Search engine optimization possesses the power to make or break your website in no time. Besides from focusing on publishing content on a daily basis, marketers these days are shifting their efforts towards driving traffic on their websites and optimizing in it for all sorts of search engines. Let it be Bing, Yahoo or Google; no site online can survive without adequate search engine optimization.
But unfortunately, it's not as easy as it looks. Now, you may have your keyword search game going strong, and you do find phrases that help to bring tremendous amounts of traffic to your website. You slowly start to gain momentum and get loads of links generated; everything is looking good. But then disaster strikes when you see your website not making its way on the first page.
So, what is really going on? Why are your efforts getting thrown out of the window? Well, it’s probably because you are missing something. But what could it be? SEO is something that cannot be mastered in a day. It requires a great amount of patience, a great deal of resilience and frequent updating, to get your website on the first page. However, in order to achieve this, you must be aware of all the blunders, mishaps and shortcomings, you make while optimizing your content. Therefore, I have curated this blog especially for you. This blow enlists all blunders that website owners commonly make. So, read-on as I have provided some ten common errors and have also given a great deal of advice to correct it. Without further ado, let’s start:
- Leaving Out Local Search
The most common mistake that marketers are observed doing is that they fail to drive their focus towards being region-specific. If you really care about your customers, then aim for keywords that are more region-specific. Google handles global and region-specific keywords, a bit differently. Local search helps you to focus on the audience within your reach.
So, start by incorporating region-specific keywords in your page titles, Meta description and subheadings. Apart from headings, try adding in your contact information, such as your address, local phone number and email. This will definitely influence your customer's purchase decision. Lastly, also try listing yourself on region-specific sites such as Google places, Four Square or Yelp.
- Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is a big no-no when it comes to optimizing your content for Search engines. As its name implies, it's the practice of stuffing as many keywords as you can onto a page to gain reasonable rankings. But this technique is considered to be an SEO white hat practice. Despite its shortcomings, many digital marketers tend to get away with it. No doubt, it's a risky process because if a website gets caught, they would immediately have to pay the penalty and this is just the start. Apart, from paying the penalty, such sites also get demoted or get permanently removed. Hence, avoid the stuffing your keywords as it might give you a short-term advantage, but it will never provide your long-term benefits.
- Forgetting about Using Analytics
There is a common misconception which has gotten every digital marketers mind-boggled. Marketers believe generating high traffic is all that matters, but they are incredibly wrong. Marketers mainly focus on targeting high-competitive keywords, but what they fail to understand is that generating traffic on high competitive keywords is exceptionally challenging. So, they should focus on targeting low-traffic phrases. Low-traffic phrases being more specific will give better conversion rates.
But the real questions lie in finding it out? How can you track it? The best way is to make use of an analytics package. An analytics package will help you to set up conversion tracking for your keyword phrases. The best way to master is getting your familiar with it. Invest a considerable amount of time in looking up how various analytics are used to elevate your conversion rates.
- Leaving out Creativity in Meta Tags and Description
The title of a page is the first thing that crosses the reader's eye. If it's not catchy enough, then it's more likely your reader might move on to some other page. Many marketers add their company's name as the title, which is a huge mistake. People utilize your title while bookmarking content, and it's the first thing that appears in front of millions when your page gets shared via a social media platform, so, don’t screw your title up. Your title should speak for your content reflecting on the originality of your page. Hence, be careful while crafting them.
- Not Fixing Broken Links
Have you ever clicked on a link that has landed on a page, with a 404 file not found an error? How frustrating right? Well, these are the broken errors that need to be fixed, and it's your responsibility to get this done. Bad links will give your website a terrible reputation, so monitor them accurately and try fixing them as soon as possible.
- Refraining from Mobile Optimization
Around 40% of web users, make use of their mobile phone to browse websites. Nobody, these days has got the time to open up their laptops and scroll through. Getting your website optimized for mobile is the first thing you should do. It will give your website a professional outlook, building up its reputation. Google is also not behind in this game. It has given out a specific algorithm to monitor the performance of websites accordingly.
- Plagiarized Content
One common mistake that you can expect from content writing services out there is plagiarized content. Copy pasted content is such a turn off. Don't expect a lot of audience getting attracted to your website if you are putting up plagiarized content. It's your duty to check it thoroughly and making sure you submit fresh, crisp and creative content.
Wrap Up
There are many mistakes a website owner can make while optimizing content for SEO; some of the most common ones are mentioned above. Read all of them, carefully to ensure you know how to avoid and fix them in the future.