
#6: Not thinking ahead: The future is mobile
It’s simple, we are a mobile world. We like things on the go, at our finger-tips and ready right now! That wouldn’t be any different for our online expectations. Our websites need to please those expectations. “Since Google has announced that next year they will switch to mobile indexing first, you should be busy preparing your site for this change. ‘Mobile indexing first’ means that Google will look at the mobile version of your site to decide how high you should rank.”