The web results that we get in search engines are not always the most relevant. SEO helps you to rank higher in SERPs and thus helps people find what they need. SEO also helps you to get more organic traffic from search engines.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. SEO is the process of getting traffic by using SEO techniques. SEO includes practices like on-page optimization, link building, and social signals. SEO helps you to get higher rankings in Search engine results pages (SERPs).
Having a website is not enough to make people visit your website or business. You have to design your SEO strategy around the keywords that attract your target audience. The SEO strategies should be set according to the type of business you run and who your customers are.
SEO activities vary from one industry to another, but some SEO strategies remain the same for all kinds of businesses.
In this article, I am going to discuss some common mistakes that people make while doing SEO and how you can avoid them or improve your ranking by fixing those mistakes.
Table of Contents
Not using a high-quality title tag on your homepage
High-quality title tags on pages help search engines rank them higher on SERPs (Search engine result page). Title tags on landing pages have 70 characters limit and on blog posts, they have 60 characters limit.
Use the SEO title tags to rank higher on search engines and get more SEO traffic. SEO title tags can help you rank your website high on SERPs.
Not using an SEO-friendly URL
SEO-friendly URLs are shorter, containing keywords or relevant phrases for your content/website subject matter. Avoid using lengthy URLs for pages of your web pages as it makes it difficult for search engines to read them properly and rank them on SERPs.
Use short SEO-friendly URLs that encourage visitors to click through to your site, which will increase click-through rate (CTR) and Google rankings.
Using hidden text and links
The hidden text refers to text that is displayed in browsers but not visible in HTML code. SEO experts use hidden text for SEO activities like SEO copywriting, keywords, and backlinks. It is also known as “hidden text or hidden links”. SEO experts typically use SEO copywriting to achieve this task of writing SEO content with the intention of improving your rankings in SERPs.
Copying material from other websites
This can be considered plagiarism and it may lead to penalization by search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc., so always write original SEO content that helps you rank higher on Google results in pages. Content should be relevant to your website subject matter. If you are using material from another website then provide proper link-backs (footer link) when using the information on others’ webpages for yours. Copyright laws stop people from copying SEO material for SEO purposes.
Forgetting to update content
Updating SEO content tells search engines that your website is active and not dead, so keeping SEO content updated on a regular basis helps index your site better by search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc., and shows you more SEO traffic. SEO experts recommend updating SEO content at least once every two months if it’s a blog or website and once per week for an e-commerce store.
Instead of just deleting obsolete SEO material from your website you can add your new SEO content instead with the relevant keywords in the SEO title tags and meta-descriptions. You can also add fresh videos on YouTube or Vimeo with SEO titles and descriptions.
Focusing on SEO instead of SEO traffic
You need to focus on SEO traffic rather than SEO itself, as you cannot control the rankings of search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc., but can only influence them by adding more original SEO content on your website or blog from time to time.
Not having enough SEO traffic means that there is no SEO value for your website if you are not getting enough visitors via search engines because it shows that people are not able to find their way back to the website when searching for a specific term related to the content of your webpages.
Not using social media for SEO
Social media provides you with the opportunity to share links on various social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Pinterest, etc., helping drive SEO traffic. This is one of the most overlooked yet powerful free tools of promoting your website/blog posts for more SEO traffic which means highly targeted and highly engaged people who are browsing on a particular topic.
Many big brands also engage in Social Media Marketing (SMM) to increase their visibility on social networking sites that helps them become an authority and rank number one on Google SERPs, which is SEO.
Slow loading time
A slow loading time for web pages on your website can result in losing SEO traffic because people don’t like to wait very long before the content of the page starts rendering. This means that they will move on to some other site with faster load speeds, forcing you to lose SEO traffic.
Poor navigation
Good navigation affects bounce rate which shows how many people leave a web page after visiting it once without browsing any further pages of your website/blog.
It’s better to have more internal links (within the same domain) than external links (links to another website) on your web pages because internal links give visitors an easy way to find out more about your content and stay on your website longer.
Poor navigation often results in high bounce rates which impact negatively SEO because search engines like Google measure the time people are spending reading your content. More time spent = higher SERPs for you or better rankings in popular SERPs where more visitors will click on your website link to see what’s inside, which is why it’s important to improve your navigation structure.
Conclusion
SEO is a very important part of Internet marketing, which can take you from the bottom to the top in search engine ranks. It takes time and money to learn SEO but it’s worth it if you are serious about doing business online because there’s no other way to get targeted traffic for your website or blog without spending a lot of money on advertising.
The best thing about SEO is that your website becomes more visible to search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc., and shows up when people are searching for relevant terms related to the content of your web pages which means that it’s a free yet very powerful way to get highly targeted visitors to your site every day until you achieve the number one spot on popular search engines like Google.