9 SEO MISTAKES TO AVOID FOR BETTER RANKINGS

Organic visits remain the most sought-after traffic in the online space and rightly so as the prospects of meeting the eye of your ideal client are high and so is the potential to convert them into customers.

Search Engine Optimization is the dominant way to help any business appear in organic rankings in search engines like Google, but it being a complex, competitive, and long process, it requires a regular ongoing effort.

So most businesses feel wary of investing in SEO and yet many small business owners try to take things into their own hands, due to budget constraints.

So here’s a simple 10-point strategy that can motivate such business owners to taste the fruits of having an online presence but also try & test different ways to promote themselves against the competition.

1. Keyword Research

Keyword Research in itself is quite complex and requires a lot of skills to arrive at queries that may fetch top organic rankings, and if you’re not giving it due consideration you’re leaving a huge gap between your content and your audience.

As a layman, the least you can do is to identify the most common queries for your product/service and place them on your content so that the Search Engine understands your target profiling/location, etc.

2. Duplicate Content

Make sure the content on your website is unique and not copied from your competitors or any web resource. Many developers may play smart and deliver your site with duplicate content to save a few bucks.

You need to ensure you’re not being taken for a ride, you can use tools like small SEO tools or Copyscape to confirm your site has unique content.

3. Upload Photos Without Seo Optimization

Desist from downloading images online, and putting them on your site as it is, Image optimization is a small and rather easy process to follow. Here’s a quick video to learn how to optimize and Geo Tag your images for better targeting & potential engagement.

Make sure each photo isn’t too heavy before uploading it. You can use the tricks shown here to lighten the images before uploading.

Update proper Alt Text with a keyword and make sure the dimensions are correct.

4. Not Integrating GA & GSC

If you haven’t integrated Google Analytics or Google search console, do it now. Refer to this video to install both tools, for they help track your website traffic, engagement, and a host of other metrics to help your site SEO.

Google console is designed to help webmasters optimize the SEO side of their website. It’s an essential tool to help you make progress in a short time. You can also learn if there are any indexing or other technical issues on your site that may jeopardize your traffic growth.

5. UX Optimisation

The UX or the user experience is most underrated and the most crucial factor in today’s SEO scenario.

The user’s activity right from clicking on your link to leaving your page/website is being recorded by Google as a signal as to how much engagement your content is generating which further helps the search engines to do profiling as to what sort of audience matches the intent of the page/website which further helps search engines to promote your content with the likable audience.

So you need to make sure your site appeals to all those who visit it, organized in a clear and structured way, to facilitate smooth user activity.

The navigation menu, the structure of pages and categories, the homepage, all these elements are communicated to Google, but they are equally important for users as well.

Related Read: Is HTTP/2 Good For Search Engine Optimization

6. Slow Site Speed

Site speed remains one of the most important performance indicators for your website to search engines, the load speed can make or break your website’s credibility as a slower load speed fends off users even before the page is loaded which, potentially, hurts the engagement metrics beyond imagination and kill your prospects of ranking in top google searches.

7. Interlinking & Silos

Your website is your virtual business and it needs to be accessible to everybody and anybody entering your website from anywhere.

A lack of proper interlinking among different pages as well as a lack of proper navigation is enough to hurt your website SEO as well as exposure to prospects.

So having your product/services pages interlinked as well as having better navigation across the site is of utmost importance.

8. Optimizing Non-Working Links

It may happen that you have some links within the site that don’t work and that return an error page like 404, in a large portal it is normal that such a situation may occur but it is good to keep the number under control.

If there are too many articles with broken links, it is absolutely necessary to intervene to correct or delete them, having a site that does not offer smooth navigation is not good for Google but above all for users who visit it.

9. Absence Of Backlinks

Backlinks or inbound links certainly are important, as they greatly affect your site’s reputation among the competition. Backlinks are like votes for your site, the more links mean your site commands a better reputation.

But it’s a double-edged sword and one needs to tread the link-building path only if they have a detailed understanding of links and their effects.

You must ensure backlink comes from established, credible, and trustworthy websites, with good traffic preferably.

You consider hiring a link-building professional to help you with a balanced approach.

Also Read: Highly Effective SEO Trends For Your Small Business in 2021